Independent Living — E.M. Foner

In space, retirement is a new beginning.Harry and Irene have sold their small-town bakery after forty years of hard work to finance their dream retirement in space, but a few days into the trip, it starts to look like they and the other retirees on board have been taken in by a scam. Julie Gold (not her real name) has secretly fled Earth in the witness protection program after testifying in open court against the bosses of the drug syndicate she's been working for since childhood, but somebody has spilled the beans on her location. Can they make a new start on Flower, an alien colony ship visiting a circuit of human communities on distant worlds. Or will it prove impossible to live with the ship's guiding artificial intelligence, who is so bossy that her original crew and owners declared her a rogue and abandoned ship back when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power?