The Rubowski/Silberstein Wedding Cruise
1. An Eagerly-Anticipated Meeting at Armstrong Station
Captain Pawel N. Rubowski sat back down in the blue sim-leather seat of the high-backed chair outside the offices of the Dae and Aggarwal Agency LLC, Armstrong Station Branch, for the third time in forty minutes. It was the matchmaker agency most used by belt miners, L5-ers, and inner system freight carriers like himself. He had picked D & A after looking as far afield as Mars to find that elusive candidate for the title of Mrs. P.N. Rubowski. D & A’s reviews had been good, and being next door to Earth, gave it a statistical edge on the female/male ratio. It cost more, sure, but convenience and comfort, not price, ultimately, had been the key factors in picking the agency that had scheduled his first meeting with Tamar R. Silberstein, the woman he hoped would soon agree to marry him.
His ship, the Karol Wojtyla, had just delivered 30,000 standard cargo units of unrefined asteroid rock, heavy on the iron and nickel, to the processing facility of the Novak, Villareal, and Kashigura Interplanetary Mining Consortium. His ship’s small fleet of bots unloaded the cargo under the supervision of the station’s dock personnel, while his crew– Cargo Handler Lew Giordano, Mechatronic Technician and Computer Specialist Ping Nan Tsai, and Engineer Shelly Corbett– was enjoying the recreational facilities of Armstrong. They were probably having a much more relaxed afternoon than their captain was. He was nervous.
One moment, he was looking down at his impeccably pressed uniform for some sign of defect to correct, the next, looking down the hall through the glass pane in the section door for any sign that the dark-haired, blue-eyed woman he had first seen in the data profile, the one whom he had gotten to know through time-delayed a/v coms, was headed toward D &A ’s lobby. Until today, she had only been a voice and an image coming by laser transmission from Tel Aviv or the orbital hotel she flew shuttles to and from. All their conversations had been quite proper, limited to a prescribed list of “get to know you” scripts, as was required in the D & A terms and conditions. Today she would become real to him.
From their long-distance communications, he knew that she was attractive, clever, young– a good decade younger than he– and a decorated veteran of the EDF. A lieutenant with real space combat experience. Not many of those around and Lt. Silberstein had been the only one to post a profile to D & A. She had a solid family background. No divorces or other known past entanglements that could scotch things between them. She had been willing, even eager, to sign on as the Karol Wojtyla’s new Chief Officer and co-pilot as part of their pre-nuptial arrangement.
And she was late. Today of all days.
Pawel got up from his chair again, walked a few meters down the dusty rose-colored floor to the pale gold back wall of the reception area, turned around and saw, through the thin glass pane in that heavy section door, a thin, athletic woman of perfectly average height. It was her. She still wore a tight, tidy coiffeur’s net designed to contain longer hair in low-g environments holding what, he knew from her profile images to be shoulder-length sky-dark hair. She wore a blue two-piece skirt-and-top suit and was pulling behind her one of those large levitating travel cases that had become trendy in the last year. Pawel walked toward her, and the door opened.
“Lieutenant Silberstein, good to finally see you in person. I’m Captain Pawel N. Rubowski, and I am exceedingly pleased to meet you.”
Tamar Reza Silberstein was taken aback by the enthusiasm of Captain Rubowski’s greeting. She was already a bit rattled from the late arrival of the Texas to Luna Shuttle. A misfire on a deceleration thruster had forced the pilot to loop out again from the landing site to slow the ship down. Then lunar customs had been a circus without a ringmaster. She had gotten her fill of surprises for that day, but she had not expected her prospective husband to be wearing his dress uniform, or to meet her at the door.
So, this is him for real, she thought. He was never this formal on the commlink. The uniform is sharp. Impeccable.
The tightly trimmed, perfectly pressed black jacket with the silver epaulets and the charcoal trousers with the black stripe suited Captain well and his dark, pointed boots were so polished she could see the hallway reflected in them. He was well above average height for an earth-born, but no giant, and his eyes were just as stormy grey as they had appeared in his data files. There was a little more silver in the hair at his temples, she thought, but that could have been a trick of the light.
When he said:
“I hope your journey went well. Thank you for not cutting your hair back. Many women do for micro-g environments. It helped me recognize you,” in nearly flawless Hebrew, she was stunned and hoped she didn’t show it. His file had not mentioned that he spoke any Hebrew. She asked him about it.
“It’s your mother tongue, language of your heart, as you said in the contact network. So, I knew I had to learn it, to surprise you. It took weeks of concentrated training with the ship’s AI, but I had the time,” Pawel explained, continuing. She felt her pulse quicken. “I hope my words were adequate and my pronunciation pleasant?”
“More than adequate. I’m… impressed. Thrilled,” she responded in Hebrew with a genuine smile. “The trip went well right until we had to land,” she turned and tugged her case on through the door. Then she switched to English, “I’m sorry about the delay,” she extended her right hand. He took it, bent at the waist, and kissed her there. She smiled. “We are supposed to meet D & A contract rep to sign the pre-nuptial agreement, right?”
The door into the main office on their left opened. A short man with thinning red hair and van Dyke beard emerged. He wore a light grey business suit with the stylized “Dae and Aggarwal” initials embroidered on the lapel. He greeted them and beckoned them inside. Introducing himself as Mr. Whitcomb, he led them down a corridor that looked to Tamar like it had been cut down from a larger structure and reconfigured with hasty, ad-hoc construction. The rear wall appeared to be light blue hull metal, not standard interior construction grade material as she had seen in the rest of the station. The lighting was also… the polite word would have been “subdued”. A few steps ahead of them, Whitcomb indicated the last small room on the right. The door opened automatically, he gestured, so they followed.
“Captain Rubowski, Lieutenant Silberstein, we are so pleased to have you among our new clients, we have some pleasant official tasks to complete, if you would take your seats at the table,” he pointed at the two chairs opposite his own, saying, “and could I offer the happy couple any refreshments? It’s not every day we send intrepid space pilots off on their wedding cruise, so to speak.”
When Pawel drew out the chair on the right and offered it to her, Tamar smiled. The small act of gallantry pleased her. But she responded first to Whitcomb’s offer.
“No, but many thanks,” it was the polite rejection she had been trained to give at university and then officer’s school. She looked at the man she had come so far to meet, seeing that he was shaking his head in the negative.
“Likewise, no,” Pawel, “I think we are both eager to get the formalities settled, so that we can get to my, no, our ship.”
Our. He said our, naturally and warmly, Tamar thought. Coming to Armstrong Station was quite the right decision today.
Minutes later, as the couple read through and signed, by piezoelectric records of their fingerprints, each individual article in their prenuptial contract, Pawel told Mr. Whitcomb to stop and clarify the subsection on “clergy”.
“We get to choose the clergy? Or does the company specify which clergy we may name?”, he looked through the text in the smartscreen built into the desktop.
Tamar, pressing in close against him (a most agreeable sensation to Pawel) ran her finger down the inactive side of the grid and read aloud, “...may select from among those clergy who hold contracting agreements with Dae and Aggarwal.’ No, Pawel Nikolas, we don’t. It’s their list. I find this unacceptable.”
“As do I,” Pawel averred. “Within the three months stipulated here,” and he stabbed his right index finger at the contract, “what if we decide on a priest…”
“Or a rabbi,” Tamar interjected, “we’ll settle that question later. As I read the text, if we want someone who is not contracted with D &A, we would have to pay for that clergyman’s services ourselves?”
“Yes. Go off the list and you are solely responsible for all fees and any transport costs incurred,” Whitcomb added, too eagerly for Pawel’s taste. “And you would still be legally required to send us a digital, holographic, or print copy of your marriage documents. For testimonial purposes.”
“Testimonials I can live with,” Tamar conceded, “it’s paying for our own priest, rabbi, both? What if I want Reb Löwenherz from Be’er Sheeva to fly up for the wedding?”
“It’s your dollar,” Whitcomb said flatly. “And not included in our fees.”
“No, it’s my dollar,” Pawel countered. “Tamar Silberstein, if you need that particular Rabbi to solemnize our vows, then I’ll fly him here or us there. You name it.”
She arched an eyebrow and smiled at him. “So, who robbed the First Interplanetary Bank of Armstrong?”
“I’m a ship owner, remember? You read my files. I’ll fly him up myself. Or you can, like you said the last time we talked.”
She nodded. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, as my great-uncle Marek used to say. Where else do we sign?”