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Lowell, Nathan.

In memory of Patricia Wallace Whitney Lane.

When I was a kid, Aunt Pat would bring over large grocery bags filled with paperbacks. Many of them were odd little books called *Ace Doubles', which I devoured.

Without her, I might never have become the fan-or writer-that I am today.

Chapter One.

Dunsany Roads System.

2352-April-23.

All children, except one, grow up. While I had never considered that the one might be me, recent events had punctuated that reality. The thing to keep in mind about up is that it isn't a destination like grandmother's house or a condition you arrive at like growing bored or becoming hungry. Up is a process that ends-as the Bard has said-gravely. I was reflecting on this idea while on the afternoon watch and, to be truthful, more than a little remorsefully. The Lois McKendrick was three days out of port, clawing her way out of Dunsany's gravity well bound for Betrus. Our stay at the orbital had been so surreal and bizarre that I wondered idly if someone had laced the air supply with an aerosol hallucinogen.

The console jarred me out of my reverie by initiating an Automated System Integrity Check. The status message blinked Running for less than a tick before changing to Air Systems Nominal and under that Water Systems Nominal. I acknowledged the message and went back to my funk.

The rollercoaster of the last week had been emotionally exhausting. It started with my self-absorbed exhibitionism at Chez Henri, continued with a rendezvous with the Second Mate of the Duchamp, and ended with my pathetic debacles with three of my shipmates. The fact that they were, as Henri Roubaille had said, "three of the most delightful and strikingly beautiful women on this end of the galaxy," made me feel even more like a mooncalf. I was left with the singular and distinct impression that whatever else might have happened I had been an idiot. Given my gender-male-and my age-eighteen-that should have come as no surprise, but I had hoped for better from myself.

Even with all this berating, I had to admit that it hadn't been all bad. I think I helped the new mess deck attendant, Sarah Krugg, come to grips with years of abuse she had suffered on St. Cloud. She was shaping up to be a crackerjack cook and might very well be the best natural born salesperson in the galaxy. As for her practicing a little South Coast shamanism on the side, well, we all have our individual faiths.

Pip-that's Phillip Carstairs, cargo genius-and I had made a tidy profit on our last leg and we had some interesting cargoes for Betrus. The McKendrick Mercantile Cooperative, a trading club for the crew that I helped to setup, was going great guns. The group who was becoming known as the co-ed crochet team was seeing fantastic success. They bought yarns in one port, crocheted their goods in the Deep Dark, and sold the completed products at our next destination. They'd just been getting started going into Dunsany Roads and I was glad to see my little idea was working out so well for them.

The chrono clicked over to 16:00 and I realized I hadn't done my Visual Site Inspections yet. I slaved my tablet to the watch stander station and pulled up the sensor overlay.

"Hey, B," I called to Specialist One (Environmental) Brilliantine "Brill" Smith, "I'm going on VSI now."

Brill was in her office with the door open. "Stay on the path. Write if you get work," she answered back. This was one of those silly ritual responses we all used. She'd just told me to check the sensors in the specified order so that if something unexpected happened they'd be able to find me quickly. The last part was an instruction to notify her if I found something that needed attention.

"Aye, Chief," I replied. I couldn't help but smile. Brill had that effect on me, among others, and I sighed.

I headed out to check each environmental sensor package by working my way down the five hundred and twenty-eight meter spine of the ship. It was a good hike and helped to break up the monotony of a watch. The other benefit of the trip was that it's hard to carry a good funk the whole distance. It gets too heavy and begins to fall along the wayside in pieces.

By the time I got back, there wasn't a lot of the watch left, but I settled in with my spec two environmental lessons and worked on that awhile. The test was in a few days, and if I pa.s.sed, I'd be promoted to spec three and finally qualify to fill the slot left when Gregor Avery left to take a new berth on the Audrey Moore. I had just enough time to run a practice test and scored a whopping ninety-six when Francis, that's spec three Francis Gartner, showed up to relieve me.

Francis was a good guy. He was a tall, skinny drink of water who held a Ph.D. in astrophysics but worked in environmental just so he could get out into s.p.a.ce. Seeing him made me consider that notion. For all the time we spent out in the Deep Dark, we saw precious little of it. Sometimes it seemed like we got on board, sealed the locks, sat confined for some specified number of weeks, and when the doors opened again we found ourselves in a remarkably similar orbital. I supposed the bridge crew must get to experience it on a different level, but for most of us, we really didn't get to see much.

"Hey, Francis," I greeted him as he stepped through the hatch right on the dot of 17:45.

"Hey, Ish. How goes?"

Francis and I had had our differences, but that was in the past. Enough wind through the sails and all that. "Good. Looks like I'm ready to take the test," I told him. "Did you have a good time in Dunsany? We didn't see much of you."

A kind of silly smile formed on his face. "Oh yeah, very good." Francis didn't elaborate, and I was beginning to smarten up enough not to ask.

"You ready for duty?" I asked him.

"Let's do it."

"Mr. Gartner, all ops normal. No maintenance scheduled or performed. You may take the watch."

"I relieve you, Mr. w.a.n.g. I have the watch," he replied formally.

And with that I was off for the next twelve hours and free to sit in my bunk and stew all I wanted. Brill stepped out of her office then and smiled at us. "Hi, guys!"

"Hi, B," Francis said.

I just waved.

"You headed up to dinner, Ish?" she asked.

"Yup. Wanna join me? My treat."

"Cheapskate!" she teased and even Francis laughed.

The thing to remember about Brill is that she's tall. Not like what you think of as tall, I mean really, really tall. In a galaxy of people who seldom break the two meter threshold, Brill tops out just above two and a quarter. She's also beautiful, smart, and s.e.xy. Brown eyes, a willowy build, and the fierceness of a Valkyrie when she puts her mind to it. She was one of the three women Roubaille had been referring to. Like the rest of us, she was currently zipped into a shipsuit, and she even made that look good-really good-heart achingly good.

We set out and I held the hatch for Brill who ducked carefully through it. I suspected that being so tall on a ship had to be a headache, quite literally, although she never complained about it. She never complained about anything.

"You don't look good, Ish," she said quietly after the hatch closed.

"Aw, you know. I'm still adjusting. That was a rough ride through Dunsany. I need to pace myself a little more when we get to Betrus." I smiled.

"You need to do more than that," she said seriously.

"Like what?"

"If I can offer some advice, you need to figure out who you are and then go for it."

"I know. I'm working on that."

"No, I don't think you are. You've made a start on Dunsany, but you need to do more."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, you're still young, but you can't afford to waste it."

"Waste what?"

"Time, Ish, time. Do you want to be like Francis and slop sludge until you're fifty?" She was serious and what's more she was right.

"d.a.m.n, you're good." I said.

She chuckled a little and gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Let's go see what Cookie's got going. Smells like pot roast."

After dinner, I went to engineering berthing and lay down. I planned to just let dinner settle for a bit before I went for a run and a steam. I hadn't run in days, which probably wasn't helping my mood. I knew from past experience not to get out on the track with a belly full of Cookie's excellent food. My bunkies were gone and I had the quad to myself. Mitch Fitzroy had the bunk below mine. He was a machinist in the propulsion section and a typical engine head-a great guy with oil in his veins. Mitch and I were on the same watch schedule so he was probably in the gym or maybe still tanking up on dinner. He had a pretty healthy metabolism. Specialist Three (Electrical) Rebecca Saltzman had the lower bunk on the other side. I liked her a lot. She was from one of the heavy-G worlds and had the genetic legacy to prove it. As soon as I got stretched out, though, I nodded off. I didn't even get a chance to pull my tablet out of its holster. I just crashed and slept until the duty messenger woke me for watch the next day. I wasn't even conscious enough to catch who woke me. I realized I was still in yesterday's shipsuit and sighed. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

Showering made me feel better and fresh clothes helped even more. I went up to the mess deck and grabbed a coffee before heading down to relieve Diane.

Specialist Three (Environmental) Diane Ardele was a cute, little thing with elfin features and a wicked sense of humor. She had red hair and green eyes and she was another of the three women who went with me to Roubaille's that day. She smiled broadly as I came through the hatch. "Hey, Ish!"

"Hi, Diane," I replied with a groggy yawn. "I can't seem to wake up this morning."

"When'd you go to bed?"

"Early. I had dinner with Big B then went to lie down for a few minutes to let it settle but fell asleep until the messenger woke me for watch."

She looked at me hard. "Are you okay, Ish?" she asked with concern. "You've seemed a bit out of kilter ever since we got underway."

"Yeah, I'm fine," I told her, although I considered that was a lie. I just couldn't be sure. Everything seemed off-gray-dull. I tried to convince myself it was just emotional whiplash from the stay in Dunsany. "Just tired. I feel like we spent a month in port last week."

We changed the watch and she stayed around for a few minutes giving me an I'm-not-sure-I-can-leave-you-alone look similar to the one my mother used to give me.

"Brill seems to think I need to be considering my future," I shared.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"She doesn't want me to waste my time."

She shrugged. "That seems like good advice."

"Yeah, she says I need to find myself. But how do you know who you are? Or who you're not?"

She shrugged again. "You've had a h.e.l.l of a week, Ish. Those sound like questions you need to puddle in the back of your brain for a while and eventually they'll resolve into something."

"Thanks, Di, that actually helps." And it did.

She stood and headed for the hatch. "See you up at breakfast?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll be up in a few ticks. I just wanna check the logs and maintenance records."

"Okay, see you in a bit, then."

I settled down to check the logs and make a list of tasks. My brain slid back into a familiar script, running through the overnight logs and checking the maintenance schedule for the next twenty-four stans. This was one of my fast-flip days-the name I'd given to the six-on-six-off-six-on portions of the watch cycle. At the end of a fast-flip, I would get either a twelve or a twenty-four stan break. I'd just slept through my twelve, and I had eighteen stans before the twenty-four. I made a note on my tablet to change the number two water intake filter on this watch and clean the number three scrubber's field plates during the evening's leg. I felt oddly detached, as if I was watching myself from someplace outside-like one of those cheesy holo-noir shots that pan to show the character huddled over some task while the point of view spins around them. The technique always made me think of watching something in a microwave. Realizing that those panning shots usually ended in something awful happening to the character, I looked over my shoulder and laughed at myself when I realized what I was doing.

Yeah, Dunsany had been a strange port.

Chapter Two.

Dunsany Roads System

2352-April-23

After breakfast I settled down with my tablet to study, but Brill's words kept coming back to me.

Do I really want to be slopping sludge at fifty?

Environmental duty was interesting in a way, and certainly one of the critical functions of the ship, but I was suddenly aware that it was a job-something I did in between the things I wanted to do. Working there was not something I did because I loved doing it.

The next question dropped my head into vapor lock as I considered what exactly it was that I loved to do. A long time pa.s.sed while I sat there flipping ideas across my brain. At least two Automated System Integrity Checks-we call them ASICs-came up while I was thinking. They were nominal and I cleared them with as much automaticity as they exhibited. My problem was I had no clue as to what I wanted to do.

I had been four years old when my mom took a job at the University of Neris and spent almost my entire life there. Neris was a company planet and I lived in the university enclave with her. She was an ancient literature professor in the English department until she was killed in a flitter crash. I had escaped deportation by signing on to the Lois McKendrick only a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday and a month before I was supposed to start at the university as a student.

Even back then, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had only agreed to go to college to humor my mother. I knew I had to find something to make a living-we were far from wealthy. It's just that I hadn't found anything remotely appealing until I came aboard the Lois.

My first a.s.signment had been on the mess deck working with Pip and Cookie. There was a sense of satisfaction in working there. He always said, "We run a restaurant, gentlemen, and even though the crew can't go anywhere else, they still deserve our best efforts."

Back then, I studied all four of the divisional materials and qualified as half share in each one. I laughed at myself when I remembered my plans to collect a complete set of full share ratings because I had been so worried about being put ash.o.r.e. A lot had changed in just a bit more than seven months.

When the chance came to move to environmental, I took the offered position. The ship needed me there and I was happy to oblige. I still had a sense that the ship needed me, but that was where I stalled-stymied.

On a whim, I pulled up the Able s.p.a.cer test. Sandy Belterson, who is now a spec two in astrogation-but had been a spec three at the time-had helped me study for my ordinary s.p.a.cer exam. Back then, she'd tested me at the higher level and I was shocked to see I pa.s.sed that practice test. It took me just a half stan to finish another practice test and I blinked numbly at the score: ninety-two, which was well above the pa.s.sing score of eighty.

Brill came in just then and found me staring into the void. "You in there, Ish?" she asked with concern.

I grinned. "Yup," I said, and began to think that perhaps I was.

"Well, it's good to see you smiling again. What'd you do last night? You disappeared after mess."

"I slept."