The Scavenger Door

Chapter 1
Neptune smells, Fergus Ferguson said.
His sister Isla was slouched low on the worn, brown sofa in the tiny, cluttered apartment above the Drowned Lad, a lightball on dim hovering overhead. She glanced up from her handpad, pushed away a lock of red hair from her face, and scowled at him. What? she said.
I said Neptune smells. It s the damnedest thing, he said. He was perched on an old oak stool, one leg mysteriously a centimeter shorter than the others so that it wobbled every time he took a breath, his chin in his hand and elbow on the kitchenette s island. I mean, there s nothing particularly exceptional about the atmo­sphere, and it s so cold everything is frozen, but when you get back from any kind of out of ship activity, your exosuit smells. It can take weeks to fade.
I asked five minutes ago, mind if ye knew how to calcu­late the proper speed and insertion angle for a standard Cricket-class cargo ship carrying five tons of liquid water to land on one of the wind-cities of Neptune, she said. Not how it smells.
Fergus shrugged. No one would do that. They d let the wa­ter freeze so its mass distribution is stable. Keeping it liquid would burn a lot of energy and make the whole process harder.
I m sure the exam proctors would be entirely happy to give me full credit for writing in This is dumb and also Neptune smells instead of doing the actual math they asked for, Isla said. I am trying to study here. Don t ye have something else to do?
At the moment, no. Gavin kicked me out of the bar.
Big surprise there. It s probably the ammonium sulfide.
What?
The reason why Neptune smells, Isla said. Honestly, don t ye know anything at all?
He got up from the stool, stretched his lower back, and looked around the tiny apartment. Discovering I have a little sister I never knew about has been fantastic, he said. It makes me feel so loved and appreciated.
If ye want to be appreciated, go down to the bar and grab me some

Suzanne Palmer is an award-winning and acclaimed writer of science fiction. She won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Secret Life of Bots in 2018 and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the novella "Waterlines" in 2020. Her short fiction has also won readers awards for Asimov s, Analog, and Interzone magazines, and has been included in the Locus Recommended Reading List.
 
Palmer has a Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where as a student she was the head librarian of the UMass Science Fiction Society and spent many fine summers reading in the stacks from back to front (she wanted to hit Zelazny sooner rather than later.) She lives in western Massachusetts and is a Linux and database system administrator for the Sciences at Smith College. You can find her online at zanzjan.net and on Twitter at @zanzjan.

Priase for The Scavenger Door

"Fergus is as charming and witty as ever...has plenty to please series fans." Publishers Weekly

Praise for the Finder Chronicles

"Wicked, fast-paced, and fun. This is a total romp, and I loved it."  Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-Award winning author of Ancestral Night

"Fergus Ferguson makes an excellent lead in this fast-paced hard-sf repo adventure set in space opera's sweeping scale and balanced on the heart of one very finely wrought character. Suzanne Palmer s writing is delightful."  Hugo-, Nebula-, and World-fantasy finalist Fran Wilde, author of the award-winning Bone Universe trilogy

"Finder is a raucous good time! Suzanne Palmer's Fergus Ferguson is charming, imperfect, always in trouble, and a most resourceful rogue. I can't wait for his next adventure. Characterization at its finest. Firecracker dialogue." W. Michael Gear, New York Times-bestselling author of Outpost

"Finder proves hard SF, done brilliantly, is passionate, powerful, and brimming with humanity. Be it daily life or war in zero g, realistic communities in space or making us laugh at what clever beings we humans are, Suzanne Palmer nails it. I cannot wait for more. Highly recommended."  Julie E. Czerneda, author of Search Image

"Finder is a breathless ride."  Jacey Bedford, author of Empire of Dust

"A breakneck-paced and action-packed science-fiction adventure featuring an endearing con artist whose current mission to retrieve a stolen spaceship ignites a war.... A nonstop SF thrill ride until the very last page."  Kirkus

"Palmer makes short-distance space travel feel as comfortable as riding a bicycle, and concludes this entertaining caper with a clever resolution and a hint of intrigue. Fans of space adventure will find this a fine example of the form." Publishers Weekly

"This will please anyone who embraces outer-space