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as the last lonely member of his clan? Will he find it prosperous and happy? Run down and penniless?
    Cesar curses the years he spent refusing to even look for news from home. At first, he told himself it was better not to know what his family was doing, but lately he’d realized that was just cowardice. He didn’t ask for news about his family because it hurt too much to think of them. Right now, he’d happily listen to a rambling story about his old dad’s bunions if that meant the rotten old bird is still alive.
    Whatever he finds, Cesar resolves to be satisfied in the knowing of it and move on. Cesar is not a man given to deep thinking or conflicting philosophies so he comes spoiling for a fight, half dead on his feet.
    The ship gives a final shudder as it locks into place against the floating little world and then a voice over the intercoms announces they just docked with Ithaca.
    “Named Ithaca by my lunatic father,” Cesar mutters.
    He hears the final set of grinding clicks that indicate everything was locked into place. Space colonies, regardless of their design, always spin. Ships always dock on the part that doesn’t spin, so that part never has much gravity. Which is why Cesar’s hair seems even wilder, floating around his face.
    Cesar steps toward the airlock, wobbling just slightly as his vision blurs. Fortunately, his grav boots hold him tightly to the floor. Cesar is extremely sick and he knows it. Weeks of battling some sort of bug have him fevered and weak. On the trip here, he did everything he could to appear healthy. Many orbitals refuse to allow a sick man entry. Others might quarantine him for weeks.
    In some of the rougher colonies, quarantine means getting pushed out the nearest airlock since a bug-infested corpse can’t be used even as fodder for the manuvats.
    Cesar figures he is dying and he wants to do that at home, if he can. Fortunately, Ithaca is a medium-sized colony off the main shipping lanes but far from the well-populated Lagrange points. It doesn’t have the most rigorous of security checks. Or at least it didn’t when he left. If they’ve been having the kind of trouble he’s heard about, that may have changed.
    The airlock door finally swings open and he strides forward, trying not to look like he is hurrying. Cesar imagines that he can already smell his old home before he steps through the door, but he knows the pressure differentials keep that from happening.
    The lone man at the gate is a frontier world’s haphazard attempt at a doorkeeper. Cesar recognizes the oldster as one of his father’s old drinking buddies, Mathis. Cesar smiles to himself and straightens up to begin the process of coming home.
    Grizzled, cranky and suspicious of outsiders, Mathis lets returning locals pass through with a nod and pushes the leaving strangers out as fast as they will go. Mathis stops Cesar, squinting at him as though Cesar is some mangy dog trying to sneak past.
    “What’s your business here?” Mathis snaps, snatching Cesar’s ident card but not really reading it.
    On Earth, he’d have been DNA-printed and body-scanned and no one would care what his business was.
    “I’m visiting some old friends,” Cesar grins, waiting for Mathis to recognize him. It didn’t happen.
    “Old friends? Where?” Mathis gives him the kind of look you give a man when you are trying to decide if he matches any of the pictures from this week’s “Universe’s Most Wanted” posts.
    “Vaquero Ranch. I’m an old friend of the family.” Cesar tries to nudge the man towards recognition, but it is not to be.
    “Vaquero? Listen, mister, those are good people out there and they don’t need anyone else pestering them. You give them no trouble, you hear?” Mathis waves him on dismissively, grumbling about unwashed outworlders.
    Cesar makes his way toward the elevators. He wanted to ask old Mathis about the rumors he’s heard, about Ithaca in danger and under attack, but he can’t risk old Mathis