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Bull and Young-gai are having dinner. Bull looks a lot better now, the shabby clothes have been replaced with an expensive shirt and slacks. Young-gai looks a lot better, too. She's taken time to enhance her makeup, hair and jump suit. Bull is talking, Young-gai is eating.
"Deep Spacers all have their hobbies." Bull said, "Some are pretty strange, but almost all are tolerated because..." he switched to an old farmer accent, "How else are ya gonna keep us off the farm?
"Legend has it that more than one deep spacer is a serial killer, but if he or she is a million miles from another person, who cares? We spend years in space, we spend days on a transfer satellite, then we spend years in space again. That is, when we come back. Deep spacing may be the dullest thing mankind does, but it's not the safest. Those of us who are old Deep Spacers get treated pretty well, as long as it's clear we're going back out again soon, or that we've saved up a big bankroll." Bull leaned forward and said quietly, "But there's nothing sorrier than a Deep Spacer who's lost his nerve and his bankroll." Young-gai nodded.
"Anyway, one of my hobbies is finding the Honeycomb Comet. What is the Honeycomb Comet you may ask?"
"I'll ask." she said between gulps.
"Well, it's what I call the mother of those rare honeycomb meteors that have been found a couple times now."
"Honeycomb meteor? Never heard of it."
"There aren't many, and they're considered a minor curiosity by everyone else who knows about them. Meteors are solid rock or solid metal--throughout history mankind has known that. Well... that's almost completely true. But now that we can catch meteors before they hit the earth's atmosphere, we're finding more variety, and that makes them good prospecting tools.
"Meteors are chips off of something bigger. If you find a meteor with lots of lithium, for instance, it came from a lithium rich asteroid. Backtrack its orbit to the point it was blasted away from the asteroid, then run time forward with your best guess at the asteroid's trajectory, and you find the asteroid. Jonas 4 was found that way, Jonas was one hot prospector, and lucky too... but then any rich and alive Deep Spacer is lucky. Now to do this right, you need to find a couple fragments flying from the same asteroid that got blasted off at the same time--preferably recently. You track their orbits carefully, mix in a whole lot of computing power, and Voila!, a location and vector for the mother asteroid comes out."
"It's as easy as that, eh?"
"Well, the location is a probability spheroid, and if your data is fuzzy, or the collision is old, or something deflected one of the meteors, or they came from different collisions, the spheroid can extend from Jupiter to Mars. You spend a lot of computer power and cash for not much help.
"Bummer."
"Looking too long for answers from the TC has bankrupted more than one deep spacer. We all keep our fingers crossed, and we keep close tabs on how well it's going, and when to cut bait.
"However, I feel real good about what I've got. There have been three recorded honeycomb meteors. Honeycomb is very light weight meteor. Those exominerologists who have bothered to look at one say it's just a pumice or volcanic foam from a proto-volcano on some proto-asteroid, so they're interested in it, but not excited about it. I look at the honeycomb and I see a cheap, lightweight construction material. If these meteors are coming from a honeycomb planetoid, it would be a mountain of the cheapest, strongest construction material available in deep space. The belter construction companies could be very interested in the find.
Bull leaned over again, "But even more important to me, I've looked at the honeycomb carefully. It's more like bone than foam, Young-gai. Besides, how are you going to get rock to foam without gas being rapidly depressurized? And depressuring gas means gravity, planetary-size gravity, not asteroid-size. No, the Honeycomb is a genuine mystery, and I aim to solve it.
Bull leaned even closer, "Young-gai, there are two unrecorded finds of honeycomb. I found them! That's my secret, and I got good trajectories on them. The way I figure it, anyone lucky enough to find two honeycombs is lucky enough to find the Honeycomb Comet. I call it a comet because my preliminary extrapolations put it out in the Kuiper Belt. And that's why we're going there."
"You've got only two trajectories?"
"Three. A friend of mine who knows about this hobby of mine just found another. He didn't bother to collect it, but he just sent me some careful trajectory measurements."
"So now you're burning up the seconds on Trajectory Central?"
"Even as we speak."
A shadow came over Young-gai's face. "So, you're asking me to sign up for a six year voyage to the Kuiper Belt to find a strange comet that may or may not exist?"
"Six or seven years, yeah. This is no space tanker run, Young-gai, this is real deep spacing. It may be for you, it may not."
"How come you're telling me about this... secret comet?"
Bull looked confused for a second, "Secret comet? Oh... the Honeycomb! Remember, I said this was a small community. Everyone here knows about my hobby, it's no secret, they're just not interested. Everyone has their hobbies, Van Cleeve is into watching girl-girl wrestling, and he sincerely believes there are Dark Ones waiting for us beyond Pluto. That's one reason I can't take him on this expedition. He's a good Deep Spacer, but he does have his peculiarities.
"Richards loves horses, and he's trying to bring back Voyager 10. Van Cleeve thinks that's a great idea so the Deep Ones can't find us. Richards knows Van Cleeve is playing with a short deck upstairs, so he won't ask Van Cleeve for help.... We all have our hobbies.
"No one thinks much will come of any of them. Hobbies are tolerated. I'm back from my seventh run, I've been modest in my port spending and lucky in my prospecting. Searching for the Honeycomb is a hobby I can now afford. That's what everyone thinks. Everyone knows I'm outfitting for it. That's why it's not a secret comet.
"No, I'm not trusting you with any deep secrets, yet. We work together awhile before that happens, if ever."
"If ever?"
Bill looked at Young-gai, "We don't have many secrets up here, Young-gai, but those we do have are dearly kept. We may trade some at some later date, we may never feel that close. We'll see."
"In the meantime, that's about all there is to say about this Honeycomb expedition. We'll be out there searching, and we may come back by way of Pluto. Does this still sound like your cup of tea?"
"Pluto?"
"Yeah, there hasn't been a manned expedition there in twenty years. I should get a fair chunk of change from the government for a manned Pluto expedition. This may be a hobby, but that doesn't keep it from being a paying hobby."
"Isn't it out of the way?"
"That, my dear, will depend on what Trajectory Central comes up with, but when you're that far out, the gravity well is essentially flat and orbits are really slow, so it's simply a matter of point-to-point distance. There's nothing complicated about the math. If it's on the way, we stop by, if not, we don't."
"When do we find out anything?"
"TC will have a first pass tomorrow morning. So, are you in?"
"Why did you pick me, Bull?"
Bull grinned, "Easy. Like you, I did some research. You're the best available crew mate who might take the challenge. Everyone one else here has a place in the planetary system. We're about to take a step beyond, to the edge of the solar system itself. That calls for someone new. Is it you?" Bull smiled and held up his cup.
Young-gai smiled, but did not raise her glass, "It's not me." she shook her head, "It's too far. It's too long. But thank you very much for honoring me with this offer."
"Suit yourself." said Bull. He drank a sip of wine, then looked a little serious, "Young-gai, what I said about secrets is not quite true. People know I'm going, but they don't know how much information I'm sending to TC. You can talk all you want about our evening, and I'll try to help you get on with Richards, but please don't mention my Honeycombs, OK?"
"OK." she smiled, "Those are our secret." They finished dinner with little else to say.
They said good bye and Bull went over to the bar after she left. Without a word, Ivan poured him a fine Australian Muscat.
"I take it she never heard about my second hobby." said Bull.
"Not from me, she didn't." said Ivan.
"Smart, resourceful girl. Too smart for Deep Spacing, she'll be back on Earth in a couple weeks."
"Well, there's lots of fish in the sea."
"Which is a long way from here. No, it's just another Deep Spacer fantasy--having an attractive partner on a long voyage."
"Keep trying, you'll get lucky one of these days. Personally, I really thought she might have been the one."
"Yeah..." Bull finished his drink, "Well, there's an expedition to plan. Catcha later, Ivan."
And thus it was that Bull Burnmeshorts did not have a codiscoverer of the Honeycomb Comet.
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