After teaching him the basics of sail, rudder, keel, and line, Jake went on to show him how to heave-to in the hurricane-force winds so that they would ride easily, neither making way nor being blown back. They’d used that technique to mine the edges of Jupiter’s storms. The updrafts in these dangerous hurricanes often pulled metal-rich meteorites and icebergs—worth their weight in gold to the floating stations—from the lower depths of the atmosphere. Jake showed him how to “cheat” the boat close to the edges of the turbulence, using jib and main to close in on these bits of rock and harvest them.

Jake had shared all of his secrets of playing the winds of Jupiter’s storms and winning its rewards. Jake taught Rams to love the winds on the wine-red seas.

Rams’s transition from crewman to ship’s captain hadn’t been easy. He’d scrimped and saved every cent he could, and signed away nearly all of his future profits—all to buy a fast, outdated clipper at one of JBI’s auctions. Clippers had been deemed too inefficient to achieve JBI’s “acceptable” level of profitability.

Refitting the boat and replacing the instruments that Primrose’s former crew had stripped put him even further in debt. In addition, there had been the outlay for new sails and refitting the keel. Both cost more than he expected and, suddenly, his debt for Primrose started to look like a financial black hole from which there was no hope of escape.

His first year had been a disaster. The cargo he’d hauled hadn’t generated enough to pay the interest on his loans. To keep from losing her he borrowed even more. If he wasn’t careful he could lose Primrose and be thrown in jail—that was the penalty for simultaneously using her as collateral for multiple loans. Since then it had been nip and tuck, keeping one financial step ahead of bankruptcy.