8
The ride back to Refugio was long and uneventful. Eddie had to shut down several systems and features to conserve fuel. He had just enough to get home.
Here and there Eddie passed an occasional private passenger ship. One even hailed him, and the pilot told Eddie that he had his kid onboard and that they wanted to see how the garbage compactor worked. Eddie obliged, stopping the ship to run the compactor. From the cockpit of the approaching ship, a little boy sat wide-eyed with his fingers on the windows, watching the ship rumble and buck as the roof closed in on itself.
And then Eddie continued on his way, blasting into hyperspace to save time.
He checked the soccer scores—Santa Juana del Bosque won, of course—and the Rah Galaxy News Network.
He watched footage of an Argus invasion
