The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel by Frank M. Robinson

took two meals before I was at ease with the game. Then I found myself gulping down my food so I could spend the last fifteen minutes of the period in deep thought opposite Noah, studying the pieces on the board and trying to decide on my next move. Nobody paid attention to me at all now and I could watch them with ten percent of my mind while the other ninety percent concentrated on bishops, knights, and pawns.
    Crow and I made up shortly after that, when I was alone in my compartment and felt the bulkheads pressing close around me. The touch of claustrophobia made me envy Crow his falsie of the ancient city and its lagoon. What I saw was what I got. Then I wondered if there might be something more. I untangled myself from the sling, drifted over to the palm terminal, and retrieved the inventory of furnishings for the compartment—the standard inventory for every living space on board. It didn’t take much searching to find the program and switch it on.
    When I turned around, my stomach tightened. The compartment had become an ancient library, with books racked on varnished wooden shelves that extended from floor to painted ceiling. Windows looked out on a green lawn and distant rolling hills. A thick carpet covered the floor and there were leather chairs with nearby lamps that cast a pleasant glow for reading. Outside, I could hear faint shouts and the crack of what I guessed to be a cricket bat. Inside, there was classical music. One shelf of books was real, the others illusion. I reached for one volume and the book vanished at the same moment that my fingers touched the metal bulkhead. There was a sudden glow from the terminal’s viewing screen. When I glanced at it, I saw an image of the book with the pages slowly turning. It was a compartment for an older man and I wondered why it had been assigned to me. Probably because if I were to design it, it would be the same—I wouldn’t change a single detail.
    “I wondered when you would look at it,” a voice said behind me.
    Crow and Loon had ducked in through the shadow screen. Crow smiled half apologetically. “Do you mind, Sparrow?”
    Ishrugged, glad they had come but reluctant to admit it.
    They drifted in and sat in the two chairs opposite me. It took a moment before I realized they had brought in metal crates and were sitting on them. They were familiar with the falsie from… before.
    “It was kind of you to ask us in,” Loon said, trying to hide a grin. Crow took a small pipe from his waistcloth, lit it and handed it to me.
    “Want some smoke?”
    I took it, inhaling cautiously. The smoke made me cough, but after a moment it also made me feel very much at ease.
    Loon accompanied the classical music with a few bars on his harmonica,then suddenly asked, “Did you hear about Quince and Portia in the equipment room?”
    He said it with a wink. I looked blank so he filled me in on all the details, including some I’m sure he made up on the spot. I started to giggle and found I couldn’t stop. Crow’s smile grew broader. They offered me more smoke and gossiped about other members of the crew and I spent half that sleep period alternating between shock and fits of laughter.
    It was the first time I had ever felt completely at home on board the Astron .
    ****
    One time period, after my shift was over, Crow took me down to Reduction, a compartment on the lowest level. My skin was crawling before we even got there, and once there, I didn’t want to stay very long. It was a small, tidy room with a low overhead and a metal ledge jutting out from the bulkhead to which you could secure yourself if you wanted to sit. There were tightly covered, well-scrubbed vats with a lot of piping along another bulkhead. Against the far one was a squat, sealed chamber with distillerylike apparatus on top. The compartment reeked of efficiency; it was the only one I had seen whose metal piping still shone and whose bulkheads still gleamed.
    It also smelled far different from the