Chapter 1

Sex, Serendipity, and Salacia Station

1

“Can you believe people used to think our first encounter with alien life would be like this? Bipedal, human-sized, with a fake third eye, and suspiciously good command of human languages?”

Mick could. He enjoyed the old movies with their smart and often humanoid aliens, and honestly found such fictional extraterrestrial life much more interesting than the real variety. So far humanity had yet to find anything more intelligent than your average rabbit, and while Mick had nothing against rabbits, he didn’t find them particularly fascinating.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? Most people aren’t captivated by bacteria, you know.”

His good friend Larissa Donovan, PhD, studied the bacteria in Neptune’s atmosphere, the existence of which she’d co-discovered. It was no surprise that her view on alien life was vastly different than Mick’s.

She frowned. “Bacteria are so underappreciated.”

“You have to admit it wouldn’t be an exciting movie.” This from Ott Gulbis, a man who couldn’t enjoya movie with a flawed depiction of engineering. Mick knew from painful experience that such films accounted for a large percentage of movies ever made.

“I’ll admit no such thing,” said Larissa.

“Unless your bacteria were evil,” amended Ott.

“Bacteria can’t be evil. You can’t apply moral judgments to bacteria.”

“They could be killing off the entire human race.”

“That doesn’t make them evil.”

Mick drained his beer and said, “It would make them a suitable antagonist, though.”

The three of them spent a fair amount of time discussing movies for lack of other entertainment options. Salacia Station had never in its fifty-two-year history been renowned for its variety of leisure activities, because apparently the designers had been more concerned with keeping the station from crashing into Neptune and less concerned with the residents going mad. Some days Mick thought thatwas short-sighted of them.

At least the design team had concluded that eating real meals merited carving out space for a kitchen. Therefore Salacia’s residents enjoyed the physiological and psychological benefits of actual food as opposed to nutrient shakes, and Mick enjoyed full employment.

Salacia was the last station in the Sol system for outbound travel and the first for incoming (at least,most journeys were aligned with planetary orbits so that this was true), therefore most of their entertainment came from travelers passing through. At the very minimum the station could expect to receive some new gossip, like the previous week’s revelation that the lead terraformerer on Mars claimed to have fallen in love with his robotic assistant. When visitors were scarce Salacia’s residents had to amuse themselves any way they could, and to that end, movies were shown twice daily in one of the lounges.

“Why can’t bacteria be a protagonist?” asked Larissa.

“Because nobody wants to watch that.” Ott shook his head as though the answer was obvious. Which, to be fair, it probably was to everyone but Larissa.

“He’s right,” agreed Mick.

“Yeah, well, nobody wants to watch movies about station mechanical parts or paring knives either.”

“Never said they did,” Ott replied.

Mick shook his head, wishing the station didn’t have a strict one-drink per day limit. He’d have liked another beer. “Hell, I’m a chef and I don’t want to watch a movie about paring knives.”

“And I see mechanical parts all day at work. I’d rather see something else when I’m relaxing. Which just goes to show that your obsession with bacteria is unhealthy.” Ott punctuated this by setting his mug down loudly.

Mick wished Ott would let go of Larissa’s bacteria already. The man needed to find another hobby besides riling her up.

It would also help if Larissa learned to stop taking the bait, but Mick wasn’t that lucky. She bit. “You do realize that symbiotic bacteria keep you alive, right?”

Last time they had this discussion Larissa spent five minutes explaining the importance of gut bacteria, and partway through Ott’s retaliatory explanation of the artificial gravity system Mick grew bored and went home to jerk off to some porn.

“Isn’t there something new we could talk about?” he asked.

Ott said, “There’s a team docking tomorrow. They’re heading to the Gliese system.”

“They’re the deep-ocean survey, right?”

Larissa was probably right, because she kept up on the scientific groups. The science could be interesting, but Mick preferred the people. Watching the people who came through Salacia never failed to interest him. Deep space voyages weren’t for most people—hell, living as far out as Salacia wasn’t for most people, and leaving the solar system was much more demanding, not to mention riskier.

“I wonder if they get to fish,” mused Ott. “I haven’t been fishing in three years.”

“Plenty of fishing on Earth,” pointed out Mick.