Chee paused to let that sink in.

"One question," I said. "If the red smoke knew the handshake would kill Fewkes, why didn't the smoke do something? Even if it had just shouted 'Stop!' before the strider made skin contact…"

"The high echelons of the League prefer not to interfere with the actions of lower species," Chee replied. "They say it has something to do with free will."

"Or," Yarrun murmured, "giving us enough rope to hang ourselves."

The Admiral Volunteers

"So," Chee started again, "we were talking about Melaquin… and I was saying the High Council has to tread carefully. They can order us to explore a planet where there's only a slim chance of survival, but they can't send us on a total suicide mission. That's why they use Melaquin so often: they've found they can get away with it. And they can't get away with ordering a ship to refuse aid to the injured. That's a blatant non-sentient act. The League would never let another Outward Fleet ship into interstellar space."

There was a long silence. I thought about Chee's suggestion: deliberately getting hurt as an excuse to abort the Landing. It would have to be a real injury; faking or lying was dereliction of duty and we'd all be exiled back to Melaquin. But a genuine life-threatening wound was reasonable cause to cut short a mission… as was the death of a party member, for that matter. Whether or not Yarrun and I could save Chee's life was immaterial.

I turned to Chee. "Are you really volunteering to take the risk? It's much greater than you may realize. Infection, for instance. Any wound exposed to alien microbes…"

"Nice of you to care," Chee replied, "but I have nothing to lose. If we stay too long on Melaquin, we'll end up dead like the others. Even if we're just stranded no-comm, I can't survive long without YouthBoost — in case you were wondering, I'm fucking ancient. On the other hand, if I take a wound three minutes after we land, there's a chance we'll get back to the ship and I'll pull through. I'd get a kick out of that… not just living but thumbing my nose at the High Council. Think of the looks on their faces when I come back from Melaquin again. I'd give 'em a raspberry so loud it'd be heard on every ship of the Fleet. Do you want to spoil an old man's fun?"

I looked at Yarrun. He murmured, "It would be more fair if we drew lots for who takes the risk."

"I'm an admiral," Chee told him. "I don't have to be fair. Besides, if someone gets chomped, it's better to have two competent Explorers taking care of the victim than one competent Explorer and one senile old beanbag. Right?"

Chee looked to Yarrun for agreement. Yarrun shrugged and looked at me — he chose the most annoying times to defer to my rank. "All right, then," I sighed, "we'll pick a Landing site where we can expect to find large predators. Anything else?"

"I'll wear a tightsuit without the helmet," Chee said. "I may as well test the atmosphere and bacteria while I'm at it."

"Without a helmet, the rest of the suit is useless," I snapped. "We might as well send you down naked."

"You wish," Chee smirked. "But I'm going to wear a suit anyway, because I deserve it. I'm an Explorer now, aren't I?"

"I suppose so…"

"Right," he said, raising his mug. "Here's to being an ECM." He waited for us to raise our mugs too, then drained off the dregs of his chocolate in one loud slurp. In almost the same motion, he hurled the mug sideways into the galley wall. The mug shattered, scattering ceramic shards in all directions.

Chee turned back to us with a satisfied smile. "Now that's what 'expendable' means."

Alarm

I woke to the sound of applause and distant shouts of "Brava! Bravissima!" The less restrained members of the audience let loose a flurry of sharp whistles. The cheering went on and on, louder and louder, until I kicked away the sheets and stomped to my computer terminal to enter the de-ac code.

It has long been known that if your alarm clock makes the same buzz or ring every morning, you learn to sleep through it. For this reason, all wake-up systems in the Outward Fleet produced a different noise each day.

In the preceding week, I had wakened to the hum of a million bees, the drone of bagpipes, the love songs of whales, the demolition of an office tower, the screams of earthquake victims, and the national anthem of some obscure Fringe World nation as performed by a 200-voice chorus of five-year-olds. Even worse, they all started at low volume and gradually increased, so that you might sleep through as much as a minute before truly gaining consciousness.

It made for the damnedest dreams.

Dripping

I had just shoved myself into the shower when the message buzzer hummed. For a few moments, I pretended I couldn't hear it, but the buzz increased in volume. One day in my second year on the Jacaranda, I had plugged my ears and hoped the buzzer would burn out its damned speaker; but before that happened, the strength of the sound vibrations broke one of my eggs, a fragile filigreed shell from Tahawni. I had to stop the buzzer back then, and I had to stop the buzzer now. Cursing, I dripped my way out of the shower, wrapped a towel around the parts most likely to get goose pimples, and stomped off to answer the call.

Harque's smirking face appeared on the screen. "Good morning, Explorer. I hope I didn't disturb you."

There was no way he could miss that my hair was streaming wet and I was only wearing a towel, but Harque was Harque. "What is it?" I asked.

"Five minutes to Melaquin orbit," he announced. "Any special instructions as we go in?"

"I have a special instruction for you, Harque, but I don't think it's physically possible."

"Goodness, Explorer! Need I remind you that deliberate rudeness is Conduct Unbecoming an Officer. Especially when I'm merely doing my duty. I don't suppose this Landing has you frightened, has it?"

"One more word, Harque, and here's what I'll do. I'll show the admiral one of my pretty little eggs, and I'll tell him he can have that pretty little egg if he immediately transfers you to the Explorer Corps. I think he'll do it, Harque, and then you'll get to visit Melaquin with the rest of us."

The screen went blank and I laughed aloud. Vacuum personnel were so susceptible to cheap theatrics.

Leave-Taking

I spent too long drying my hair and trying to get it to fluff properly. It should have been cut weeks ago, but I refused to have it done on ship — the Jacaranda barber felt she had the right to comment on my appearance and make suggestions to improve it. ("All it would take is the right kind of makeup, not really heavy, just some pancake, and we could soften that color a lot. What if you wore your hair over to the side like this? Well really, Festina, I'm just trying to help. If you'd just make an effort, you could hide it so scarcely anyone would notice.")

Rushing, rushing, and I was nearly out the door when it occurred to me I might not see this room again. The thought chilled me. My collection. Two thousand, three hundred and sixty-four eggs, catalogued, mounted, polished.

And if I died? Perhaps the captain would let the crew traipse through my quarters and take whatever appealed to them, manhandling my treasures, breaking them, laughing at me for collecting useless dead things.

Or perhaps Harque would come with a garbage hopper and throw in all my eggs, smash, smash, smash, and they would be jettisoned into space, shot out through the Sperm tail like trash and Explorers.

No.

No.

Surprising what can give you the will to live.