Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [11]
Once there, the cargo pods would be captured and decelerated by a similar thruster, and positioned for the jump. Then the superjumpers would take over, cargo carriers as specially designed as the thrusters for their task. The monster cargo jumpers were hardly more than a pair of Necklin field generator rods in their protective housings so positioned as to be fitted around a constellation of pod bundles, a bracketing pair of normal space thruster arms, and a small control chamber for the jump pilot and his neurological headset. Without their balancing pod bundles attached the superjumpers reminded Leo of some exceptionally weird and attenuated long-legged insects.
Each jump pilot, neurologically wired to his ship to navigate the wavering realities of wormhole space, made two hops a day, inbound to Rodeo with empty pod bundles and back out again with cargo, followed by a day off; two months on duty followed by a month's unpaid but compulsory gravity leave, usually financially augmented with shuttle duties. Jumps were more wearing on pilots than null-gee was. The pilots of the fast passenger ships like the one Leo had ridden in on yesterday called the superjumper pilots puddle-jumpers and merry-go-round riders. The cargo pilots just called the passenger pilots snobs.
Leo grinned, and considered that train of wealth gliding through space. No doubt about it, the Cay Habitat, fascinating as it was, was just the tail of the dog to the whole of GalacTech's Rodeo operation. That single thruster-load of pods being bundled now could maintain a whole town full of stockholding widows and orphans in style for a year, and it was just one of an apparently endless string. Base production was like an inverted pyramid, those at the bottom apex supporting a broadening mountain of ten-percenters, a fact which usually gave Leo more secret pride than irritation.
"Mr. Graf?" an alto voice interrupted his thoughts. "I'm Dr. Sondra Yei. I head up the psychology and training department for the Cay Habitat."
The woman hovering in the door wore pale green company coveralls. Pleasantly ugly, pushing middle-aged, she had the bright Mongolian eyes, broad nose and lips and coffee-and-cream skin of her mixed racial heritage. She pushed herself through the aperture with the concise relaxed movements of one accustomed to free fall.
"Ah, yes, they told me you'd be wanting to talk to me." Leo courteously waited for her to anchor herself before attempting to shake hands.
Leo gestured at the televiewer. "Got a nice view of the orbital cargo marshaling here. Seems to me that might be another job for your quaddies."
"Indeed. They've been doing it for almost a year now." Yei smiled satisfaction. "So, you don't find adjusting to the quaddies too difficult? So your psyche profile suggested. Good."
"Oh, the quaddies are all right." Leo stopped short of expanding on his unease. He was not sure he could put it into words anyway. "I was just surprised, at first."
"Understandable. You don't think you'll have trouble teaching them, then?"
Leo smiled. "They can't possibly be worse than the crew of roustabouts I trained at Jupiter Orbital #4."
"I didn't mean trouble from them." Yei smiled again. "You will find they are very intelligent and attentive students. Quick. Quite literally, good children. And that's what I want to talk about." She paused, as if marshaling her thoughts like the distant cargo pushers.
"The GalacTech teachers and trainers occupy a parental role here for the Habitat family. Although parentless, the quaddies themselves must someday—indeed, are already becoming parents. From the beginning we've been at pains to assure they were provided with role models of stable adult responsibility. But they are still children. They will be watching you closely. I want you to be aware, and take care. They'll be learning more than welding from you. They'll also