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We ignored the protesters shouting slogans outside the gates. Back in those days a lot of kooky people were convinced that every star traveler was going to bring back some weird virus that would wipe out life as we know it. Well, that was fifty years ago and it hasn’t happened yet.

Gregor Fonatelles: My Life in the Big Nothing

Gogbok 2364.EN.56789

“All hands on deck! All hands on deck!”

That urgent call failed to disturb the syncopated rhythm of two persons breathing in a darkened cabin.

“We’ve been screwed, dammit!”

Certainly somebody had been. Seth was heavily entangled in soft, smooth arms and legs, two of each, in a soft, warm bed. Whoever it was smelled nice, was alive, gently breathing. Do it again soon, not yet… He sank back into sweet nirvana.

“Captain, hear this!”

“Captain here,” Jordan muttered in Seth’s ear, her voice still thick with sleep.

“Jordan, there’s a freaking flag on the planet!”

That was the voice of First Officer Hanna Finn, who had the watch. Who was so virginally prim that she never, ever used words like “dammit” or “screwed.” Was unheard-of. Seth forced open one eye: the wall display showed 401:01:14.

Made sense.

On Day 400 there had been a party, which explained why someone was kicking his head with hob nail boots. A fantastic, riotous, bacchanalian celebration of triumph, victory, sugarplum riches in sight at last. All the work and tedium, tension and danger had been forgotten as the Holy Grail of success shone there in the darkness. ISLA’s General Regulations prohibited alcohol aboard starships, a law impossible to enforce when synthesizers could convert plant and animal waste into gourmet food. So the party had been memorable, but when it began to grow quirky, Seth had scooped the captain up and carried her off over his shoulder to the cabin they currently shared.

That same Jordan was now making protesting noises and punching him in the ribs. Seemed he had been sleeping more on top of than with. He parted stickily from her and rolled off. From what he remembered, it had been a rollick to die for, which is what his headache now made seem both likely and devoutly to be wished.

“I’m coming.” Jordan threw aside the cover; lights came on; she grabbed her clothes from the chair.

They couldn’t have slept more than thirty minutes and Seth was due to relieve Hanna in less than an hour. Whatever could be exciting First so? He slid hairy legs over the edge of the bed and reached down for the shorts and top he had dropped while in too much of a lusting frenzy to think tidy. He went reeling at Jordan’s heels as she sped along the corridor into the control room.

The control room was the second largest space in Golden Hind’s living quarters but fourteen months ago he had considered it poky. His appreciation of size had changed since then. Its walls, ceiling, and even padded floor, could be made to display the surrounding starscape of the galaxy, or scenes such as a boat trip along the Amazon or the hubbub of a Chinese dancing team at a country fair. They were mercifully blank beige now. Hanna sat alone in her place at the long table. Jordan slid into hers at the head, and Seth hurried around to his, at the far end.

Woe betide anyone who dared sit in the wrong chair. As Commodore JC Lecanard never tired of pointing out, rank was important when six people were confined for a long time in cramped quarters; it produced a necessary minimum of formality and respect, he said. Top dogs thought like that. Seth was bottom dog, even if he was the captain’s current bed partner He called her “ma’am” when they had their clothes on and rarely needed to talk at all when they didn’t.

Hanna looked as if her headache was even more fatal than his. Her long auburnhair, normally a glory, was now a tangled fishing net, her emerald eyes floated in seas of blood. Poor Hanna was so repressed that this might well be her first-ever hangover. Prudish or not, she had proved to be a superb navigator and first officer.

She said, “Look at that awful thing.” She meant a 3-D projection of the local Cacafuego planetary system that was currently floating above the table.