The boomer drop was rough for me. I could see and hear Death on my backtrail. It was personal.

Those droppers were after me.

Navy people seldom see the whites of enemy eyes. Line ships are toe to toe at 100,000 klicks.

These men are extending the psychology of distancing.

Climbers sometimes do go in to hand-to-hand range. Close enough to blaze away with small arms if anyone wanted to step outside.

The Climber lexicon is adapted to depersonification, and to de-emotionalizing contact with the enemy. Language often substitutes for physical distance.

These people never fight the enemy. Instead, they compete with the other firm, or any of several similar euphemisms. Common euphemisms for enemy are the boys upstairs (when on Canaan), the gentlemen of the other firm, the traveling salesmen (I suppose because they're going from world to world knocking on our doors), and a family of related notions. Nobody gets killed here. They leave the company, do any number of variations on a theme of early retirement, or borrow Hecate's Horse.

Nobody knows the etymology of the latter expression.

I'm trying to adopt the cant myself. Protective coloration. I try to be a colloquial chameleon. In a few days I'll sound like a native—and become as nervous as they do when someone speaks without circumlocution.

The Commander says the TerVeen go was a holiday junket. Like taking a ferry across a river. The gentlemen of the other firm were busy covering their dropships.

TerVeen isn't a genuine moon. It's a captive asteroid that has been pushed into a more circular orbit. It's 283 kilometers long and an average 100 in diameter. Its shape is roughly that of a fat sausage. It isn't that huge as asteroids go.

The support system wakened us when the lifter entered TerVeen's defensive umbrella. There're no viewscreens in our compartment, but I've seen tapes. The lifter will enter one of the access ports which give the little moon's surface a Swiss cheese look. The planetoid serves not only as a Climber fleet base, but also as a factory and mine. The human worms inside are devouring its substance. One great big space apple, infested at the heart.