[ WP ] The ones who wander

`` Libra?'' the bartender asked. 
 
 `` Libra,'' the drinker confirmed. 
 
 `` And Constantinople?'' 
 
 `` The new or the old?'' 
 
 `` You were there? Before They dropped the cable on it. For truth?'' 
 
 `` For truth brother. I'd been out of Haven for what, a year, on some little space cutter that had been cast off by the coast guard when it got too expensive to keep up to regs. This thing was a death trap. Six weeks in I found the atmosuit in my locker was missing an O2 capsule.'' 
 
 The bartender dropped another pill into the glass, letting it crack and fizzle into a shot of brown liquid. 
 
 `` We put down on the Eastern docks because the Captain had some pickups to make. The kind that do n't go on the bill of lading if you know what I mean. Anyhow, we set down and I walk to the first tether. You ever been to Conos?'' 
 
 The bartender should his head. 
 
 `` Now that's a space elevator. Like a giant silver dick, just shot out of the ground and into the sky. Thirty gees without the compensators. What a ride. But this thing, it was old. The kind of old where you worry it's going to fall over in the slightest breeze.'' 
 
 `` You saying it was an accident?'' 
 
 `` No, no. Just saying it was waiting to happen. If it was n't Them it would have been something else.'' 
 
 `` What was it like?'' 
 
 `` Endless.'' 
 
 The drinker downed the drink, feeling the little bits of crushed shell across his teeth. He reached for another pill but the bartender pulled the glass back and filled it with the real stuff. Like nectar. 
 
 `` Forty-five thousand kilometres to the relay station. Almost the same again to the counterweight. When the station blew and it just... snapped, you could feel it on the ground. It took twenty minutes for it all to fall.'' 
 
 `` Gods.'' 
 
 `` They'd let it drift and it zagged when it should have zigged. Crushed most of the city. Took out that little cutter. Spent six months on that planet, helping.'' 
 
 `` Good man.'' 
 
 `` Stranded man. Not a ship worth it's own powercells was taking off charging anything less than a full bar.'' 
 
 `` A full bar?!'' 
 
 `` Eventually I snuck away on a Trellian freighter in a zillet container.'' 
 
 `` You dumb schmuck.'' 
 
 Another drink and both men were laughing. 
 
 `` So where to after this? What's left?'' 
 
 `` I always wanted to reach the outer rim.'' 
 
 `` Even now? With Them?'' 
 
 `` Especially now.''
