“I am curious,” said the captain, “as to the reason for your traveling all the way out to Jupiter.”

For a moment she did not reply, simply gazed at the captain with her gray eyes half closed, obviously thinking about what her answer should be. Her face was long and narrow, with a pointed chin and nose so perfect it could only be the product of cosmetic surgery. Her hair was the color of golden brown honey, stylishly cut to frame her face like a tawny helmet. She wore a pale blue business suit, simple and unadorned, except for an egg-sized sapphire brooch on its lapel.

“As a member of the International Astronautical Authority governing council,” she said at last, so softly that the captain had to lean toward her to hear her words, “I feel it’s my duty to personally review each major research facility the IAA is supporting throughout the solar system.”

Captain Guerra nodded. “Starting with Jupiter?”

“Starting with the Gold station,” Katherine Westfall concurred. Then a slightly impish smile curved her lips. “I feel one should always go for the gold.”

She had been born Kate Solo, named thus by the mother who’d been abandoned by the man she had thought loved her. Growing up in the underground warrens of Coober Pedy, in the heart of Australia’s forbidding outback, little Kate swiftly learned that determination and courage could make up for lack of money and social position. While her mother slaved away in restaurant kitchens, Kate strove to be the best student in the region’s far-flung electronic school system, consistently at the head of her digital classes, even if she had to cheat a bit now and then. She won a university scholarship by the time she was fifteen and moved to Sydney. With her mother.

It was at a party on campus that she met Farrell Westfall, twenty-seven years her senior, quite wealthy from old family money. He was a university regent, she an economics major in her second year of study. “Go for the gold,” her mother advised her.