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James Alan Gardner

To my parents

(except the naughty words)

Contents

Part I

Night

Part II

Mission

Part III

Plans

Part IV

Observations

Part V

Landing

Part VI

Awakening

Part VII

Moonrise

Part VIII

Acquaintance

Part IX

Adaptation

Part X

Communication

Part XI

Travel

Part XII

Skin

Part XIII

Giveaways

Part XIV

Transition

Part XV

Beauty

Part XVI

Mania

Part XVII

Confrontation

Part XVIII

Eggs Hatching

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part I

NIGHT

Flashback

“My name is Festina Ramos, and I take great pride in my personal appearance.”

(Again.)

“My name is Festina Ramos, and I take great pride in my personal appearance.”

(Again.)

“My name is Festina Ramos, and I take great pride in my personal appearance.”

(Again….)

My Appearance

My name is Festina Ramos and once upon a time, no one in the Technocracy took greater pride in her personal appearance.

I showered, shampooed, depilated, and deodorized every morning without fail. Nothing stood in the way of my morning ritual: not the fuzz of a hangover, nor the arms of a beckoning bed-partner. My discipline was absolute.

I exercised more than forty hours a week, and always complete workouts: martial arts, running, gymnastics, taichi…even mountaineering when the opportunity presented itself.

My body fat ranked at the lowest percentile considered healthy. People said they envied my figure. For all I know, they might have been telling the truth.

I chose my civilian clothes with the care of an entertainer dressing for the chips. Even when I was in uniform, fellow officers said that black fatigues suited me.

Their very words: “Festina, that outfit suits you.” They did not say, “Festina, you look good.”

My name is Festina Ramos and even before I was given that name, I was given a lurid port-wine birthmark covering the right half of my face from cheekbone to chin. Years of operant conditioning gave me great pride in my disfigurement.

The Doctors

Each doctor began by saying my condition could be corrected. How would they cure me? Let me count the ways. They would cure me with electrolysis, with lasers, with cryogenics, with plastic planing, with “sophisticated bioactive agents conscientiously applied in a program of restoration therapy.” Some even set a date when I would be booked in for treatment.

Then the appointments were canceled. Sometimes the doctor apologized in person. Sometimes the doctor invented excuses. Sometimes it was just a note from a secretary.

Here is the reason my birthmark endured with purple defiance in the face of twenty-fifth century medicine:

It had military value.

My Calling In Life

My calling in life was to land on hostile planets.

I made first contacts with alien cultures.

I went anyplace the Admiralty didn’t know what the hell to expect.

Officially, I belonged to the Explorer Corps. Unofficially, we Explorers called ourselves ECMs—short for Expendable Crew Members.

Why

Listen. Here is what all ECMs knew.

Violent death is rare in the Technocracy. We have no wars. The crime level is low, and few incidents involve lethal weapons. When accidents happen, victims can almost always be saved by sophisticated local medical centers.

But.

There are no medical centers on unexplored planets. Death may come with savage abruptness or the stealthy creep of alien disease. In a society where people expect to ease comfortably out of this world at a ripe old age, the thought of anyone being killed in the prime of life is deeply disturbing. If it happens to someone you know, the effect is devastating.

Unless…the person who dies is different. Not like everyone else.

Two centuries ago, the Admiralty High Council secretly acknowledged that some deaths hurt Fleet morale more than others. If the victim was popular, well-liked, and above all, physically attractive, fellow crewmates took the death hard. Performance ratings dropped by as much as thirty percent. Friends of the deceased required lengthy psychological counseling. Those who had ordered