“Vega One is in your hands, Vyr.” Gare Jolen pressed a blue button and the door sealed behind him with a hydraulic hiss. He quickly strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and began the takeoff checklist.
“Preflight check has been completed, sir,” the First Officer said.
“Thank you, Poular,” Gare said and continued with the check. “No slight against you, but I’m piloting her today and the preflight checklist is all mine.” A large grin showed his white teeth.
Since becoming captain seven years ago he had been able to pilot the shuttle pod only twelve times. He loved being captain of the Vega-One, but wished he could fly his own shuttle pod more often. He had to command Vyr to remain on board and his Security Officer did not hide his displeasure. Not that Gare had ever seen his Teggan friend suppress an emotion in the fifteen years he had known him.
The First Officer turned and winked at the other passengers. “Hold tight,” Poular joked just before Gare lifted the shuttle pod from the docking clamps.
“That’s one bleak looking planet,” Harpe said as he gazed out the pod window.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that doesn’t have a name? In the ASP star-system map, it’s just called P9-263A. Every planet should have a name.” Bazat twitched her nose. “Maybe it’s because it smells funny.”
“You’re inside a hermetically sealed shuttle pod, Bazat. The seal is tight enough to keep out the vacuum of space. You can’t smell the planet.” Harpe shook his head at her statement.
“You may not be able to smell the planet, with that virtually useless Legian nose of yours. But my Kodorian nose can smell the planet. And I’m telling you, it smells funny. Stale. Moldy.” Bazat sneezed. “Musty.”
Gare settled the shuttle pod near the foothills of a long mountain range.
“The planet’s air is suitable but the gravity will be a little heavier than you’re used to. Make sure you take frequent breaks when you’re walking.” Poular looked up into the cloudless sky. “Especially in this sun’s heat,” she added. Poular checked Harpe’s and Bazat’s packs for food, water, medical supplies and functioning communications gear before she handed them over.
Gare set two large urns on the dry soil. “Harpe, how far are you going to have to drill to get to the Plenium?”
“Not far at all, Cap. Plenium is practically drifting in the topsoil,” he said with glee, rubbing his hands together.
He set up the automatic Plenium extractor and switched it on. He studied the display panel. “This is some rich Plenium. Our hyperdrive will be happy, once it gets a taste of this batch.”
“We’ll be back here in six hours to pick you up,” Poular shouted from the hatch before closing it.
“Don’t be late,” Harpe replied and slapped the side of the pod with his hand. A fine layer of dust billowed upwards. Harpe sneezed. “You’re right, Bazat. This planet smells funny.”
Gare settled the shuttle half a mile from what appeared to be a decades-old crash site. He handed a pack to Poular. “We’ll pick you up in five and a half hours.”
“See you then.” She slapped the side of the pod with her hand.
Gare and Revva flew to the other side of the planet. The map system said the planet was uninhabited and they had found no life signs, but from orbit the ship had detected a small heat signature and they decided to check it out. The map system had been known to be wrong before.
“Looks like an encampment,” Revva said as they walked closer. The building looked like it once had four walls but the front and left walls were missing, replaced with hanging tarps that billowed in the dust-filled wind. The remaining two walls were rusty but well secured both to each other and to the square mobile foundation.
Gare checked the sensors. “No life signs. It’s the source of the heat signature, but it looks abandoned.”
Revva ducked inside and pushed past the tarp with his gloved hand. He spied a pot of stew simmering over a fire. Water boiled in another pot near it. A makeshift bowl sat on a shelf attached to the rusted wall. “Guess again,” he said. He peered deeply into the dark corners, looking for the home’s host.
“Do you hear that?” Gare asked, resting his hand on his weapon.
Gare and Revva ducked out of the makeshift building and turned right, walking behind the structure. Gare heard a rhythmic pounding, followed by a rattle. Then the rhythmic noise again for four beats, followed by another rattle. Gare looked at Revva. Revva shrugged and Gare pulled his weapon out of its holster.
They walked south, toward a rock wall. The sound stopped. Gare poked his head around the wall. Behind the natural wall was a rectangular box canyon; three high walls with the only opening where he now stood. There was a ball in the middle of the rectangle. The canyon ground looked unnaturally flat, its dirt packed hard. Gare saw no one as he walked to the center of the yard.
Gare holstered his weapon and picked up the ball. He bounced it once, testing it. “Not bad.” He dribbled toward a makeshift hoop anchored into the far wall and took a shot. The ball went through the hoop, which rattled.
“I guess that explains the sounds we were hearing,” Revva said.
Revva spoke with most of his body still hidden behind the wall. He carried no weapon but as a Beppar he needed none. His teeth were as sharp as any sword and his four arms acted as a vice strong enough to crush any biped’s spine. His jaw held pockets of poison which he could pool in the hollow of his tongue and eject outwards over fifty feet. His body was covered by a leathery skin six inches thick which acted like a hard shell. He had ten fingers on each of his four hands and each hand held two fingers tipped with claws strong enough to slice through most metals. He wore a choke collar around his neck, though there was no chain through the control loop. Instead, a circle separated by a squiggly line hung from a thin gold chain, displaying his allegiance to The Spirit Order.
“The ball’s a little soft, but the court’s nice. Level. Firm.” Gare took another shot. He appeared nonchalant but his eyes scanned the box canyon, looking for the cook and basketball court maker.
Revva entered the box canyon cautiously, also looking around for whoever made the noise before Gare started making it. He stopped in mid-stride when he saw the head of a woman peeking out from a crevice in the wall. Revva watched her. She had glanced at Revva once, but her attention was quickly drawn back to Gare who was bouncing the ball.
“I wonder who made the court?” Gare asked, turning toward Revva.
“Her?” He nodded his head to where the woman stood.
The woman stepped out from the crevice and casually leaned against the wall. She stared at Gare for a moment, squeezed her eyes tightly and then re-opened them. She shook her head roughly from left to right as if to clear it. A cloud of dust billowed from her long, tangled hair.
The crevice she came out of was angled perfectly to remain hidden from where ever any one else stood upon the court. Gare knew it wasn’t a natural formation. Someone had designed it. Someone who wanted to hide very effectively. Gare wondered if she was that someone.
Gare bounced the ball to her. “Play a game?” he asked.
Gare wasn't sure what species he was looking at. She was a biped, two arms, one head, but that didn't tell him much. She was a thin, almost emaciated woman. Tattered rags billowed away from her body in the strong wind. It was hard to tell the color of her skin beneath the layers of dust that covered her. She carried a knife at her side but her hand didn’t flinch toward it.
The woman caught the ball easily. She held it in front of her for a moment, her eyes wide with shock.
“So it’s come to this, has it?” she said.
She stood considering the situation for a moment and then smiled an impish smile.
“Cool!” She shrugged and stepped onto the makeshift court.
She turned to Revva. “Joining us?”
Revva settled onto a rock. “I’ll just watch for a while, thank you.”
The woman stopped and looked at him quizzi
cally.
“Why would you be here if you’re not going to play?” she asked.
Revva cocked his head to the left. “Gare once told me that this was a spectator sport.”
The woman shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She dribbled the ball around Gare and put it through the hoop. They returned to the dark line on the ground at center court. She bounced the ball to the new player.
“My name is Gare. What should I call you?” he asked and bounced the ball back to her.
She shot and it went through the hoop with a swish.
“Like you don’t know,” she responded. “You know everything I know.”
Gare caught the ball and shrugged his shoulders at Revva. Gare stood in front of the dark line on the ground and bounced the ball to her.
The woman darted out and around Gare. Gare went left and came up in front of her below the hoop. The woman ran right into him, as if thinking she could run through him. Her body collided heavily with Gare’s. She bounced off and fell backwards onto the hard-packed dirt. She rolled over and leapt into a crouch, her body balanced lightly on the balls of her feet. The ball skidded across the court and settled into a hollow near the wall.
“Sorry,” Gare said and reached out to help her to her feet.
The woman scuttled away in fear. She whipped out her knife and held it in front of her. Her eyes flitted wildly around the court.
“You’ve never done that before,” she whispered.
She thrust the knife in Gare’s direction. He retreated.
“It’s OK,” Gare said. “I won’t hurt you.” He held his hands out in front of him to show her he wasn’t holding a weapon and that he meant his words.
Revva walked toward them and motioned for Gare to move back. The woman looked quizzically at her bleeding forearm, keeping one eye on the strangers. She flicked a piece of rock out of her arm with the knife tip and then pressed her arm tightly to her pant’s leg to stem the bleeding.
“Let us help you,” Revva offered. He walked slowly toward her with his hands in front of him. He kept his sharp claws tucked under their protective fold of skin.
The woman’s eyes twitched from Revva to Gare and back again.
“I got it,” she said, standing up. She walked toward Revva, holding the knife at his throat level. With her wounded hand she reached out and squeezed his left forearm. She grunted, shook her head and walked away from them, toward the encampment.
“What was that about?” Gare asked Revva. They followed her inside.
The woman dipped a piece of cloth into the boiling water. She removed it with the tip of her knife and waved it through the air to cool. She took the still-steaming cloth and wrapped it securely around her forearm, gritting her teeth against the heat and the pain of her raw wound. She saw Gare and Revva in the doorway. “Oh, please. Do come in.” Her voice was polite, almost mocking.
“You’ll have to excuse the sparse accommodations, but I’m transferring everything to the new location. But then you already know that, don’t you,” she stated without asking. She sat on the floor and motioned for them to follow.
Gare looked quizzically at Revva. “I’m Captain Gare Jolen, of the Association of Planetary Systems starship Vega-One. And this is Revva.” Gare and Revva sat down across the fire from the woman. “And you are?”
The woman looked up at him with sarcasm on her face. “You can stop pretending you don’t know who I am. I understand why you want to do it. You hope it will keep me occupied, but it’s just irritating.”
Gare looked at Revva who nodded. “Actually, we don’t know. We just entered this solar system two days ago,” Gare explained.
“If that’s the game you want to play….” She sighed. “You may call me Milial.” She scooped some stew into a bowl. She poured the boiling water into a cup over a thin cloth with herbs inside. “I’d offer you some, but I only have one bowl and cup.” She held it up as evidence.
She held her palm to her mouth and a thin piece of silver slithered out between her lips and straightened into a needle. She set it on her knee and began to eat.
“Do you eat?” she asked.
Gare smiled. “As often as I can.”
“I wonder….if I gave you some of this, I wonder if I would find it buried in the latrine tomorrow. Or maybe behind the court.” She shook her head.
Gare sniffed the stew. “It smells pretty good. I don’t think I’d bury it.”
The woman chuckled. “I know you wouldn’t,” she explained. “But I would, to cover up the fact that you’re not really here.”
“Ah, I’m not following you,” Gare told her.
“I believe I can help,” Revva interrupted. He leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “We are real. We are not your imagination.”
“Ah huh,” the woman nodded, unconvinced.
Revva reached over and pulled the bowl from between her fingers. “Could your imagination do this?” he asked.
“Yes.” The woman nodded and retrieved her bowl. “You used to just talk and flit about from place to place, just to drive me crazy. But I have to say I like this change, you having a solid form. It has a lot of potential.”
“And would your imagination conjure up someone like me?” Revva asked, holding his hands out. Beppars were from a remote corner of the galaxy and most of the other species wished they had remained there. Revva was an excellent example of an average Beppar. He was five feet tall, had four arms, the top two short and nimble, the bottom two thick and strong. He kept his tail safely under his cloak but his clawed toes stuck out from the cloak’s edge.
“I saw a vid of your kind once. You’re called the…Beggars….Bemmars…”
“I am a Beppar,” Revva supplied.
She moved her face closer to Revva’s. “You have Yankel’s eyes.” She turned to look at Gare. “And you have my husband’s hair.” She reached over and ran her dirty fingers through Gare’s hair. She pulled her hand back and closed her eyes. “Hmm. I haven’t felt that in a long time,” she whispered. A melancholy smile appeared on her face. “This is a really good change.”
She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and nodded. “Yep. Figments of my imagination. You’ve never been able to return the ball before but it’s nice that you can now. That’s very nice. Now we’ll be able to play some real games, rather than you just goading me while I shoot.”
“You’ve imagined people before?” Gare asked. “Can the other people of your village see your imaginary friends?”
The woman scoffed. “Now you’re just pissing me off.” Her voice was low and hissed in warning.
Gare looked around the room. He saw one bed roll, one cup, one bowl. He saw only one daypack, one pair of shoes. He turned to the woman.
“There are no other villagers, are there?” he asked.
The woman finished eating. She placed the silver needle back in her mouth, in between her jawbone and cheek.
“I’ll clean the bowl and then you can eat, if you want.” Her voice sounded like she was testing them, to see how far her sense of reality had really fled.
“You are alone here.” Revva stated softly.
Milial returned and filled the bowl. She handed it to Gare. “Go ahead. Let’s see if you can eat,” she challenged him.
Gare looked at Revva, who nodded his support. Gare took a bite.
“This is good!” he said, surprised.
“How long have you been here?” Revva asked gently.
Milial looked at scratches in the metal ceiling. “Nine years,” she began. She looked at one wall and then the other, reading scratches in the metal. “Eleven months, and six days. Common Time.”
“You’ve been alone on this planet for almost ten years?” Gare exclaimed.
“Maybe I should ask you instead. What’s the date in Common Time?” Her smile told Gare she was once again testing them.
He told her the date.
Her face fell. She set her tea cup on the floor with trembling han
ds. “You are evil figments of my imagination to try and play such a vile trick on me.” She glared at Gare. “You know I think I’m losing it, that I may have lost it a long time ago, and now you’re trying to mess with me even more? I try very hard to mark one notch a day, and only one.” She shook her head.
“I should have only counted the seasons, but I never thought I would be here seasons and years instead of just days or weeks.”
She rubbed her hands across her face. Her face came out refreshed, calm.
“I can play your game.” She raised her chin. “Fifteen years, then, by your calculations.”
“You’ve been alone on this planet for fifteen years?” Gare exclaimed with even more surprise.
The woman looked at her hands twisting in her lap, seemingly of their own volition. She looked up with a small smile. “I haven’t been alone. I’ve had my friends like you.”
Her face turned to stone.
And my enemies.”
“Was it your ship that crashed to the west?” Gare asked. Poular was investigating the area as he spoke.
“It was the ship of my people.” She gazed to the west and her eyes shifted, focusing momentarily more on memory than on sight.
From orbit Gare had seen a crude layout of SOS, or at least the beginning of it. The first S and O were complete, but the last letter was only half-done. This encampment sat on the spot of fourth point in the partial S letter, which had led Gare and Revva here.
“You built the SOS?”
The woman laughed. “My latest attempt. It gets destroyed every now and then.”
Gare looked at Revva. The woman had clearly lost her mind from isolation. Could she be destroying the SOS as soon as she builds it and not realize it?
From orbit they had also seen a series of graves, positioned in the formation of a ten-plane squad. There were nine graves with one spot left blank. “And the graves. They were your protection squad?”
“Yes.” She nodded her head slowly. Her face turned sad. “None of their ships made it to the surface intact. Mine didn’t either, exactly, but somehow….” she trailed off.
“You were in an escort plane?” Gare asked.
“I was a fighter pilot. We weren’t so much escorting the passenger ship as protecting it.” She rested her chin on her hands. “And we failed.” She closed her eyes. “They all died. Every one of them died.” She sighed deeply.
“Captain Jolen, this is Poular. Come in.” Gare’s radio crackled to life.
Milial jumped but then smiled. “Oh, more friends. I guess my imagination is expanding.”
“Jolen here. What is it Poular?”
“Everything all right? You were supposed to pick me up ten minutes ago.”
Jolen looked at this watch. “Hold,” he spoke into the radio. He turned and motioned for Revva to join him outside.
“Please excuse us for just a moment.” Revva spoke to her gently, as if speaking to a child.
“We can’t just leave her like this,” Gare told the Beppar. "She's alone on the planet, half out of her mind. The planet has no visible signs of food, water. I don't know how she has survived this long, but now that we know she's here, we have to take her with us. We'll drop her off at the first station we find." He ran fingers across his face to brush off the layer of dust that had already accumulated there. "We can't leave her here."
“I agree. But we also can’t force her to come with us,” the priest reminded him.
“Do you feel safe with her?”
"I feel safe anywhere.” His smile, with its four rows of sharp, jagged teeth, reminded his old friend that while the Captain was seven feet tall, Revva was a Beppar. “But especially with her. I don’t think she’ll try to hurt her new company.”
“I’ll go pick up the crew and return for you within the hour. Your job is to convince her to come with us. We are not leaving her alone here.”
“You’ll want to hurry back,” Milial said from the doorway. “The fog will start to form in a half an hour and within an hour you won’t be able to fly. I wouldn’t want my new friends to crash. Not like my old friends.”
She turned and stared at the rusted doorjamb.
“Oh, that would be nasty for my imagination to conjure up such wonderful new playthings only to make me relive them crashing over and over again.”
She raked her fingers across her face, contemplating the new horror.
“I think our shuttle pod can make it through a little fog,” Gare commented on his way to his shuttle.
“If only it were a little fog,” Milial replied, mostly to Revva. “It’s thick enough to coat your shuttle with a honey-like substance that causes the gravitational force to square every ten minutes until you are pinned where you lay. You are unable to move until the fog lifts with the morning sun.”
Revva looked at the blinding sun settling against the southern mountains.
“This isn’t a very hospitable planet, is it?” he asked.
Milial ducked inside and added another black rock to her fire. It sparked, flared green and then settled into an orange glow. “You’ll get used to it.”
She took another sip of tea. “Except for the nights. If I could change one thing and only one thing, I know which one I would choose.”
She settled her back against one wall.
“The winters are hot with no rain and a wicked wind that can move boulders. The summers are even hotter but no wind, not even a breeze. In all my time here, I've seen neither animal nor bird. Insects? Every planet has insects, but not this planet. There are no trees, no bushes, no flowers. No water springs forth from the ground. I have learned to live with all of that.”
She tipped her head upwards.
“But I would give anything, anything I tell you, for just one minute to look at the stars again.” Her shoulders drooped. “That blasted fog settles over the land every night. Summer, winter, it makes no difference. Every night for almost ten years. Ah, fifteen,” she corrected herself.
She lowered her head to look at Revva. “You have to understand. I spent my life on a space station. I spent my life rotating, surrounded by stars. I could look at the stars night and day. And then we were forced to this planet. This planet where the fog hides the stars from me.”
She spat into the fire and it sizzled.
“No matter where I go, how high I climb, the stars are kept from my eyes.”
She squeezed the end of her cloak in her fingers.
“You are a priest, no?”
Revva nodded.
“To keep the stars from my eyes is to keep your god from you. It is the stars which feed my very soul. And my soul hasn’t been fed for ten...fifteen years. That is the one thing I would change, if I could. I’ll take everything else, even the visits from my enemies, but I just want to see the stars again before I die.”
“Come with us and we’ll take you to the stars,” Revva offered. “You’ve seen our shuttle. We have another ship in orbit. A large ship. You’ll be free of this planet which has held you prisoner. Your eyes will feast on more stars than your imagination can conjure.”
Milial shook her head. “The other one I wasn't sure about, but I thought you were from the good part of my imagination. Now I see you are here to taunt me too. You offer me things that you know I cannot have. You are evil to play with me so.”
Revva took her hand in his. “I am a priest of The Spirit Order. We speak only the truth. Always the truth. And I tell you that I am real and you can once again see your stars.”
She pulled her hand from his warm grasp. “I dare not believe you. It will take too much out of me. Hope? After all these years?” She snorted. “Better to die without seeing the stars again then to let hope resurface inside my heart.”
Revva reach inside his robe. “Have you ever seen the Tiger Eye from a planet called Suurie?”
She shook her head.
He pulled out a round orb and placed it in her palm.
“Do you think your imaginatio
n can conjure up something that you’ve never seen before?”
“How can I be certain?” She rolled the polished stone around in her palm. “If I have never seen a Tiger’s Eye, how can I know if this really is one? I could have the tawny color wrong and its warmth and the heavy weight. I could have all of it wrong and I would never know, now would I?”
“Even if I tell you that this is a Tiger’s Eye?”
“When I fall asleep and dream, I go to places I’ve never visited before. I go to planets which have blue suns and green sand. I taste berries that make my mouth water. I even name them, like Bilioxoberries. But I’ve never eaten a Bilioxoberry anywhere but in my dreams. They don’t really exist, at least that I know of. And the only way that I really know that I’m dreaming is that eventually I wake up.”
Milial pressed the warm stone against her cheek.
“I might wake up any moment now and all of this would just melt away. This stone. You. Your friends. Your offer of seeing the stars.”
“But that’s not what you’re afraid of,” Revva predicted, watching her twitching eyes.
Milial shook her head.
“No, I’m afraid I won’t wake up at all,” she whispered to the stone. “I’m afraid that I have finally lost my mind completely and I’m really sitting unprotected in the hot sun on this damnable planet, about to die of heat stroke and I don’t even know it.”
She set the stone in Revva’s hand.
“I’m afraid all of this is just my imagination and I won’t even know when my body dies and then I’ll be trapped in this dream forever, not knowing that my body died long ago. I might have died years ago already, I might have never even survived the crash, and not know. Not ever know. I'll live out eternity in this dream I've constructed.” She sucked the air in between her teeth. “I assure you, it's not even a pleasant dream. It's my own personal hell.”
Revva was silent for a while. “Priests of my order, we study many texts throughout our lives. One of my favorites is that of Mencochou. ‘He did not know whether it was Mencochou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was Mencochou.’ I have studied that for many years.” Revva nodded in contemplation. “It seems I need to study it more.”
Revva placed his hand on her shoulder. “It sounds as if Captain Jolen has returned. Please come with us, my little butterfly.” He rose and held out his hand for her. “Even if it is a dream, isn’t better to dream of the stars than of this planet?”
Milial smiled. “Your logic is impeccable, though we’ll see if it floats on the wind.”
She poured a bucket of sand on her fire to douse it. She placed her hand in Revva’s and let him help her to her feet.
“Milial, I’d like to introduce you to some of my crew,” Gare said, holding the tarp open.
“This is my First Officer, Poular, my Science Officer Harpe, and my Medical Officer Bazat.” The room became cramped with everyone in it.
Milial’s eyes scanned their faces in order. Her eyes bulged when they fell upon Bazat.
“Bazat is from the planet Kodor,” Revva offered.
Bazat was six feet tall with no hair anywhere on her body. Her skin changed color to match her surroundings. Milial moved closer to get a better view. She reached out and placed the tip of her finger on Bazat’s bare arm. Bazat’s skin turned the same color as Milial’s dust-covered finger.
A beaming smile broke out on Milial's face. “I could never imagine anything as beautiful as you, Bazat.”
Suddenly the smile left her face and fear filled Milial’s eyes. She pulled her knife from its holster and held it front of her, pressing her back against the metal wall. She waved the blade through the air. “You’re real,” she said, finally convinced.
Revva motioned for them to back out of the room. “Yes, we are real. But we won’t hurt you. You have my word on that. Come with us. Back to our ship. Back to your stars.”
Milial’s face turned red and she hung her head. She lowered her knife and returned it to its holster. “I’m embarrassed,” she whispered. “I thought you weren’t real.” She tugged on her cloak to straighten it and ran her fingers across her matted hair.
“It’s all right,” Revva took her by her arm and steered her toward the door.
“I was rude to both of you.” She met Gare’s eyes and quickly looked away.
“Is there anything you want to take with you? A keepsake or something?” Revva asked.
Milial snorted. “Nothing. I don’t want to remember this place.” She walked out of her home without a backwards glance.
Fog started to rise from the soil and coiled around the legs of the shuttle pod. “We better hurry.” Gare could feel the fog dragging his feet down to the ground. It was an effort just to walk.
They filed into the shuttle pod. Revva relinquished his window seat to Milial.
“Come on, let go of us, you rotten sticky stuff.” Gare needed more than twice the normal thrust in order to pull away from the fog.
“I guess this planet doesn’t want to give you up,” he said to Milial over his shoulder.
Milial stared out the window. Her view changed from yellow barren soil to yellow sky to darker sky. Tiny stars twinkled in the darkness and they grew as the shuttle pod broke out of the planet’s atmosphere. Milial started to cry. Revva rested his hand on her shoulder but her eyes never left the stars.
“I don’t care if all of this is my imagination,” she whispered. “This was worth it, no matter what price is asked of me later.”
Gare negotiated the shuttle pod into Vega-One’s bay and opened the door.
“We’ll all have to go through quarantine. I’m afraid that means you, too, Milial,” Bazat told her. Bazat’s skin was the color of the bay’s grey walls.
Milial let Bazat take her hand and the chameleon led her into a small room.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to work this,” Milial admitted.
Bazat helped her undress and placed her in the decontamination chamber. “Close your eyes and mouth. A fine spray will settle over you. Then water will clean you off.” Bazat pushed a button. “Press this button up to make the water hotter and down to make the water cooler. Push this for cleaning fluid. I’ll be in the next chamber and then I’ll wait here until you come out. Take as long as you want.”
Bazat waited ten minutes before she opened the door. “Is everything OK?” she asked. Her voice sounded worried.
“Oh,” Milial said, startled. She turned off the water. “This is the first shower I’ve had in a long time. Fifteen years according to your Captain.”
She blushed.
“It never rained on the planet. Not once. The running water...I guess I lost track of time.”
Bazat helped Milial into a new set of clothes. “I don’t think we’ll be able to comb out these tangles,” she said, touching Milial’s hair.
“Shave it.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to do anything that drastic.” Bazat reached for a pair of clippers. “We’ll just get rid of the worst tangles here at the end. Then we’ll try and brush the rest out.”
Ten minutes later, a pile of wet hair lay on the floor and Bazat turned Milial around to look in the mirror.
Milial jumped backwards. She peered forward and turned her head from left to right, keeping her eyes on her reflection.
“I’m sorry,” Bazat said, realizing her mistake. “When’s the last time you looked in a mirror?”
Milial poked at the wrinkles around her eyes and her hollow cheeks. Darkness ringed her eyes. Her finer followed a scar that ran from her forehead down her left cheek to her neck bone. “Since before I crashed,” she whispered, captivated by her reflection. “I look like my mother, but with my father’s nose and chin.” She ran her fingers through her drying hair. “This is the length that I used to wear it, before the space station fled in the chaos.”
Bazat set her hands on each of Milial’s shoulders. “You’re quite beautiful yoursel
f.” Bazat’s hand disappeared as her skin changed to the color of Milial’s blue shirt.
Milial rubbed the leathery skin on her face. "My grandmother would be horrified. On the space station, we were never exposed to direct sunlight. Over the generations, our skin became quite smooth. Not even the elders had wrinkles. That's how we identified planetarians, those who had walked in the sun and the dirt. I'm glad my grandmother never had to see me walk in the dirt, with my wrinkled skin."
“I’m going to run a couple medical scans and take some blood to check for parasites or viruses,” Bazat told her, reaching for her kit.
“We used to have checkups every six months on the station,” Milial told her. “In a closed environment like a space station, viruses could run rampant if they got loose.”
Bazat ran her scans. “Nothing shows up on the scans; you’re cleared to be released. Are you tired? Would you like to go to your quarters?”
“Does it have a port window?”
“No. None of our quarters have windows.”
“Could I go to someplace that does?” Milial asked.
Bazat smiled. “Let’s go to the solarium. You can see plants and stars both at once.”
Milial smiled.