Resignation
        He'd only read a little more of the report when he laid the tablet down and grabbed the fone and called his secretary. "Book a flight to Mars as soon as you can get me there," he said.
        He composed a letter to his daughter. "Dear Destiny," it said, "I wish you'd stay in touch. I'm in the middle of reading your fiancee's report and I see you're getting married. Please wait until I get there, I want to give my daughter away :)
        "Love, Dad"
        After he sent the mail a message from the company president came in.
        "Dewey, I just now fired that idiot Richardson. That moron must have had a devout Jewish Rabbi to program the robots to cook pork, because I just had barbecued pork steaks on this ship and they were worse than the coffee.
        "The ship's captain is excellent, from what I can tell as a random traveler. You know I went under an assumed name. Well, no sooner had the robot brought me coffee when the captain himself brought a pot of excellent coffee in and apologized for the robot coffee. He said he made coffee for all his passengers, even when he was flying cargo class passengers. At least some of our people are doing a good job, even above and beyond. Captain Muñoz said that all the first class captains were doing it, and even most cargo captains, and that there was one guy named 'Tex' that made barbecued pork for his passengers. Steaks, ribs, chops, Muñoz said that Texas is famous for barbecue. I understand that the Australians are pretty crazy about barbecue, too.
        "Anyway, I wish you'd talk to Engineering and promote someone as chief. See you when I get back to Earth."
        He composed a memo to all engineering staff.

        TO: Engineering
        FROM: Dewey Green, CEO
        SUBJECT: New Chief
        Staff, your chief has tendered his resignation immediately and I am looking for his replacement. I want my engineers to be productive, and you're more productive when you enjoy your assignments. I want my engineers to be happy.
        Please reply with answers to the following questions, and let none of the answers be your own name.
        1. Who do you consider to be our best engineer, and why?
        2. Who would you most want to be chief engineer, and why?
        3. Who would you consider to be our worst engineer, and why?
        4, Who would you want least to be our chief engineer, and why?
        5. Which or our engineers has the best people skills?
        I expect a reply in one hour and will expect all of you to be in conference room three in two hours.

        He poured a cup of coffee and continued reading.

Last weekend Mars, Ho! passed the magic 40,000 words, the number of words necessary for a science fiction work to be a novel.

Tuesday it massed the even more magical 42042 words; that's the number for marijuana glued to the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything. More importantly, it's the exact number of words in Nobots. As of this writing Mars, Ho! is 47,000 words. I don't think I'll reach my 100k goal, there are only half dozen more chapters to write.

Oddly, Mars, Ho! is turning into a genre that I usually don't enjoy -- horror. "Drugula". But Knolls will later be glad he has a boat full of dangerous monsters.

The next five chapters have been written, which are followed by a few that aren't written yet, followed by ten written that go almost at the end of the book.

Yes, I've become obsessed with this thing. Tomorrow, Knolls gets a surprise that you've probably already guessed.

This chapter goes between the present chapters seven and eight.

Financials
        The CEO of the company was annoyed. More than annoyed. He put the report down and buzzed his secretary.
        "Yes sir?" she said.
        "Who's in charge of scheduling?"
        "I believe that's Ms. Martinez."
        "She's in charge that department?"
        "Yes, sir."
        "I want to see her. Right now. And the head of financial as well. What's the financial head's name?"
        "Yes sir. The head of financial is Larry Griffins."
        He drummed his fingers as he waited impatiently for his incompetent staff. This was inexcusable, so they damned well better have a good excuse. The two finally came in together with worried looks on their faces; neither had actually met the highest ranking officer in the company, and he had an angry look on his face.
        He said said "Miss Martinez..."
        "Missus," she said defiantly. She was going to get fired anyway, she thought, even though she didn't know why. If she were going to get fired, she'd not be disrespected.
        "Sorry, Missus Martinez," the CEO said sarcastically. "I'd like to know why Mars two eighty four didn't wait a week and a half to launch? And you, Griffins, why are you letting stockholders' money be wasted like that?"
        Both looked puzzled, and said in unison "Sir?" Martinez added "I don't understand. We schedule according to launch availability as the requests come in, in order."
        "And you allow this, Griffins?"
        "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand, either."
        "Christ!" Green exclaimed, exasperated. "Didn't either of you go to college?"
        "Yes sir, I went to U of I," Martinez said.
        "I have an MBA from..." Griffins started.
        Green interrupted him. "It's basic physics, people! Orbital mechanics! My boat captains think you're really ignorant; they know how stupid it is to launch at the wrong time and are reporting on it, and they're only high school graduates."
        Martinez frowned. "I only had one physics class, my major was math."
        Green shook his head. "Look, you two need to communicate better with the other departments. Especially you, Griffins. Mrs. Martinez, we have astrophysicists who could save this company a lot of money if you'd let them. Don't just have them plot trajectories, talk to them and even more importantly listen to them. Don't just have them guide ships, I want them to guide you.
        Griffins, this is mostly on you. You're supposed to be finding ways to save this company money and undereducated boat captains are doing a better job of it than you are. I have reports that we're underenginnering parts to save money, and spending even more to replace them. Don't issue orders to engineering; you're not an engineer. Listen to them, make sure you find out repair costs and calculate that in with engineering and manufacturing costs.
        "Martinez, from now on consult with astrophysics for scheduling! You should already be doing it. Now get back to work, both of you."
        They left and he buzzed his secretary. "I want a meeting with all department heads tomorrow at nine in the morning." These people were going to communicate with each other or he'd replace them all.
        "Yes, sir. Mister Bush is on vacation in Rio though, sir."
        "Then have whoever he left in charge attend and contact Bush and tell him he'd damned well better be there by teleconference, and I don't care if he's on the beach in South America naked with a tablet."
        "Yes sir," she said. "Wow," she thought, "he's really in a bad mood today!"
        He started reading again.

Movies
        Destiny and me woke up at the same time the next morning. We cuddled a while, made love again, then made coffee and took a shower together while the robots made us steak and cheese omelettes and toast and hash browns. Destiny put on the news. There was something about a problem in one of the company's boat factories; some machinery malfunctioned and killed a guy. I sure took notice of that! They didn't really have much information about it, though. They said something about trying to build in safety laws into the programming, I think I heard about something like that before.
        Something occurred to me. "You can afford pork but it makes you feel guilty? I didn't know astronomy teachers made that much money."
        "We don't," she said. "I should have told you, I don't just work for the charity, it's my charity. I started it."
        "What?"
        "Sorry, I never give my money any thought. My dad's Dewey Green."
        I almost fell out of my chair. "Your... dad..." I was almost speechless. "Uh, your dad's my CEO? No shit?"
        "Does it matter?"
        "I don't know," I said. I was dumbfounded. "I can't support a CEO's daughter on boat captain's pay!"
        "You don't have to, silly, I pay my own way. Didn't you say you were going to retire and live on Mars with me? Didn't you say you wanted to tend bar?"
        "Well, yeah, but bartenders don't make much money either."
        "No, but bar owners do. At least successful ones, you'll have to take some business classes."
        "I was going to go to college anyway, can't have a high school grad married to a PhD. What's your dad going to think?"
        "It doesn't matter, he has no say. I'm not dependent on him and I won't be dependent on anyone. I got my endowment when I was twenty one and invested it. I have more money that he does, even."
        "Holy shit," I said.
        "Computer," she said, "what time is it?"
        "The present time is seven fifty eight."
        "Oh shit," I said, running to the pilot room.
        Except for a slight course correction everything was fine, and that only took a minute. The computers do the work, I just make sure they all agree with each other.
        The commons only had the fat blonde in it. These girls almost never ate breakfast, except for the blonde. She was always in there eating, it seemed. Inspection was easy.
        Cargo was easy, too. Every single one was asleep, which was a relief. Tammy was keeping the animals under control and even keeping them human, apparently.
        It was the passenger section that was a pain - R1 caught fire. Why in the hell are robots programmed to clean unoccupied quarters? Rooms that are never occupied shouldn't even have any air in them. Air is a fire hazard!
        Anyway, there was nothing I had to do except log it. Another maid would come by to clean the mess after another robot dragged it off and repaired it. I thought of something, then thought better of it. I almost told the computer not to use parts cannibalized from other broken machines, but at this rate we would run out of maids. And probably other robots as well.
        The sick bay was empty but I had to inspect it anyway, mostly to make sure its drugs were all secure, especially with all these drug addicts on board, but since there was nobody there it didn't take any time at all. Now it was time for my daily exercise routine, my five flights of stairs down to the engines and generators, and my long walk from one generator to the other, stopping at all those huge ion rocket motors.
        All the engines and the lone working generator checked out and there weren't even any robots working on any of them, so I was done early for a change. I was glad of it, as busy as I'd been lately I could use some time off. I trudged up the five damned flights of stairs and walked back to my quarters.
        Destiny was reading as I walked in. "Johnie! You're home early!"
        "Easy day for once. Computer, what time is it?"
        The computer said "The present time is eleven thirteen."
        "Want to eat lunch early and watch something?" Destiny asked.
        "Sure," I said, and grinned. "Ham sandwiches?"
        She laughed. "Yeah, with pork bacon and a side of caviar and a hundred year old bottle of French wine to go with it! How about a cheeseburger and shike?"
        "How about a pizza and beer," I suggested.
        "Sounds good to me. Computer, a medium supreme pizza and two beers. We can eat it while we're watching. What do you feel like?"
        I didn't care. "I don't know, pick something."
        She put Spaghetti on. Huh? It's an old science fiction comedy from the first part of the twenty second century. Destiny said it was one of the last two dimensional movies, holograms were getting cheap enough to start being popular.
        We had spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner and put on a modern holo, a really bad holographic recreation of one of the old westerns. It sucked, she shut it off after fifteen minutes and said "We should watch a spaghetti western."
        "Huh?" I said. "What's a 'spaghetti western'?"
        She said that a "spaghetti western" was a movie about the ancient American west that was filmed in Italy. No, I don't know why where a movie was made would matter, either.
        Instead of a spaghetti western she put on an old two dimensional shades of gray horror comedy. Huh? No, I never heard of a horror comedy either, but it was hilarious. Destiny said the movie studio had balked at its not having colors, but they were making fun of the horror movies from fifty years earlier when none of them had colors.
        When it was over we shut it off, put on some music, cuddled a while, and went to bed.
        Huh? None of your damned business!

To the best of my knowledge this is the first time I've pulled this off - up moderations of insightful, informative, and interesting all on the same comment.

Amusing that because of slashdot's shitheaded fuzzy math it says it was moderated Insightful 40% of the time and the other two 30% each even though each was done once as of this moment (yes I know that is an ancient bug here but still worth pointing out how epically stupid it is).

Heads
        "Good morning, Mister Green."
        "Good morning, Mister Osbourne. Ladies, gentlemen, I had a particularly trying day yesterday, as a few of you know," the CEO said, looking at his chief of engineering. "We have a serious problem in the company and it lands squarely in your laps. Folks, we're getting complacent and sloppy and it stops right here and right now or heads are going to roll.
        "If any of you think some of your employees are less than excellent, reassign them to something they're good at or get rid of them.
        "Mister Osbourne has a few words to say about a few of the problems we're having and some solutions to those problems. Mister Osbourne?"
        "Thank you, Mister Green. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a severe quality control problem lately. Human Resources hired a saboteur who was employed by pirates to work in the shipyards. That is unacceptable, we do not hire pirates. Ever. It had better not happen again. I looked into the matter myself, and he should have never have been able to pass a background check to begin with, the man should have never been hired in the first place. He had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor retail theft and was fined for it when he was younger. We do not hire thieves or any other criminals, period. Any criminal record at all no matter how minor, and I'm not talking traffic tickets here, use some judgment, that's what you're being paid for, is not suitable for employment at this shipping and travel company.
        I want everyone's records checked. If we have any felons on the payroll I want them terminated immediately; our contract with the union gives us the right. Anyone with a misdemeanor I want transferred to somewhere where they can't cause mischief, and that means they're not to be anywhere near one of our ships or near anything that goes into their operation. Mister Johnson has suggested this to me, and I agree with him. He's still looking for other measures, he's only been on the problem since yesterday.
        "But what's just as bad and possibly even worse is you people are assigning the wrong people to the wrong teams. Our passengers pay a lot of money to ride our transportation and they don't expect bad coffee and they don't expect to have to make their own. It was sheer stupidity to assign a programmer who doesn't even drink coffee to program robots that make coffee. You wouldn't assign a Jewish or Muslim person to program a cook to prepare pork, or an American to program it to cook escargot."
        Richardson went pale and said "Sir, we can't discriminate against a person on the basis of religion or national origin."
        "Of course not," the President said, "but you can discriminate on the basis of competence. Don't assign a programmer to a project that he or she would not want to sample the end result of himself.
        "No one is competent in building a repair robot unless he or she can repair a robot him or herself. Look, your programmers are nerds, if someone likes fixing stuff in his spare time as a hobby, have him program repair robots, not the guy who loves to cook and hates to work on a machine. If you're working on something you love you'll create excellence. If you hate what you're doing you're going to hate the work and the best work you do will never be better than mediocre. You think a guy who doesn't like coffee wants to program a robot to make coffee? Do you think a Muslim wants to program a cook to prepare pork? He would have stern religious objections. Just ask your staff what they want to work on. Come on, this isn't theoretical physics.
        "It isn't just Richardson," the President said. "I dug up similar sloppiness, incompetence, and downright stupidity in all the departments. Ladies and gentlemen, you're becoming complacent and I'm simply not going to tolerate it from any of you.
        "And talk to each other! We could have saved a lot of money had scheduling been talking to orbital instead of just giving them schedules. There's probably a whole lot more money to be saved, as well. Mister Griffins, you, especially, need to talk to the other heads. Folks, if you or any of your people have ideas for saving money, call Mister Griffins. If he doesn't listen, call me or Mister Green.
        "From now on, our ship's Captains will be making a report after each run. I want all of you to read those reports when they come in; Captain Knolls' report is in your in-box now. You should expect Captain Kelly's and Captain Ramos' in a day or two.
        "I want a progress report from each one of you in one week. This meeting is adjourned. Now get to work, you have your work cut out for you."
        The president and CEO sat there silently until the last of the department heads left the room.
        The president said "You know, Dewey, I haven't been to space in fifteen years, way back when we still used fusion generators on our boats. I think I'll visit Mars for a weekend and have a look at our repair facilities there."
        "Yes, I agree. We haven't knuckled down and gotten our hands dirty in a while. I think I'll visit the various departments tomorrow, surprise all of them. Well," he said standing up, "I have a report to finish so I'm getting back to the office. I'll see you at the board meeting this afternoon.

I don't recall vomiting violently on our shoes for about 9 hours and then running away being a standard part of the script previously. Someone needs to look in to that code.

Ease
        I guess Destiny had stayed up and read or something. I woke up about six, started coffee and was glad the robots were almost as good at cooking as they were bad at making coffee. Unless it had to do with barbecue sauce, and who has barbecue in space? Especially for breakfast?
        Or pork, I remembered. I don't eat pork, it's too damned expensive these days and I like beef and chicken better, anyway, but George Wilson, one of our guys who hauls first class passengers, eats it sometimes because the company has pork on first class boats and he tells me the pork is as bad as the coffee. Odd that they cook bacon pretty good, but all you have to do with bacon is microwave it. The robots would have to be dumber than they already are to mess bacon up. Besides, only rich people eat pork bacon, normal people have turkey bacon and you cook them both the same way. I had a pork bacon sandwich with lettuce and tomato in a restaurant once and couldn't tell the difference. Except for the size of the bill, that was a damned expensive sandwich!
        But that one trip I was hauling frozen pork to that big science station in orbit around Venus I had plenty of pork. Too much damned pork. Especially since I can't cook pork much better than the damned robots can. Yeah, my parents taught me to cook when I was a kid but we were poor, had to print everything out and we damned sure couldn't afford a luxury like pork.
        I was twenty three before I ate my first ham and cheese sandwich, as a treat to myself on my birthday. I didn't see what all the fuss was about, I thought thin sliced turkey was better, and a hell of a lot cheaper...
        Huh? Oh, sorry, my mind wandered. Anyway, while coffee was perking and the robots were making breakfast and Destiny was sleeping I took my shower and got dressed.
        The smell of decent coffee that robots can't make must have woke Destiny up, because she walked in as I was pouring the first cup. I handed it to her, said "Good morning, sweetheart," and poured a cup for myself and kissed her. "Hungry?" I asked. "I had the robot make waffles and sausage."
        "Sausage? You have pork?"
        I laughed. "Of course not, it's beef sausage. The company sure isn't going to pay for pork unless there's rich passengers traveling first class. And I damned sure can't afford it on a Captain's wages."
        "That's too bad," she said, "I love pork sausage but it's way too expensive to eat very often, I feel guilty when I do eat pork. I usually just eat it on my birthday for breakfast."
        "I never ate any," I said. She switched the video on and we watched the "news" while we ate. There was one item about a robot probe that was on its way to Alpha and Proxima Centauri at five gravities thrust. I wonder how fast that thing would be going by the time it was halfway there? Compared to that, Neptune's right next door, and it's a long way off, even from Mars! It was already months ahead of its telemetry, and no, I don't know what "telemetry" is but that's what they said on the news. It sounded impressive to me, anyway.
        It was almost eight so I kissed Destiny and went to the pilot room. Everything was normal so I started my inspections. It would be a light day, since I didn't have to inspect quarters. I still had a hell of a lot of ion engines to check out, though.
        After the generator had blown out I'd reduced power to a third of the engines, and twenty four, the one I'd made sputter when I'd killed all them damned pirates in the rock storm, and sixty four and seventeen, the ones with the funny voltages, were offline.
        I plugged robots into all three of them and had them do a "twenty four hour diagnostic" which is what they tell me the robots do when you plug them in like that. I'd see the results tomorrow. I might need those motors when we were closer to Mars and pirates were more likely.
        I climbed the five damned flights of stairs, and walked past the commons on my way home. The German woman was in there eating, and four more were playing cards. I wondered what they were gambling for... oh hell, I'm a dumbass, they were gambling for drops, of course. What else would they be playing for? I pretended not to notice and went home.
        Destiny was reading, so I got a cup of coffee and started to sit down. "That's robot coffee," she warned.
        I poured it down the drain and started a new pot and turned on the video and watched an old Western. She put her tablet down when it started. I asked what she was reading.
        She grinned. "A history of fones. I was reading an old historical novel about a 1930s prison where they executed criminals by electrocuting them. Creepy book, but hard to understand in places, I have to look stuff up to see what the author is talking about. Back then 'fone' was spelled with a P H instead of an F and they weren't really fones, they only did speech and they were all wired together, either attached to a wall or by a wire than went into the wall.
        "That prison book was creepy, I haven't finished it yet. Barbaric back then. What are you putting in?"
        "An old western with that one guy from Rawhide, called The Outlaw Josey Wales," I answered.
        "I haven't seen that one yet," she said, which surprised me. She's the one that got me liking these old westerns. I said "There's a movie listed that says it's about a 1930s prison, I wonder if it could be from that book you're reading?"
        "Probably not," she said, "but anyway the movies are never faithful to the books and usually aren't nearly as good. Are you hungry?"
        "I could eat."
        She told the robot to cook a pizza and bring us some beers, and I started the movie.
        That was a long movie, but it was a really good one. We went to bed after it was over, well, after cuddling and listening to music a while...

Engineering
        The company's co-founder, largest stockholder, and CEO was annoyed; this was certainly not his best day, golf aside. He'd spent too much time on the course and only had time for a little more of Knolls' report, and now he had to chew out that incredibly stupid chief engineer, who was knocking on his door and in danger of losing his job. This could have crippled the company. "Come in," the CEO said.
        It seemed the company he and Charles had practically built from scratch was falling apart. God damn it, quality was deteriorating badly, and he was starting to think he needed a new head engineer.
        "Talk to me, Gene."
        "Sir?"
        God damn it, he thought. He opened a folder and handed a piece of paper to the engineer. "I'm talking about this schematic wiring diagram. How in the hell did this happen, and why was it spotted by someone who wasn't even an engineer?"
        Richardson said "I honestly don't know, sir."
        "Your teams are getting really sloppy, Richardson. This has been built into ten ships already and they're all going to have to be rewired because engineering screwed up on the blueprints. How in the hell could your team miss this? How the hell could you miss it? An intern discovered it! And he wasn't even an engineering student, he was just an electronics hobbyist."
        Richardson hung his head. The CEO continued. "If these ships had been operational a lot of people would have died and it would have caused the company great financial hardship; we're self-insured. One more mistake like this and you're fired, Richardson, and I'll get someone competent.
        "Now tell me, who programmed our robots to make coffee?"
        "Sir?"
        "Robot," Mister Green said, "Make this man a cup of coffee. Richardson, I got a report from a ship's captain complaining about the coffee so I had one of the ship robots sent here to check. He's right, this is the worst coffee I've ever tasted."
        "Well, sir, I don't like coffee myself, I had Larry Jones program it."
        "Why in the hell didn't you test it? That's the kind of sloppiness I'm talking about."
        "We did do chemical tests, sir..."
        "But you never thought of having anyone who actually drinks coffee try it? Look, Richardson, I'll be blunt: you're on the verge of losing your job. We have paying customers booking passage on our boats and they don't expect to make their own coffee and they expect the coffee they're served to be good coffee. I want a program for a robot to make not just drinkable coffee, which this isn't, and not just good coffee, but great coffee. I want the program in a week and a demonstration in two weeks and updates sent to all the coffee robots as soon as it's tested, and by that I mean by a group of people who enjoy coffee. Put Jones on a project he's good at. This is unacceptable. Am I understood, Richardson?
        "Yes sir."
        "And I want you to weed out the incompetents in your shop. This sloppiness is inexcusable."
        "Sir, the union..."
        "Tell the union that if they give you any trouble there won't be a new contract, I'll replace every engineer and programmer in the shop as soon as the contract expires. The union is supposed to give us quality employees, and it doesn't look to me like we're getting them.
        "Now, one more screw up and your career is over, Richardson. Now get out of here and get to work, I have a report to finish reading."
        After Richardson left, he buzzed his secretary. "Get Human Resources on the fone. And schedule a meeting with all the department heads for nine tomorrow morning. And I don't want to take any calls unless it's the company President, my wife, kids, or an emergency after I talk to Human Resources." He drummed his fingers for a few seconds and the fone buzzed again. It was Osbourne.
        "What's up, Charles?"
        "Have you tasted our robots' coffee, Dewey? I was curious after reading Knolls' report. That's the nastiest coffee I ever drank. And I was in the Army."
        "Yes, I did, and Richardson got a good ass chewing. I threatened to fire him, and I might still. And his might not be the only head to roll, Knolls' report was an eye opener. I want reports from all the Captains after each run from now on."
        "So do I, I already ordered it. I'm leaving for Mars tomorrow on whatever of our first class passenger boats can get me there the fastest right after the meetings. I wish I could skip the board meeting.
        "I'm especially worried about engineering, that's our most important function. I'm not too happy about financial, either. How did we let this slip past us, Dewey?"
        "Hell if I know, Charles. Both of us are going to have to be more vigilant. Look, I have to finish reading this report. I may not finish it this afternoon so I want you to mostly take charge in the meeting since you've read the whole thing and have more information. I'll see you in the morning. Goodbye."
        "See you, Dewey."

Sorry I haven't been here lately, but I've been working furiously on the book. There are five more chapters ready to post, followed by a few that haven't been written yet, then six more written chapters that go at the end of the book. The manuscript stands at 40,261 words as of this writing.

The two rulings are not a big surprise considering who is on the bench. The downstream repercussions of the Hobby Lobby ruling will be interesting to see played out, however.

In particular, if no insurance company wants to offer a plan that excludes every imaginable type of "contraception", then what would happen? Will Hobby Lobby take them to court to force them to offer a plan that meets their particular belief system?

Note: There will be a chapter inserted between chapters nine and ten. Chapters have been renumbered in the manuscript.

Animals
        Destiny was already awake and dressed when I got up the next morning. I'm glad she was there or I might have overslept.
        "Are you going to sleep all day? Your breakfast is going to get cold. I'm eating."
        I groaned, rolled out of bed, put on a robe and followed her to the dining room. She'd made coffee and had the robots make French toast, bacon, and tater tots. I didn't feel like tater tots. "What time is it?" I asked.
        She laughed. "You need a clock right there on the wall! Computer, what time is it?"
        The computer said "The time is seven twenty eight." Good, plenty of time. I finished eating and took a quick shower and started my morning chores about five minutes early. This time two of the computers disagreed with the other two. Two said "systems were nominal", one said that engine sixty four was getting three volts too much and the other said number sixty four was two volts short. Oh, well, I was going to have to walk the stairs anyway, so I decided I'd get engine and generator inspections out of the way first. Even though two or three volts was almost nothing when you're talking terrawatts.
        As I passed the commons Lek walked up, the one that talked English kind of okay.
        "Captain Knolls?" she said, which confused me because the whores usually called me "Joe" even though my name is John.
        "Lek?" I said, "how can I help?" I read Tammy's book, I didn't want to piss these dropheads off.
        "Look, Captain, you surely know what not having drops does to us by now."
        I almost said "I ain't got no drops, bitch" but I didn't. Instead I said "You're short of drops? Look, talk to..." Damn, I almost screwed up and gave Tammy away. Damn it, John!
        "Uh," I continued. "You need drops? Look, Lek, I finally get it. I do inspections and can confiscate..."
        "No," she said, "It's Sparkle. She going to..." she hung her head. "Buddha, but I really hate myself. I not human without drops! What has happened to me? But Sparkle need drops or she be dangerous wild animal."
        I really felt sorry for these women. I didn't think of them as whores any more, life had really kicked their asses. Tammy's book had really opened my eyes. Poor women. I called her on my fone, but she was already on it.
        "Tammy, could you get some..."
        "Drops to Sparkle?" she interrupted.
        "Yeah. Is she..."
        "She's okay. Now, anyway. But John, even though I knew, thanks. Please, if it comes up again call me, don't hesitate!"
        "Jesus, Tammy," I said, "Of course I will, after I read your book I know how dangerous a dropless drophead is."
        I finished walking down the hall to the stairs, then down that five damned flights. Most of this boat is engines. Second is generators, the generators take up more space than quarters and storage, and storage is as big as quarters.
        I checked number sixty four first, of course. It read normal. I almost logged that, but it suddenly dropped two volts, then immediately to a two and a half volt overvoltage. Bill told me once that that usually meant a bad connection, he's kind of a nerd.
        It's good to know nerds.
        I shut sixty four down like the book says, then inspected the rest of them. I don't know why I have to check the port generator, since it's broke, but I do so I did.
        The starboard generator was fine.
        The damned alarm went off. Fire in cargo seven. I didn't know whether to cuss the damned whores or the damned stupid engineers who design shit that catches fire and have emergency drills when there's a real emergency.
        I fucking hate it when there's an emergency upstairs when I'm downstairs. I have to run up five flights of stairs. Yeah, we're at half gravity now but it goes down slow, after the first day you don't really notice it dropping. The droppers hadn't complained, except when it had sudden changes like when we sped up to beat the rocks. I'm just glad I didn't have to run up the stairs that day I was climbing around outside. Oh, wait, I did, didn't I?
        I wished we were at zero G, I could have made it to the top in seconds. But then, of course, the women would kill me.
        The red light was flashing on cargo seven. "Computer, is there anybody in there?"
        "Parse error, please rephrase question."
        God damned computer. "Is cargo seven, uh, occupied?"
        "Negative." That was a relief; not only does the company get pissed off when cargo was damaged, these weren't just cargo, they were people. Human beings.
        At least, they were human when they had their drops. What Lek said was spooky, like one of those old horror movies Destiny likes, the old two dimensional ones with werewolves and vampires and no colors. I kind of shivered a little.
        The flashing light went out and I went in. There was a burned up maid in the room. Hell, was it noon already?
        Another burned up... wait, what was the number on that thing? R2? That's the same maid that burned up before. Whoever programs the robots that repair the other robots needs an ass kicking, or at least an ass chewing.
        I pulled out my fone. "Computer, take R2 out of service until the Martian maintenance."
        "Acknowledged." Another robot dragged it off to storage, and a third started noisily cleaning up the mess.
        I went to the commons, which right now was a restaurant with robot waiters and robot cooks and about a hundred naked women. I thought "I'm going to start inspecting cargo at meal time!" Not that these girls eat much, except the fat blonde with the German accent. They slept more than anything.
        "Attention," I yelled. They ignored me, the din continued. I pulled out my fone and addressed the PA, they can't ignore that.
        "Attention, ladies, who lives in number seven?"
        "That's Crystal," one of them said.
        "Where is she?"
        "I don't know. Oh, there she is," she said as another woman walked in.
        "Where have you been?" I demanded. "You're supposed to go to the commons when your quarters catch fire."
        "What?" she said, startled. "My quarters caught fire? I was in Leslie's cabin and got hungry. Is my stuff okay?"
        What stuff? "Yeah, the only thing that burned was the maid."
        "Good, I hate that noisy damned thing! Robot, I want a ham and cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake."
        I finished inspection by one thirty and was starved by then. Destiny called. "Where are you? I'm starved," she said.
        "Walking back to our apartment," I said. Oh, shut up you two, that's what I said. I told you I don't want that "professional" shit, I ain't no God damned professional.
        We had pizza and beer and watched an ancient comedy called Blazing Saddles and I didn't understand a lot of it, but some parts were funny. Destiny thought it was hilarious, and told me to read some history.

First, I want to thank you folks for your suggestions, although I didn't see them until I logged in this morning. The answer came to me last night when I was sitting on my porch with a beer in my hand and several in my gut.

The answer was simple and I don't know why I hadn't already thought of it, maybe I should drink more. I hacked out maybe 500 words, about half a chapter that will go between the present chapters 9 and 10. I'll post it when there's more than a skeleton, tomorrow is chapter 24.

And the answer was something you guys have probably seen way too many times at work -- corporate bureaucracy and lack of communications. What I wrote last night had the CEO chewing out the head of scheduling, a women with a BS in math who had only taken one physics class, and the head of finance, who held an MBA.

Stopping the boat a couple of times (like to help Captain Kelly) and detours around meteors didn't hurt.

As to the CEO, I have to apologize to you folks for something that may be a bit confusing; I'm changing the CEO's name.

The first germ of an idea for this book came last spring when I was sitting in the beer garden at Felber's talking to a couple of guys about Nobots. I hadn't realized that the patrons there were more literate than the general population, probably half of them read Nobots when I published it.

A few crack whores were walking down the street (it's a pretty bad neighborhood with plenty of characters who make fodder for fiction), and Dewey laughed and said "you ought to write a book about whores in space." I'd never seen a book with space whores, so it might be a unique idea, and writing a book about whores without it being pornography was a challenge.

A few days ago, Dewey said he wanted to be in the book, so I named the CEO after him, even though the Dewey Green in the story is nothing like the real Dewey.

I'm having a math and physics problem: math and physics is getting in the way of the plot in Mars, Ho!

I originally thought it would be a six month trip, but math got in the way since they were getting gravity from propulsion. So I shortened it to a two month trip, and to do that I had to have Earth and Mars on opposite sides of the sun -- but orbital mechanics makes waiting shorten the time.

The best bad way around it I can see is a little hand-waving, with the captain wondering why the company didn't wait a week to launch. But I'm not satisfied with this. Does anybody have any ideas?

Junk
        I felt pretty good the next day when I woke up. Destiny was still asleep, so I started coffee, told the robot to make breakfast and no robot coffee, damn it! And took a shower.
        Huh? Bacon, eggs, and hash browns for two. Destiny would be awake by the time I got out of the shower. Huh? Why? Over easy. Christ, guys! What difference does it make how the God damned eggs are cooked?
        She was just waking up as I got dressed. "Hungry?" I asked. "I made coffee and the robots are making breakfast."
        "I'll probably be hungry when my stomach wakes up. What time is it?"
        "About seven thirty, we have a half hour before I have to go to work."
        "Is the coffee done?"
        "It should be by now, I started it before I got in the shower."
        "Well, I guess I'll get up, then," she said grinning, and got up.
        She put the news on the video... or is that "olds" since it's the same old shit? There was something on it about pirates, they had arrested thirty after a firefight on Earth, and fifty pirates and twenty policemen died. Hell, I killed hundreds of the bastards just throwing rocks at 'em. And only the bad guys died.
        Stupid news.
        Destiny I weren't paying attention to it anyway. Five 'til eight I went to the pilot room to make sure we weren't going too fast or too slow or the wrong way and started my inspections.
        There was arguing coming from the commons, damn it. I stopped and called Destiny. "Hon, could you call Tammy and have her handle these crazy women?"
        "Sure, what are they doing?"
        "They act like they need drops."
        "Okay, I'll call her."
        I decided to inspect the commons last. I didn't need a dropless whore.
        For once the cargo didn't give me any trouble in inspection; they were all asleep and the doorbells didn't wake them up.
        Odd, what with the commotion in the commons.
        When I went into the passenger section there was a funny smell in number eighteen. Burning insulation, it smelled like. I got out fast and pulled out my fone; systems should have seen that and fixed it already.
        "Computer, fire in number eighteen."
        "There is no fire in cargo eighteen."
        "PASSENGER eighteen you stupid computer!"
        "There is no fire in..." There was an explosion in eighteen! Shit!
        "Computer," I said as alarms went off. "Report."
        "Fire in passenger eighteen" it said as the door light flashed red. "Fire suppression technologies in play."
        Damned computer. "Cause of fire?" It had smelled like an electrical short circuit to me, ozone and burned plastic. They don't make these boats like they used to. This was the third damned fire on this ship! It wasn't a brand new boat, thank God, or the damned robots would talk. But the ones with three generators, the old ones that got retrofitted with fusion generators, almost never had electrical problems.
        "Unknown at this time," the stupid computer said. Stupid computer, something shorted out and a fuse should have blown but didn't. Same as the port generator, it should have shut itself down before it caught fire and melted lots of the parts.
        I decided to investigate later. "Computer, do not repair until ordered by me. Continue fire suppression and keep the door locked.
        "Acknowledged," it said. Why do them damned things talk like that? I'm glad my robots are old, I hate talking robots.
        Well, except that the old ones catch fire. That's never any fun.
        I inspected the good generator, the ion engines, and the messed up generator. One robot was working on engine One Thirty Two and I noted it in the log.
        Back at P18 the light was no longer flashing, so I went in. Yep, a burned up panel. I opened it, it was fried; something had shorted. I logged it.
        This shit didn't use to happen on old boats.
        I went to the commons and finally inspected it. The commotion was over.
        I went home and had lunch with Destiny. "What was going on in the commons?" I asked.
        "Thieves. You read Tammy's book, most of these girls had criminal parents and stealing is normal for them. Well, there were about fifty of them that had all their drops stolen and were in the commons accusing each other of stealing, when the thieves were all asleep. Tammy took care of it."
        "I'm sure glad we have her," I said.
        "Me too," she agreed. "Do you have to work this afternoon?"
        "I hope not. Not unless something breaks or the whores act up or pirates attack or..."
        "Okay," she said laughing. "I get it. Want to watch something?"
        "Sure. Pick something."
        "How about..." she started before an alarm went off.
        "You jinxed me," I said, grinning. "Damned dropheads!"
        It was another fire, this time in P19. Why in the hell are unoccupied quarters powered? It don't make no sense. It's a fire hazard, especially the shitty way they build boats these days, glad I didn't get a brand new one. I'll bet they're even worse than this one, and it's only ten years old.
        But it wasn't a real fire, just a drill, there only to waste my free time and annoy me. I have enough real emergencies that I don't need no drills. The company's programmers are idiots.

President Barack "Lawnchair" Obama forces striking Philadelphia Transit Workers Back to Work. While he didn't go so far as to fire them, he did break up the strike for at least the next 1-4 months.

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