[First Live Concert]

The radio burst to life and drowned Ray out, the listeners inside the dome
suddenly chattering over each other, none listening to who they were talking
over.  Ray dropped the control for the radio, hands open with disgust, leaving
it dangling from the strap that ran to her elbow. 

'This is why I run communications. They really shouldn't let untrained people
touch radios.' She gritted her teeth and waited for the chatter and cacophony
to stop. The man inside the capsule was making a face as he held his headset
away from his ear.

'I know, right?' Ray thought, sure she was making a face just as much.

He caught her eye and rolled his eyes, and she nodded her whole body in
agreement and shrugged, since he couldn't see her face.

The people with the worst radio etiquette finally stopped chattering, but the
conversation was obviously taking place inside the dome, and the radio only
broadcast random pieces.

"About time someone told the ESA where to go." "Cascadia? Where'd they launch
from?", and a couple jokes about the rocket being fuelled with hemp oil. Ray
gritted her teeth again and almost wished for the incoherent squelch of radios
trying to broadcast at the same time. Better than their nationalist bullshit.

She mimed new numbers, then moved a control on her radio. One ear went quiet,
and she saw the man adjust his radio too.

"That's better." The same drawl, clipped only by the crunch of the radio as he
keyed the microphone. 

"Much. Racist assholes. You'd think a bunch of scientists dredged up from the
bottom of the space agencies would get it, right?"

The man just shrugged nonchalantly.

"I don't suppose we can come in? I'm getting stir-crazy in here." The woman who
was sitting behind him nodded in agreement.

"Well, I don't see why not, but we might want to wait for the buzz to die
down." Ray listened to the still chattering radio in her other ear for a
moment. "They're not sure what to do with you."

"I figured as much. It's not every day you get to run off with an ESA ship."

Ray tapped one of the other crew members on the shoulder and mimed connecting
the cargo gantry. They nodded and started to fasten it down. Two of the others
tried to signal them to stop, but nobody wanted to be out in the suits any
longer than they had to.

The gantry sealed itself on the first try, and Ray pressed the button to test
the airlock. Even from outside, she could see the tunnel jump a little as she
released the air and the vaccum was released and air started to flow from the
cargo.

"Well, there's the first delivery. Hopefully they trust us a little more when
they see we can breathe the air we brought with us." He stepped, or more hopped
down through the hatch into the connecting tunnel, suddenly revealed to
everyone inside the dome. He unsealed his helmet and took it off.

He was almost the perfect stereotype of Cascadian. The moment the helmet was
off, he looked ill-placed in the clean-cut lines of a flight suit, something
comfortable and a little ragged showing from underneath, and his hair hung half
way down his back in dreadlocks, and he sported a patchy one-week beard. Ray
wondered how he had managed to fit all that hair into the helmet. There was a
reason the national haircut on the moon was a crew-cut. Ray turned off the main
radio as another joke shot down the channel about the smell of Patchouli.

She waved to the gantry crew and motioned to follow, three of them did, leaving
two standing a little like sentries before they too headed back for the
airlock.

They waited for the air to return, the suits softening as the pressure inside
stopped inflating them like balloons. Any moment now. It felt like forever,
even if it was just a few minutes. Her ears popped and she yawned to try and
relieve them.

The light came on and Ray finally cracked her helmet's seal. Finally. Air that
didn't smell like stale sweat. She was always amazed at just how bad she
smelled after a trip out in suits.

The gantry tube was still sealed, and the two passengers were waiting calmly on
the bench in the airlock, still on display to everyone inside. 'At least
they're calm', Ray thought. 

Everyone had come to peer at the arrivals, of course. Even on a normal cargo
drop, it would be a celebration, and this time, everyone wanted to see the crew
from Cascadia.

"We should send 'em back. Let the ESA sort 'em out." "How'd they get on the
ship anyway? The UN hasn't admitted Cascadia, there's no way they'd get here."

"It's not even a real country anyway. Just because you decide to split off from
the United States doesn't make it a real country."

Ray had heard it all before, the moment someone talks about a news clip from
Earth, the rants would start. There were a few colonists who'd come from the
old Oregon and one from Western Canada, but if they were seccessionists, they'd
kept their mouths shut.

She pushed into the crowd around the tube door, trying to get close enough to
at least see what was going on.