Berndt focused his gaze on the huge planet below so he could avoid looking at the man as he spoke, his normally gruff voice sounding a bit nervous. “Engineer Clarin, I’d like to request a favor. While we are here, I would ask… if you might provide me with some instruction?” For years, he had blustered and shouted to get his way; now it felt very strange to be making such a request.

The engineer seemed surprised. “What is it you would like to know?”

“I want a stronger background in the functioning of the skymine, from ekti processing to the Ildiran stardrives. It’s my business now.”

The engineer looked at his hands. “This seems rather… unusual. Berndt Okiah is not known for his scholarly pursuits.”

Berndt flushed. “That was in the past. I’m the chief of a new skymine. I should broaden my horizons.”

Outside, suited workers crawled over the hull of the factory suspended in the emptiness. He ran his eyes over the enormous collector tanks for raw hydrogen and the geometrical reactors that processed and siphoned off the ekti allotrope. The big skymine also had an upper habitation and support deck containing crew quarters, leisure chambers, and command centers.

After being constructed in place around gas giants, skymines were maneuvered to the clouds with powerful in-system engines. The skymines themselves would never leave their gas-giant homes, relying on cargo escorts to take away storage tanks of ekti.

The Ildiran propulsion system was based on direct physical movement, without resorting to exotic anomalies such as wormholes or dimensional jumps. But the stardrive did produce a space-time ripple effect that, as far as Berndt understood it, relativistically slowed time for the ship. Somehow, the stardrive maintained a “continuum memory” that allowed vessels to return to real space very close to the proper frame of timeline reference. The effective result was to travel great distances in a short time span. To the unschooled outsider it looked simple, though the actual mechanics were very complex. During their next two months together, Clarin would attempt to teach Berndt the detailed systems.

Long ago, when the Ildirans had offered them the opportunity, Roamers had jumped at the chance to work the ekti-processing stations. Ambitious clans had secured loans from the Ildiran Empire to lease their first skymining stations. Despite an initial disaster on Daym, the Roamers turned the cloud-processing facilities into profitable operations. Roamers had copied the skymining technology, then improved it and set about building other stations. They continued to expand as their ekti profits increased.

Now Berndt led Eldon Clarin through the tube to the suitup chambers. “Time for us to launch the new skymine. I want you with me.”

Clarin looked surprised. “Me? But you’re the chief—” “It’ll look good on your résumé when you get back to Rendezvous.”