The cargo hold looked cavernous in the starlight, and more than one deep spacer hadn't lived through a cargo hold accident. But this got Bull "out" and so he took the slight risk involved with puttering around in the starlit, airless hold to alleviate his cabin fever.
He carefully toured the hold, inspecting the small amount of equipment left in it. Pluto had been on the way out, so he'd stopped there first, and the government had paid him handsomely to deliver a hefty load to the outpost. So what remained was a deep spacer's dream. He had all the tools, now all he had to do was endure the trip out and get lucky, real lucky.
The Kuiper Belt is big ... no, giant, compared to the asteroid belt, and uncharted. TC gave him a cheap answer quickly, but the probability sphere maximum offered only a 0.07% chance of being correct. TC advised that doubling the computing time would only improve that to 0.08%. Even with his good trajectories, he was looking for a needle in a haystack.
But it was time to look. The Kuiper Belt was largely uncharted, and if nothing else he could bring back some charts. The stopover at Pluto had gone smoothly, now two years later, he was on the edge of his search area.
Now he was like an old-time California gold prospector panning for gold in a stream. He was searching for the mother load by looking for more fragments. Actually, Bull didn't have to do anything right now, the ship's systems were doing the leg work. They were looking for meteors and other space debris. Bull had set the parameters for what he considered interesting debris, and the ship would let him know when it found something interesting.
For now, he was taking a break from the other work he did to fill time on the ship.
Deep spacing is highly individualistic. Some deep spacers pretty much go into a haze during the transit time. Others pursue hobbies with feverish intensity. Those that plan on returning to Earth or Mars are exercise fanatics. They spend half their day in the exercise room, and some will spin the ship and sleep in the outer parts to keep the calcium loss down.
Bull did property development. He'd done commodities on Earth in an earlier life, but he couldn't keep up with that frantic pace out here. Being hours behind the action was a giant handicap. But a lot of development deals were leisurely enough that he was not at a disadvantage being hours away. So he stayed busy reading up on current events, dabbling in stocks and swinging interplanetary development deals. His specialty was buying up property in strife-torn cities and holding until normalcy returned. Property development supported his hobby, and would give him something productive to do when he decided to return to Earth. Thanks to his properties, this expedition would not break him, and he could continue to invest in Push-on Propulsion, the company developing the constant acceleration drive he was using. But if he came back empty handed, he might not be able for afford living in a Greenland condo, which was a long-time dream of his, and half the people who were in The Belt making a living.
There was an alert beep in his helmet, the interesting debris beep. He put the display through his helmet. "Hot dang, I'm getting lucky!" He muttered to himself, “Honeycomb already?" There was room for error, as Bull had discovered shortly after passing Neptune’s orbit. It turned out his density parameter for honeycomb included a lot of fluffy snowball mini-comets. These appeared to be proto-comets that had never come near the inner solar system. They hadn't melted or consolidated at all, so they were as fluffy as a collection of snowflakes. They were interesting, and Bull was surveying them, but they were no longer worthy of alerts. Bull had spent a week working on an algorithm that could distinguish snowflakes from honeycomb. This might be paydirt, or it might be an out of spec snowflake.
He examined the readings closely. It sure looked like paydirt.
"Track this for a week and ready a catcher to be sent out, Honey. And see if you can reserve some time on TC in ... what a month? Will we have that specimen back here in a month?"
"If we send a catcher in a week the specimen will be back in twenty four days. Optimal time to send the catcher for quick retrieval is ten days. We'll have it back in twenty two days."
"OK, do it in ten."
"Damn I'm hot tonight!" Bull muttered to himself. He finished his puttering around and went inside to give himself a real treat. He went to the exercise room, and selected Suzanne. "I've earned you tonight, Suzanne," Bull muttered. Bull suited up, and Suzanne was waiting.
"I haven't seen you in quite a while, darling,” she cooed. Suzanne was a 20 year old, tall, athletic redhead. She wore her hair long and down. The waves fell enticingly over her shoulders, she was dressed in a tennis skirt and had a racket in hand. She was in her kitchen in a small bungalow in West LA as it was in the 1970’s.
"True, but I'm hot tonight, and that's why you're my sweetheart tonight."
Bull walked up to her, took the racket and put it on the counter. Suzanne moved into his arms and reached up, slightly, to kiss him. Bull returned the kiss, and backed her into the counter to press her hips hard with his. His hands ran up and down her back and wove through her hair. As she sighed and pressed a little harder into his chest, he tickled her sides. She grabbed for his hands, but he caught her wrists instead and twisted her arms behind her. His left hand he held them there, while his right ranged from breast to thigh, rubbing, stroking, feeling the texture of her body. Suzanne's breathing deepened. Bull’s hips thrust hard as he kissed on the lips, cheeks and neck.
Then he backed off and simply held her hands.
"Hmm, it must have been a special day, Bull," She said. She was smiling at him with admiration and respect as her breathing returned to normal. "Tennis first?" She asked as she moved to him again and slid her arms from his chest around to his back to hold him gently.
Bull kissed her. "Tennis first. This is going to be a full evening," He announced. She smiled and kissed him again as if this was the best news of the week.
"Your racket's in the closet," She said as she went for her purse and the keys. Her 240Z was just outside.
Hours later Bull hauled himself out of the simulator suit.
"What a night," He muttered. He was working kinks out of his muscles as he put the suit in the cleaner, then put himself in.
"I've got to spend more time keeping in shape," He resolved once again, “I'm not getting out of that suit what I should."
But that was a scheduling problem he still hadn't satisfactorily resolved, and his mind was now on to other issues. There was property to analyze and a report on these snowflake mini-comets to finish. Bull was back on his normal routine.