"IT seemed that the Outzoners made a business out of taking over assets that Earth-based interests had judged unprofitable by their own measures of worth, and abandoned. Camp Coulie had once trained units of military—now being scaled down and reformed to merge into a global police force with the move toward an eventual world government. Seville Trace, intended as a hotel, had been obsoleted by other technologies in the ceaseless pursuit of trying to get more for less. Meyer Flat, in Colorado, it turned out, had previously been a small community college, since closed down because of funding cutbacks.
Grayling Station, named after somebody otherwise forgotten to most, who had been involved with its conception, had been built as a collection port for payloads of moon rock catapulted electromagnetically into orbit from mining operations on the lunar surface. From there, according to the original plan, the ores and other materials would be distributed by transporter vessels to various construction enterprises planned to take shape across the nearby regions of space. When the ventures ran into unanticipated obstacles and complications, however, the major investors had pulled out, redirecting their funds into areas of proven safer returns, presumably more highly valued by Earth society, such as cosmetic gene therapy and mood-sensitive entertainments. These days the Outzoners used Grayling Station as a first-step training base for their recruits before sending them on to the reaches of deeper space. The governments who supplied many of the recruits showed the calculated savings as income on their balance sheets, paid a portion of it as risk-free return to the original investors, and that way everyone was happy.
The station hung in the L2 libration point, three hundred thousand miles away from Earth, directly in line on the far side of the Moon—a choice reflecting its originally intended function. This, Linc had learned during a five-day familiarization course at a technical center near the launch facility on Yucatan, was one of five points in the Earth-Moon vicinity where the effects of both gravities and the centrifugal orbiting force cancel out, enabling a body to remain in the same relative position. (It was one of three unstable points of the five, meaning that an object placed there would tend to drift. Jets were therefore fired periodically to nudge the station back into position.)
His first view of the structure, not counting the models and diagrams he had studied as part of the preparation, was on the cabin wall-screen in a transfer shuttle closing in on the station two days after liftoff and separation from the booster that had carried it to Low Earth Orbit. Its general form was that of a pair of crossed barbells. The "bars" consisted of tube-and-latticework booms several hundred feet long projecting from a roughly cylindrical central assembly that included docking facilities at one end and a nuclear generating plant at the other, forming an oversize "axle." Cylinders at the ends of the bars, made up of various living, working, and functional areas stacked like disks, formed the "weights" at the ends of the bars. Slow rotation of the whole produced a simulated gravity effect perpendicular to the floors inside the peripheral cylinders. A web of ties, lines, and assorted structural additions had grown between the booms, and a gaggle of outstations serving various purposes moved with the main structure in a loose formation spread through a volume of space fifty or more miles across. One of the larger of these, called Jade, had a transparent outer skin filled with water as its radiation and thermal shield, and making it also the emergency water reserve for the whole complex of stations. Algae cultured in the shield for hydroponics processing and biological experiments gave a green tint through which starlight diffused, causing it to shine eerily like a gem-stone in the heavens. One of the speakers who came to address Linc's group at Yucatan—they were officially recruits now, not inmates or guests—offered the thought that one indication of intelligent life spreading across distant galaxies might be the greening of light from their constituent stars.
Life had become less programmed and structured. There was no formally defined Phase Three for everyone to move on to as had been the case with the transition from Phase One. Different groups and individuals went different ways to prepare for the different futures that ability, preference, need, and an inevitable element of chance had concocted for them.
Probably because overt military training was not considered a wise thing to flaunt on Earth, Linc had been part of an advance group sent to Yucatan for immediate transfer up to Grayling. Included as well in the same group of early birds were Arvin, also earmarked as natural for the military; Flash, now Linc's solid ally and buddy, with ambitions to develop his technical abilities in a military direction; and Rocky, who had volunteered because of lack of inspiration for anything else. Mace was one of those selected for training as space-construction riggers, who were going up early to get preliminary experience at Grayling. Also included was Liz, who had shown little inclination toward anything beyond routine office chores but somehow wangled things to be near Rocky.
Linc had come to accept Patch as the strongest friend he had known since Angelo, and in their conversations had opened up to him in a way that was rare. He had hoped that Patch would be singled out for something that would involve early shipment too and keep them together, but circumstances didn't work out that way. A couple of the Seville Trace coaches talked to Patch at length about his mountaineering experiences and general interest in remote regions, and he was spirited away a day or two later. He and Linc reaffirmed their promise that they would go climbing together again on Earth one day.
Another face that Linc had gotten used to but which went a separate way, was "Piano Man" Johnny. His outspoken politics, which would have branded him as a subversive and gotten him locked up in most other places, were evidently viewed differently here. He'd been told he was being sent on a crash college course somewhere. One person Linc didn't miss was Welsh, his antagonist from the machining tool store, who exercised his right to opt out and left the scene permanently. So once again, Arvin was left without a willing sidekick to report happenings and run errands.
Unlike previously, the people that Linc and the others found themselves among at Yucatan were not all of younger age groups, and from their talk and manner it quickly became apparent that they came from all kinds of backgrounds. There were loners looking for a new start; family groups ready to leave all in search of what they saw as freedom; professionals seeking recognition that eluded them in the exploitive jungles that Earth had become. Linc met two engineers from places in Siberia that he'd never heard of, going out to work in the plants that processed materials out of asteroids. There was a Chinese kid his own age whose whole family had been lost in the civil war going on there. A schoolteacher and her husband from Iraq—wherever that was—who were getting away to start a family. Although there was no particular reason why not, it had never before crossed Linc's mind that the operation might extend beyond the U.S. borders. The Outzone was obviously eager for all that Earth had to offer.
This was no longer a reorientation and redirection program for salvaged delinquents. For those who had come via the same route as Linc, the ban on talking about past lives was lifted. The past was of little significance now. Also, they were free at last to use their full names. The common visions all of them would be sharing from here onward were to the future.