Moon Dog: Space Life Series

By Barry Shuken

The Moon colony's part-time cop wakes up one Sunday morning to reports of a hung girl. He is told to bury her as a depressive teen suicide. Theirs is a post-apocalyptic world. People shuttered underground from a poisonous atmosphere caused by disaster have many issues. They occupy one of Earth's fledgling alternative home sites off planet. Boris, the cop, a stubborn man, quickly discovers that all is not what it seems to be. The girl may have been murdered. He can't let it go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Self-Publshed
• Release date: Apr 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201082420

Barry Shuken

I am a retired lawer who loves astronomy and science fiction.. There is  much information on space science easily avialable, but it is used indifferently in fiction. I have been starved for stories that are true to real space science, and i have been looking for some.. When I found none, i set out to write them. The Space Life Series is the result.

Book preview

1: Pickup:

Thursday Nov 18, 2117

Boris Levsky was an unimpressive specimen of manhood. He was a man of middling years, older than young, yet younger than old. His reddened eyes were unfocused. He reflexively rubbed his scalp, feeling the stubs of white hair on a skull unshaven for too many days. He looked exhausted, hardly able to stand.

In earlier generations, he would have been considered an ancient, his life ebbing, a specimen ripe for discard. In the new age, he was one of that vast cohort still needed to do the work of society. For on Earth many women have declined to bring forth children. Therefore, there were many fewer young people. They needed the older ones, still able. For want of younger people, they even sent them to the Moon.

Those eyes were open, but they did not see. When he was under pressure too great to bear, he recoiled from it, to find perspective within. So he could know how ridiculous and unimportant it all was. It was his psychic shock absorber. Its usually reliable reward of calming dark humor detached and insolated him, but it wasn’t working well that morning. They had chained him up against that moon-dark wall to await exile. He had been battered by a week with little sleep, constant pressure, and mortal fear for those dear to him. He had been forced to kill. He was in not in a rational state of mind.

Yet he kept trying it anyway. His idea was not original. People had not missed the link the Impact had forged between them and the Dinosaurs, the last top predator. The two impacts and the two species were welded together in the popular imagination, another reminder of the fragility of life. He imagined how one of them would have looked if it were standing there instead of him. What kind of clothes would it wear? Would they be leather? Would its hat mimic the ridge on its crested head? Would it lisp when it spoke its reptile tongue? Would it wear its own moon lenses in its black, bird’s eyes? For it would be a civilized dinosaur. A creature more capable than him, certainly, better able to deal with his troubles. That was triggered when Matt Morrison put the chains on his aching wrists. Matt was gloating:

This is what you deserve, snitch. For what you did. We weren’t hurting anybody. No call for the nuke, jerk. Finally, you're history, you old fart.

Boris, unaware, could only manage an indecipherable grunt in reaction: Wha?

The padlock was grotesquely big, barely fitting through the links of the absurdly heavy chain that completed the set. That, on a planet that had no need for locks. He was the first prisoner they had ever had, unless one counted occasional drunks confined for a few hours on the weekend. None of them were lock and chain material.

The heavy chain seemed built to restrain his imaginary raptor, a creature who would have dwarfed him. That creature would have been powerful enough to have required such restraints. One who might be standing there if its species had lived through that day sixty-six million years previous. The day that had expunged its kind and promoted our species in replacement. A process that drove humans to the Moon instead of them.

Ours could easily have been another world. One where the first of those two impactor strikes, that one that destroyed them, had never happened. A miniscule change in its path would have caused their species killer to miss the Earth entirely. The second Impact, that came so close to exterminating humanity, just eighty years previous, would have come to them instead. Intelligent, they could have journeyed there, instead of Homo 'sapiens'.

Man’s mammalian ancestors would have remained underfoot, mouse-sized, and mouse-smart. The Human species would never have been. After enduring untold millions of years at the bottom of the food chain, those tiny mammals would have died unnoticed in the extinction that followed our Impact. They would have been just more wild animals eradicated with their fellows. That would have left the dinosaurs to struggle for survival, as Humans are now struggling. An insignificant change in an endless universe, yet it was all to Earth's existing inhabitants.

His mind couldn’t hold those bizarre thoughts for long against the insistent demands of reality. It cleared, despite itself, and the shield dissolved. His eyes came into full focus again. Of course, both strikes did happen. One to them, and one to us. The dinosaurs were gone, and we were here. They did not survive. Mankind, barely, had persisted. They had lost their world. Our kind had hung on to ours just fingertip tight. They had not been lucky. We had been just lucky enough. Humans stood there now. A cosmic crapshoot where beings were, and remain, the dice. That was no way to ignore that.

Humanity’s presence there was, essentially, as unlikely as how that week’s events began. The impact of Cyra’s dark asteroid, whose arrival with its gifts, all those millions of years ago, had deposited what the settlements then needed in just the right spot. Cyra’s discovery had set the previous week’s events in motion. Of course, the whole scene that confronted Boris was theatrical overkill. It fit his fancy. At that point, they could have confined him with a bow-tied doily. But the chain made a statement. He was a threat.

Matt had probably volunteered for the assignment to chain Boris. Matt was still pissed at Boris. He had a reason (perhaps excuse was a better word for us observers), for his venomous overture. As legal officer, the Constable being elsewhere one busy Saturday night a few years previous, the old man had sucker punched him in front of his buddies at one party that got too loud and strayed too far. Boris was too busy that night to get to the law part of law enforcement. It would have been better to sit down with him and explain it, after. Boris never got around to it.

So, the sore remained open. Matt was decked by a codger, in public, and never quite got over it. A shadow smile played over his face. It revealed that he was pleased with the idea of humiliation in return, although it didn’t really touch his prisoner. He was going to be far beyond Matt's resentment all too soon.

Because then, he was the animal at bay.

He was sure his father would have found a way to keep his head down and do the job without attracting too much attention, and he then felt that paternal example should have informed him, but it didn’t take. He had banked on celebrity to ensure safety for his friends and associates. So much for that.

His father would have known better. He was the sometime manager of a prominent hotel in his hometown with an equally prominent watering hole favored by entertainers, news reporters, and their malodorous hangers on. Some small celebrity would have been easy for him. Some of his less thoughtful associates took it and shriveled in its glare. He stayed low and lived a quiet, and, mostly happy, life, and his family were kept sheltered. Boris wished that he had heard his father’s voice to remind him yet again. His father could have told him what to do. Unhappily, he let the echo of his father’s memory, and his sage advice, fade over the twenty odd years since his death.

Boris had depended on his own judgement and made others do the same. He wondered whether he could have done it differently. It was really an unanswerable question. He hadn’t figured it out then, and it was open whether he ever would.

The chain had him shackled to one of the lockers, wound about his waist to leave his hands free. Chained like a dangerous animal, but preferable to arm and leg irons. Displayed in darkened hues on the wall behind him was some Moonscape, perhaps the one on the other side of the hab wall, unnecessarily reminding him that there was no place to escape to.

After all, he was a killer, and the label did fit. He had taken life, in defiance, technically, of established authority. He was extremely dangerous, a seventy-three-year-old man with gimpy knees.

On the other side of the room, a Plaser in her hand, stood his embarrassed and tearful friend Gloria, leaning against a virtual palm tree in a dazzling virtual jungle, outlined in a harsh light amped to hurt the eyes. He had to look away, and that was intended also. She was the Constable, and she was assigned to guard him along with the ‘deputies’ who so recently helped him kill Rudy. Seven of them, all armed.

And somehow, they had thought to get a uniform jumper on her, so she looked like a proper policewoman and matched the guys in the posse.

He was out of the same bed twenty minutes previous. They had cut his sweats’ waistband. That left him standing there trying to hold up his pants with one hand, stuffing the cut ends under the chain, and his personals, in a yellow plastic carryall, suspended by the other. A ridiculous figure, at best. A little at odds with the threatening theme they had set with the padlock.

Gloria was then subdued, watchful, and reticent.

Even though she was in charge, she didn't venture any comments. She was silent and remained pensive. He hoped she was already rationalizing her separation from him. They were going to be disconnected by an unbridgeable distance for the rest of their lives. He was being exiled, and unless his captors relented, there was no return. A clean break would have been better. Maybe so: however, they had no time to resolve that.

Of course, they sent her to pick him up. As he slept, the familiar spicy sweet perfume came off her body and he reached for her unconsciously. Awakening, he became aware of her presence, and the logic of it fell into place. She could never have gotten past the recognition circuit on the door unless someone had enabled her. They still had those locks, and he had never disabled his. A relic from a previous life.

It was obvious that she was there for something significant. She had never before entered his apartment without consent. So, he just rolled over and held her against him for a while. He didn't even express the deep satisfaction he felt just to be holding her. He didn’t have the nerve to ask her exactly what was in store. He was fearful of what she would have to answer. No need to make her feel the betrayer. He would find out soon enough.

His feelings for her hadn’t changed and he let his body tell the truth of it. it said that he was grateful for their time together, fond of her, and thankful for the intimacy and grace she had given. It didn’t even enter his mind to blame her for being an instrument of whatever change awaited him. He had passed that stage in life. Someone had to do it, and who better than her, who was softened by some affection?

Gloria never had told him different than that she cared for him too. Both had enjoyed happy, loving marriages. Neither of them would have disclosed that theirs was a tepid, second-time affair, reminding them more of what they had lost than what they had, with none of that magical connection. The understanding, built from a lifetime of knowledge and sharing, was not there. But what little there was so much better than nothing.

They made love that one last time. Was it pity? Maybe not. They explored all the secret places on their bodies that they had entered, touched, licked, and stroked so many times. He worshipped her, kissing and caressing lips, neck, nipples and breasts, stomach, thighs, and quim, reveling in a kaleidoscope of scents from the sweaty and sweet to mossy and muzzy, and delighting in the sighs and whimpers he garnered and offered in answer to those devotions. A reverence to her enduring erotic power.

He had not known that many women intimately in his life (two) and you could not describe him as a great lover or at all knowledgeable in the ways of women. Yet his range of affection is offset by its intensity. He had never regretted not having wider experience. Love, under a microscope, has as much complexity in its miniature as does the whole wide world in its perspective. There is a universe inside each one of us. He had always preferred to know more about less rather than less about more and been fortunate enough to know women who thought the same.

Gloria, his second love, had a remarkable similarity to his first wife that he never dared mention to her. No fem can appreciate being valued by a lover because of her similarity to another. Although not sharing any overt physical familiarities with his wife Esther, who was small and dark where she was tall and fair, there was one telling singularity. They were both quiet people, liking books and conversation, though both were more outgoing than him. They enjoyed sitting in company with one another, and he valued that. But how could you tell that to a fem? That it was the intimate, silent times, that were treasured? I like you because you are boring? Yet, it was not that to him.

He didn’t take that resemblance as a reminder or replacement for Esther, but he was grateful that those two women, so different in most ways, could be so alike in valuation of that one quality he prized so greatly. He marveled how lucky he was to come upon two such sweet women. It was a comfort reflecting the variability and the continuity of life. That bond of humanity was one of life’s greatest comforts to him.

Even though he knew that his pages recounting the week’s events would be read, at least, by those close to him, he didn’t think his children, or Gloria, for that matter, would be embarrassed by them. He didn’t think their estimation of him would be diminished by knowing that his loves were passionate as well as mundane. Isn’t the ability to love the true measure of humanity? When someone truly loves, he or she wants to share the full scope of that person’s being. That is how people come to know others. There can be no shame in it.

When they had finished and laid at rest for a few minutes, they rose and washed, and she motioned him with the yellow bag she had brought to help him to choose the few things he could take. The mere act told him precisely what was to happen to him. He was going away. Certainly not back to Earth with its dangers and its instant notoriety. So, in the other direction, then – Mars.

When she talked, notwithstanding their recent intimacy, she didn’t go out of her way to be kind. He knew he deserved no better on parting. It is the emotional betrayal that stings, and he had stung her.

"Well, lover, you are an exile now, and I’m not so sure I am all in mourning. I won’t need to fight a dead fem. Marion called me, just before she died, after that last soup tête-à-tête you had with her. She was all rhapsodic about the look, the connection. You and I know it. That poor girl didn’t.

"Never had it in her poor deprived life, so maybe you did some good sharing it with her, even if ever so briefly. I don’t know, but it was earth-shaking to her. She was - giggly. Her!

You and I weren’t any Romeo and Juliet, I thought we were exclusive. That thing with Marion was supposed to be playacting. Changed, didn’t it? You just can’t leave well enough alone in anything. If you had gone along, and done what you were told, most of this wouldn’t have happened.  Then a pause. The look on her face changed from scathing to serious.

No, that isn’t fair. We all wanted to do something for Cyra. That’s not your fault.

And then she added Entirely. Asshole. With a straight face, no smile to soften it. An uncompromising goodbye.

He knew he was wrong to say it. He did, though. Honest to the fault, he was. He said: How could I ignore it? How many times does it happen for two people? Just one other time, in my life.

In retrospect, he regretted anew the cruelty of telling her that explicitly. She knew already, why did he drill it in? He judged he was still not mature enough, even at his age, to overlook a rebuke, however justified. To tell her that she didn’t measure up to his ideal of true love, when he should have known it mattered to her at least a little. He could have held his tongue, but how often, he reflected, did he think to do that? He had been raised to be cruel in order to be kind. Trained to tell the unvarnished truth. As if people wanted to know the truth. He should have known better.

Then, without another word, she waited for him to bag his stuff, wearing an expression he couldn’t quite decipher that he sensed was mixed anger and regret. And fairly considered, it should have been, too. He had upset her life as much as his, without any prior consultation. And insulted her into the bargain. He deserved no better.

When he had finished, she took him to the departure room to wait for the shuttle. It was a long walk, longer than it had ever been before. The last one. He went quietly. They knew he could not refuse her, but they armed her anyway, later, to set the scene.

By that time, the vid of Rudy’s hopeless standoff was all over the nets on Earth and he had gone from failed detective to conquering sheriff (complete with killing) in one step. He was a hero!

He waited for the shuttle to take him up to the Rockship for Mars with his 18 kilograms of stuff. His clothes, a few old real books, some toiletries, and, strangely, his father’s tefillin, the Jewish ceremonial prayer boxes that he never used, were among them. He couldn’t leave them behind because they were freighted with history, that still stung with loss and yet seduced with pleasant memories. He brought Ben’s old yarmulke, burdened as well. And, not the least, the two scraps of canvas he had had imprinted with his favorites among Esther’s paintings. They were the sea eggs, and that hawkish self-portrait, along with the framee telescoping stretchers to hang them. Yes, those were personals always with him. The pics of his beloveds and all the rest of Esther’s stuff were on the cloud store accessed by his ever-present fon, but he couldn’t see them then. They had cut his COMM, although the op system still worked. It’s disorienting to group beings to be unconnected, and it unsettled him to look at the display panel. Its emptiness, a precipice of its own, made him feel dizzy and almost sick to his stomach.

Every person has that fon tat always. Like eyes and ears. His forearm felt bare without the flickering messages crawling across the panel. So rarely was this done that they probably didn’t realize that the COMM cut alone would have been enough to subdue him.

In the previous week, events had set the capstone on his losses. Marion had followed Ben and just earlier, Milton. He had alienated Gloria. That was his fault, he knew. And Fin, his last friend, was hunkering in his own dungeon. His was a leaving without parting, and it made him overwhelmingly sad. He already had lost his first family when he came to the Moon. That was his choice, as well. Now that he had lost a second, he was overwhelmed.

Behind him, on the wall, the displayscreen, a backward glance still showing the Moonscape in the black and white lowlight intensification of a lunar night. There were fused stone regolith pavers leading off into a regolith field fading into a regolith blackness weakly punctuated by led status beams. Its contrast, set against the aggressive jungle scene on the other wall, split the room and unsettled the senses to produce a residue of anxiety. This was independent of the unsettling events that were being imposed on him.

The Lunar backdrop set the mood. True, yet it told him that another scenario has been created. Because it was still day out there for almost another two weeks. They had a talented vid director on that job.

Gloria would follow her instructions. They watched. There was no point even thinking of causing trouble then. Even if he were minded to, there was no way to make any, restrained as he was.

He looked at the guys he had with him when they tried to arrest Rudy, again with their Plasers and KO collars. They were not there to deter violence. Just having taken part in a demonstration of the futility of resistance to weapons, he was unlikely to try to resist seven armed people. Was he going to fight them off and grab a surfacesuit to scoot off over some lunar hill? To where? They were there to dress the scene, just like the padlocks and chains.

They were banishing him from the austere world that was his home; from the people he loved, the place they had lived, and the things he loved to do. He would never see their new city Rubin built.

They had decided to let him live. Easy to kill him, and finish it, but maybe, they just decided that too many deaths close together would make them look overzealous. Of course, their killer was dead. There would be no embarrassing confessions from him. And Boris guessed his laughable efforts as investigator gave their actions a gloss of legality. It might be a bit awkward if the investigator died.

And too, when the LSA was making so much money, the UN might be thinking it would not be undesirable if they had an excuse to revoke their license. They could take it all for themselves because order was ‘breaking down’ under the Authority. He didn’t think the shareholders of the LSA, the largest companies on Earth, would want that. And maybe his name, all over the nets as the famous investigator, as a champion of public order, did lend him a little extra bit of insurance.

Anyway, he remained alive, even though his knowledge remained dangerous, and his mere existence, was exasperating to the lordly ones. He would not be free to reveal it where he was going. Lucky for him too, it was not exclusive knowledge. Zainab knew, and they couldn’t do without her. And Fin, and Gloria. A lot of useful people to kill. Inconvenient.

So maybe it’s just that there is no more immediate benefit from violence. They had what they wanted. He wouldn’t be able to talk, and Zainab wouldn’t want to. And the others, well, they were tied to him. Moreover, their Boris problem would be simultaneously displaced about twenty-two light minutes from earth, isolated in a separate, cached networld, and under surveillance. Much different than 1.5 seconds and almost immediate access to the nets. He wouldn’t be able to make more trouble.

And he was going willingly because he had come to comprehend his sin. He had been careless with at least one life and he was just lucky that the others he put at risk were still alive. He had known that serious and ruthless people were at work. Unintended consequences certainly, but not unforeseeable.

He knew that people would eventually discover the truth about him. And he was enough of a coward not to be eager to be there when they did. He was content to be bundled away. He had lost a lot less than some others. Yet he couldn't see how he could have acted much different. He couldn’t have just ignored Cyra, denying her ghost even the poor reckoning he could offer. And he couldn’t have done anything effective without the skills of his friends.

Even so, he wished that he could have found a way to use them without risking them. Unhappily, he had felt the power. At his age and experience, dangerously naïve. He should probably have husbanded his friends - events had warned him from the beginning that there was danger. It was weakness, the more seductive because he thought it was strength. He was the one who created the provocation to kill Marion.

It all kept playing in his head, sweeping through the previous week over and over. Scene after scene he could not stop. Like an excruciating vid that can’t be turned off, repeating continuously, ending in death and destruction.

By some strange mental process, he remembered every detail, rare for him. It is like it was happening again, each time it played. Considering the events, it was an unpleasant experience. Even his random thoughts, in all their aberrant irrelevance, returned in lockstep with the searing trials of the week.

Those last days had wrung him out. His mind was still disordered. So much had happened. He was just so tired; all he wanted to do was rest. He couldn’t, though. His mind wouldn’t stop. So right then, it was OK to remain inert, and let others decide what to do with his life while that story pounded through his head.

2: The Rockship

Wednesday Nov 10, 2117

––––––––

He had woken up, just one week and a day previous, and he had gone to breakfast and work as usual. Not a care in his world. After his shift, he went over to the shuttle room to wait for the new people to come in – a favorite pastime of his, and a defensible function of his part time job as legal officer.

Of course, they didn’t have docks there. They were just not big enough to justify a spaceport or a terminal. They did have a spare and utilitarian reception room on the ground level next to the shuttle landing pad. It had a wall-size displayscreen fed by images from one of the low powered orbital scopes that follow the inbound and outbound ships. They gave an astounding view. But you can see that from anywhere, even over the nets on Earth, if you want.

What you can’t see is the poverty of wider experience that makes the novelty inherent in an arrival area into air for the soul. Living in a big tin can as they do, seeing the same people in the same rooms (no matter how expansive and luxurious) for years on end, primes a person for new faces. And so, the arrival of a ship with new people is important. To some, anyway.

Looking around, he could see that most people had resisted the impulse to gawk because there were only a few waiting, and from the expectant looks on their faces, those few others were there with a specific purpose, either to meet one of the two passengers coming off, or to receive some eagerly awaited freight that was shortly to be downloaded.

There are usually a few, though, who sidle into reception to eyeball the scene when the Rockships come or go. They sit, trying to look only casually interested, splayed at random on one of the black metal tube seats. Sitting outlined against the harsh scenes on the displayscreens behind them like abandoned children waiting disconsolate in unlikely places for parents who may never come. The chairs were arranged in two rows in illogical overabundance. When would twenty-four people come to watch cargo come in with the very occasional immigrant? There are, however, a few, those inclined to gossip and curiosity, who do come to watch. Not that day. Maybe because it was mostly cargo considering that they were in a consolidation phase with colonists. Not everyone was so relentlessly curious as that man Boris.

Nonetheless, there are usually a few people arriving; replacements, and even temporary research assignments. It poses a physically challenging placement with partial gravity and no Crispr enhancement for temps. They are people who come and leave along with the freight. Also, occasionally, a few celebrity tourists. They are objects of curiosity in a small community.

The Rockships they travel in are like no spaceships that have preceded them. No chemical burners, they use the elements of nature to make their way, and the power of the sun to expel those elements at a speed that has enabled safe and reliable transportation between planets. That power is no less propulsive, but it is more predictably controllable. You can even buy a flight insurance policy on the trip if you want to – mostly a publicity stunt, of course. A stunt, though, supported by some insurance companies somewhere as practical merchandise that won’t bankrupt them. No one has ever before been able to buy one of those for the explosive firecrackers chemical rockets are.

No need to go on to describe it and its functions in detail, because if you are at all interested, you have already looked it up, and if you haven’t, well, you aren’t.

For those who aren’t, the critical point is that, because of the power of the plasma engines they use, the Rockships can afford haul the mass to protect their occupants from solar wind and cosmic rays with effectively thick shielding of the special polyconcrete that gives them their name. They can still accelerate close to the one gee that approximates normal gravity, even though they rarely do. People can get to the Moon in ten hours (even faster if they want, but they don’t need to rush). They can get to Mars in ten days in reasonable comfort, anytime, notwithstanding min and max distances between the two planets, making scheduled interplanetary travel practical for the first time. Of course, on the way back, they start slower for the comfort of passengers who might be returning from low gee. It’s tough to cope with full gravity after being in partial gravity for a while. And way easier to adapt to the gravity change in measured steps.

The Rockship needs to accelerate to the midpoint of its journey and then flip to decelerate for the last half of the trip. The ship’s length (just about a kilometer) protects its passengers from the intense local radiation the reactor generates. It’s slow rotation, though, to present the other end and yet avoid tearing itself apart. This despite the great strength of its pure lunar-refined iron frame (– one of the Moon’s most valuable products). The passengers are supposed to secure themselves during the flip. Yet five hours, while unpleasant, does not present the immobilizing health risk that prolonged weightlessness has been proven to be. The Rockship is not why we are in space, but it is the reason that we were able to get so many people there healthy and in one piece.

So, Boris was watching for the ship to come in. This time he had arrived early and watched the landing from the shuttle that comes in using eye-defying magnetism to slow down – no rockets needed. The way they decelerate without pyrotechnics seems magical.

The shuttle landed and he saw two people get off and come in through the access tube under the radiation hood that shields the access hatch. Coming in through that shielded tunnel is like a rebirth to many people who come to the moon. The beginning a new life for many new arrivals. But it was obviously not that to the pair who appeared. They cycled through the air lock (even though the access tube was pressurized – it’s hard vacuum out there), and after they stripped their transit suits you could see they were a man and a fem, both agitated. The guy was dressed in company exec uniform, gray with the twin ellipse, and the fem was in science garb, blue with the ellipse. No celeb richies that trip (they often come to see the sights – and there are sights, at eye-popping cost for the private market).

When she had shucked the suit, you could she was tall, with pale porcelain skin, tightly stretched over prominent cheekbones, substantial, like all colonists are (Crispr tweaking for micrograv tolerance, disease resistance, etc. etc. etc.) but as close to slim as a powerful, muscular, body could be. She moved a bit awkwardly as if she were not quite used to her new physique; not quite sure how much room it needed to move or how to get it there. Her skull was reddened with recent shaving (for hygiene), and she unconsciously ran her hand over it as soon as she got out of her suit. Her kind of beauty was persisting into maturity. She looked much like she had always, and remained a striking fem. But there was a problem with that too. She had no look of pride in it. Her bearing was defensive, and her gaze was averted, off-center.

She was also frowning as she talked to the man, a Filipino, around thirty, extraordinarily handsome, his strong wide face formed in solid regular features matched by a short, square, stocky body. Prominent black eyebrows hooded watchful black eyes. He had an athlete’s body, blessed with extraordinary physical gifts – balanced, competent, and capable. His shaven skull was smooth and regular.

The reaction of the young man was striking. In mid phrase from the fem, he just turned away, shutting her off, not responding at all to her conversation, walking away after having twisted off the helmet of his transfer suit in one fluid motion – a difficult feat even for a spacer used to it by long years of practice.

She had followed him and had walked over to the suit rack where he had headed, and she had removed and stored her helmet, then stripped her suit. She was in her grey undersuit, walking away from the rack.