Rosemary cringed. “Ugh.”
“You have no idea. I snapped one clean off a few years back, before Kizzy put the runners down. Shrieked like a hatchling.” She stepped off onto the next deck, nodding toward doors. “Rec room’s over there. Exercise machines, gaming hub, comfy couches, all that stuff. The hub’s got a few good outdoor sims you can patch into. Everybody’s supposed to use it for at least a half-hour every day. In theory. It’s an easy thing to forget, but it is good for you. On a long haul, this”—she tapped the top of Rosemary’s head—“needs to be the most important thing you take care of.”
Rosemary paused as they walked down the corridor. “Is it just me, or is it getting darker in here?”
Sissix chuckled. “You really haven’t lived out in the open, have you?” she said, though not unkindly. “The lighting in the corridors and communal areas gets lighter and darker as the day goes on. What you’re seeing now is sunset, or an approximation of it. You can turn on the work lamps in individual rooms whenever you need more light, but having ambient lighting throughout the ship helps us keep a rhythm.”
“You follow standard days here, right?”
Sissix nodded. “Standard days, standard calendar. Are you still on Solar time?”
“Yeah.”
“Go easy your first tenday. Adopting a new body clock can really take it out of you. Honestly, though, as long as you get your work done and know what day it is, it doesn’t matter what sort of schedule you keep. None of us get up at the same time, and we all work weird hours. Especially Ohan. They’re nocturnal.”
Rosemary wasn’t sure who Ohan was or what Sissix had meant by the plural pronoun, but before she could ask, Sissix grinned toward the door ahead. “I’m going to let you go through first.”
There was a hand-painted sign affixed to the wall beside the door. “THE FISHBOWL,” it read. The bright letters were surrounded by smiling planets and cheerful flowers. New as Rosemary was to the ship, she had an inkling that the sign was Kizzy’s doing.
She opened the door, and gasped. Before her was a wide, domed room, constructed from interlocking sheets of plex. It was a window, a giant, bubble-like window, with the entire galaxy spilling out beyond. And on their side, everything—everything—was green. Large hydroponic planters were arranged in spiraling rows, bursting with broad leaves, perky sprouts, and dark, fat vegetables. Handwritten labels were affixed to skewers at regular intervals (the alphabet used was not one that Rosemary recognized). Some of the plants were flowering, and delicate trellises encouraged the climbers to grow tall. A branching path stretched out from the doorway, lined with re-purposed cargo crates and food tins filled with bushy tufts of grass. Bits of tech junk painted with bright shapes peeked out here and there, adding dabs of color. At the end of the path were three steps, which led into a sunken garden. A ramshackle fountain chattered quietly there, with a few benches and chairs nearby. Behind the benches, small decorative trees stretched up toward the sun lamps that hung overhead. But once Rosemary noticed the lamps, her attention was drawn back to the bubbled window, to the stars and planets and nebulae waiting just outside.
After a few seconds of gaping, Rosemary had the presence of mind to note the smaller details. The window frame looked worn, and of a completely different make than the rest of the room. The hydroponic planters were of all shapes and sizes, and were banged up enough to suggest that they’d been purchased second-hand. But the room was one of those strange, wonderful places that benefited from a lack of uniformity. The plants were healthy and well-tended, but somehow, the scuffs and dents and painted scraps were what made them truly come alive.
“This…” Rosemary blinked. “This is incredible.”
“And necessary, believe it or not,” said Sissix. “It may seem like an extravagance, but it’s got three useful purposes. One, living plants ease the strain on our air filters. Two, we can grow some of our own food, which saves us money on market trips, and is healthier than eating stuff kept in stasis all the time. Three, most important, it keeps us from going crazy after being cooped up in here for a few tendays. The sim room’s good for a moment of quiet, but this is where we all come to really slow down. A lot of long-haul ships have places like this. Ours is the best, though, if you’d like my entirely unbiased opinion.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Rosemary, tearing her eyes away from the window. She thought for a moment, remembering the opaque dome she’d seen from the deepod. “Why couldn’t I see this coming in?”
“Neat trick, isn’t it?” said Sissix. “It’s made out of switch plex, so it’s only transparent when we want it to be. Gives us some privacy, and keeps things cool if we’re near a sun. It used to be part of some Harmagian’s yacht. Kizzy and Jenks have a whole network of scavenger buddies who give us a call whenever they find some scrap we might put to good use. The dome has been the jackpot so far.” She gestured for Rosemary to follow her. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the guy who grows all this stuff.”
They followed the right side of the path to an oval-shaped dining table, set for dinner. The chairs surrounding the table were mismatched, and about a third of them designed to fit non-Human posteriors. Soft lights hung from long wires over the table, capped with shades of different colors. It was far from the fanciest table Rosemary had ever seen—the napkins were faded, a few plates had dents, the condiments were all cheap brands—but it felt inviting nonetheless.
Near the table was a counter, with three stools on one side and a big kitchen on the other. The smell of baking bread and sizzling herbs flooded Rosemary’s nostrils, and her body reminded her of how long it had been since she last ate. Her entire torso felt hollow.
“Hey!” Sissix called over the counter. “Come meet our new crewmate!”
Rosemary hadn’t seen the curtain covering the doorway in the back until a member of the strangest species she’d ever seen threw it aside and lumbered forward. The sapient—he, Sissix had said—was at least twice Rosemary’s size. He was rotund and fleshy, with dappled gray skin. She would have pegged him as some sort of amphibian if it weren’t for the tufts of long whiskers that stood out from his balloon-like cheeks. The majority of his face was dominated by a broad, split upper lip, which Rosemary found endearing, though she couldn’t say why. She thought back to the picture programs of ancient Earth animals she’d poured over as a kid. If you crossed an otter with a gecko, then made it walk like a six-legged caterpillar, you’d be getting somewhere.
The sapient’s legs were especially difficult to categorize, because they could have just as easily been arms. He had six of them, whatever they were, all identical. When he came through the door, he’d been walking on one pair, and holding two tubs of food with the others. But once he set the tubs down, he folded his body down onto two pairs and walked to the counter.
“Well, well, well,” the sapient rumbled. There was a weird harmony to his voice, as if five people were talking at once. As she continued to process his appearance, Rosemary noticed that he was wearing Human style clothing. His upper torso—if you could call it that—was covered by a huge short-sleeved shirt printed with a logo of a green Human thumb zooming through space. The surrounding text was printed not in Klip, but in Ensk: Littlejohn’s Plant Emporium—Your One-Stop Shop for Transgalactic Hydroponics. Extra armholes had been cut into the sides to allow for his middle pair of limbs. His lower section was covered by an enormous pair of drawstring pants. Or not pants. More like a pouch with room for legs.
The sapient’s whole face curved upward in a surreal approximation of a smile. “I bet you’ve never seen one of me before,” he said.