It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single human in possession of the best interplanetary business degree ze could get in this solar system must be in want of a startup venture.

Dynin Nkosi’s landing at Sun-Mars L5 station did not go unnoticed by the locals, especially since he was the only upside passenger today, on a ship full of mail, hydroponic clay, and grain from Mars. Many things are public on a space station of forty thousand people where each new occupant needs to be balanced by a departing occupant, so when the staffer at the station welcome desk greeted him by name, Dynin wasn’t surprised.

“Good afternoon! You must be Mr. Nkosi, here to see Acton Darling.” She smiled and floated by her stand to help him hook his carry-all to the restraining clasp on his side of the desk, then handed him a clipboard as he carefully hooked his feet into the floor anchors at the desk. “Are you all right with the weightlessness? We can expedite the process if we need to get you into a gravitic environment quickly, and do the safety briefing there.”

Dynin smiled. “Nope, turns out I’m all right, but thank you for asking. And yes, that’s who I am. Where do we start?”

The clerk, who introduced herself as Stephanie Ma, shared the full set of safety procedures with his tablet and sign a release stating he’d received them. She walked him through a full demonstration of his emergency respirator pack and shiny plastic emergency pod. “We’ve never had a rotation failure or decompression accident in the twenty years the ring habitat has been operational, and you’ll remember that space stations are one of the safest places to live,” she explained. “But a lot of people feel better having practiced for this in a weightless environment just in case they ever need it. In space, you wanna be prepared.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dynin said, hiding a yawn.