"Yo! I'll do the delivery duties," said a young woman over the comm. "Hi, Jess! See me before you leave?"

He recognized the voice of Kellum's raven-haired daughter, only eighteen years old and already proficient in much of the shipyard work. "My schedule's tight, Zhett. I don't know if I'll have time."

"He'll make time, my sweet," Kellum said.

Piloting a small grappler pod as if it were an extension of her own arms, Zhett intercepted the Plumas water tanks and glided off to distribute them one at a time to Osquivel's assembly grids and resource rocks.

Misty with paternal pride, Kellum watched his daughter go, then raised his bushy brows. "She's making eyes at you, Jess, and she'd be a good catch, by damn. You're thirty-one years old, and unwed-isn't your clan getting anxious?"

Zhett was the daughter of Kellum's first marriage, the only part of the family remaining to him after a dome breach had killed his wife and young son. Though Kellum treated the girl as if she were a princess, Zhett had become a strong young woman on her own, not at all spoiled. Jess had known her since she was a little girl.

He looked at the older man and forced a smile. "I'll make my own choice whenever the Guiding Star shows me the way."

Kellum clapped him on the shoulder and took him through an air lock to a slowly rotating habitation module. He handed Jess a flexible bulb filled with a strong orange liqueur that he distilled himself.

Porthole plates filled one wall with an ever-changing view of the rocky blizzard. "Living here is like swimming in a school of hungry fish," Kellum said. "You watch everything that moves and stay ready to get out of the way."

He gestured proudly to the aquarium mounted on the inner wall, and Jess looked at the zebra-striped angelfish, Del Kellum's prize possessions. At great expense, the clan leader had imported the graceful tropical fish from Earth. Kellum fed them regularly, studying their sleek forms because he said they reminded him of starship designs.

He growled conspiratorially, "Whenever you decide to put together your next hit-and-run squadron, Jess, my shipyard can pump out another dozen or so blitzkrieg scoops. I've already got the production lines in place."

Jess couldn't tell if the older man sounded hopeful or frightened. "I'm not ready to lose any more people and equipment right now, Del, just so we can sell a few squirts of ekti to the Big Goose. Besides, we can focus on other methods."

Kellum rested a clenched fist on the metal tabletop. "We've got to show the drogues we can be strong, by damn. It's not a simple cost/benefit calculation."

As the habitation module rotated, the view panned across a broad black starscape down toward the hydrogen-rich, but now forbidden, gas giant. Jess sighed. "We keep modifying and improving our other harvesting techniques. There's got to be something safer."

"Safer, sure-but not a tenth as efficient."