A Stone's Throw

Paula designed a new grav sensor that projects the overlay grid directly into the user's eye. It's amazing. Naturally, when Kim asked me to help search local space for one wayward Simon, I selfishly took the opportunity to play with my new toys.

I scanned the rings for about an hour, drifting on ion-thrusters. The tidal forces made interesting patterns behind my eyes, but the spike I saw fly outwards and towards Sol repeated without pattern. I moved closer to investigate, sliding into the stream of ice and watching for another gravity spike.

Simon was standing on a small ball of gravel and dirty snow. He was throwing rocks with the full force of his Submind vac-suit. It's hard to find rocks in Saturn's rings, but there are dense clusters of gravel where the rocks outnumber the dirty snowballs. Judging from the stream of rocks heading toward the sun, he had been at it for hours.

"What's you doing, Simon?" I asked.

"I'm spitting at Earth."

"Um?" I asked, a bit confused.

"Stupid bastards," Simon said, and threw a rock. He watched it fly for a moment and then reached down to pick up another one. Then he ran a med-scan with his suit glove and muttered something about the Clee.

"Rick is going to drop one of those hyper-bombs on Earth's arctic ship-yards," Simon said, studying the rock.

"Only if they ally with Mars in the upcoming conflict," I said. "And Rick might be a bastard, but he's not stupid."

"Not Rick," Simon said, throwing the rock. "Earth. Stupid, arrogant, soft and fleshy Earth. And the bastards who run the place."

"Oh," I said. "So you are throwing rocks at them?"

Simon snorted and picked up another rock. "Wishing I could go back in time a few hundred years and send these Clee Submind pods into Earth's atmosphere before any of us were born."

"I'd rather you didn't." I said. "I like me just the way I am."

Simon looked at me for a moment and said, "What do you want, Mr. Jackson? I was having a nice cathartic fantasy, and you gotta come around and inject reality. Always with the reality."

"I'm a terrible liar," I said.

"That one sounded convincing."

"See what I mean?" I asked. "Joe was worried about you."

"Joe wouldn't ask you. He'd ask Eddie maybe, probably Wendy, or..."

"Kim." I said. "She said if Joe was worried about you, it was serious."

"It wasn't that serious," Simon said. "Was it? He won't stop trying to convince me those bombs are 'for the greater good.' I got sick of it, is all. Maybe I foamed at the mouth a little."

I nodded. "There's a bunch of people out looking for you. Maybe you should turn on your long-range and tell everyone you're still alive."

When he was done with that, I asked, "Do you really think any of those pods will reach Earth?"

"No," Simon said, throwing another one.

I picked up a rock, skipped the med-scan, and let it fly.