The next day at lunchtime, four of them sat around the same table in the formal mess. Alis was still pouting, despite Coshell having gone to say hello and to thank her for using her excellent piloting skills to rescue him.

“Give her another day or two,” said Victor. “If she’s still avoiding us then, I’ll start worrying.”

“We still want to hear about how you managed to escape Tilluma,” said Zeph.

Coshell smirked. “And would you ask a magician how he accomplished his tricks?”

“Absolutely.” Said Zeph. “Why not?”

“Bravo!” Coshell laughed. “A man after my own heart. For your boldness, sir, I shall satisfy your curiosity. However, you all must indulge me in a game of Skinner’s Focus while I tell the tale.”

Kate groaned. “How in the world did you get your hands on that game?”

“Tilluma may be isolated, but it’s not that isolated. You’d be surprised how hungry that place is for new ways to pass the time.”

Zeph shrugged. “I’m willing. I’ve never actually played it; only seen it played. My last year with the Explorers, one of my crew mates picked up a deck in the Dartell subsector.”

“They’re playing it out there? Really?” Coshell seemed amazed.

“As I understand it, it came from that direction, possibly even the next sector over.”

Victor shrugged. “Sure, let’s play it. Might as well. It’s only day two of our jump and I’m already bored to tears.”

Coshell grinned carnivorously. “Excellent. Excellent!” He reached into one of the pockets of his leather jacket and pulled out a battered plastic deck case, and three odd-shaped dice. “I’ll take it slow for those of you who’ve never played. There are eight core so-called ‘color’ suits of eight cards each. Orthogonally, there are four so-called ‘pattern’ suits of sixteen cards, and five ‘spin’ suits of twelve cards, with four wilds.”

“I’m already lost,” said Kat.

Coshell laughed uproariously at this, and proceeded to shuffle and deal the cards with an alarming dexterity. “Okay,” he said. “You want to hear the story. I’ll try and tell it as we go, here.

“Oh, first, though—no peeking at these cards. After I deal these all out, you’ll draw four cards from your deck, so, yeah. Hands off. Okay?

“Anyway, the first month in Tilluma was simultaneously rough, and boring. You get this idea that working a mine is this arduous, dirty affair, but reasonably modern technology is a huge force multiplier. It’s still dirty, and annoying, but no one was swinging picks or anything so primitive. (Okay, you can each draw four cards from your deck now. Yeah, go ahead and look at them.)

“So anyway, I got to know my crew mates well enough. They were eager to hear what life is like in the galaxy at large, so I told them lots of stories.”

“I’ll bet they loved that,” said Kat as she arranged her cards. Zeph suspected she’d played the game before, and wondered if she was any good. She held her cards well, at least.

“They were,” Coshell said dramatically, “remarkably grateful. (Okay, I’ll go first, here: I roll these dice, thusly, consider the pips, and then choose a card that is compatible, either with color, pattern, or spin. Wilds match any spin, but don’t do anything for color or pattern. I’ll go with this crosshatch five, thus. Victor you go next.)

“So, yes, they were grateful. They told me some stories of their own lives, and how things work in Tilluma, and I learned about these special resource runs that are made occasionally to some of the other moons and larger asteroids. Apparently there are other mines that are run mostly automatically, and periodically some poor souls need to go out and pick up the goods. (Ooh, nice play, Victor. Good use of a color card.)

“I mentioned, just in passing, to one of my crew mates that my poor wife and five children must be worried sick about me, and he said he had a friend on the star base crew that regularly interfaced with traders. He offered to sneak a letter chip to him, and have him pass it to the next trader to come through. (Oh, wait, Kat, not that card. It doesn’t match the dice. Ah, yes, there, that one is better. We’ll all just pretend we didn’t see that, shall we?)”

Zeph was confused, now. Was Kat really that inexperienced with the game? Well, whatever, it was his turn now. He rolled the dice and considered his hand. Victor’s red seven was the strongest card on the field—he had to beat it somehow. The dice certainly constrained his hand. No one had played spin, yet. Maybe one of the fours of widdershins?

“You’re married, then?” Asked Zeph as he set his card down.

“Oh, heck no. Not me.” Coshell grinned. “But I can certainly act like an anxious husband and father.

“Anyway, I knew it was unlikely I’d be able to receive any replies, so I had to just arrange things on the first try, right? So I estimated how long it would take to earn some trust, learned when the next possible resource run would be, and wrote a short note to Mr. Marks. The next six months were spent being as trustworthy and reliable as possible: volunteering for extra shifts, outperforming all the other mine workers, that sort of thing, you know?

“(Ah, yes, the dice favor me today! I’ll just match Kat’s six there.)

“It was a miserable six months, you can be sure. Definitely not worth remembering, let alone recounting. But it all paid off, and when the next resource run was announced, there I was, piloting the barge.”

“So,” said Zeph, incredulous. “You weren’t even sure we were going to be there?”

“Nope. But, if you hadn’t been, I would have tried sneaking out another message and being a good little miner for another couple of months. It would have worked out eventually. (Oh, well done Victor! Are you sure you haven’t played this before? No? Well, you’re a natural.)”

No one spoke for a few more turns. Then, Kat said, “What do you think will happen to the rest of the crew of the barge?”

Coshell sighed and set his cards down. “Honestly? I don’t know. I tried to make a good show, threatening them with a spot welder and promising death if anyone got out of line. I’m hopeful that they’ll be able to honestly claim I was acting on my own.”

He glanced at the table, and rolled the dice. Another glance at his cards and he placed a wild atop one of the piles. Kat groaned.

“I win!” He said with a smile.