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"Can you believe this place?"The voice who spoke was female, but it took me a few moments to realise she was talking to me.
I turned from staring out the Moon Station window. "I suppose I can't."
She was shorter than me, but more slender. Her pale hair was swept back in a neat ponytail, with no strands escaping from anywhere. Absently I patted my own hair, but my dark curls wouldn't be tamed, no matter how hard I tried. I have the kind of hair people claim they wish they had, but those of us who did, spent hours detangling it with a hairbrush and a straightener.
"It's mind-blowing," she declared. "We can see the whole Earth from here. Well, the bit that's facing us. Look, North America. I'm Brinley Grant."
She slipped in her name so quickly I almost missed it.
"Hi. Edie." I put down my cup of coffee onto the table in front of me and offered my hand.
She shook it and slipped into the seat opposite me.
"Where are you from?" she asked. "Obviously Earth. Me too. I'm from the south of England."
I had figured that from her accent. "Australia," I said while she took a breath. "Sydney, specifically."
"Oh, fabulous. I watched that go past on the last rotation. It's amazing to see water where there wasn't water for hundreds of years." She must have seen the expression on my face, because she stopped speaking.
"I'm terribly sorry. My mouth runs away from me at times. A lot of the time, actually."
"It's okay," I said quickly. "We need to think of ourselves as citizens of the IF now, not just Earth." It was a simple thing to say, but to do, that was something else.
"Yes. Or Agus. You're going there too, aren't you?" Brinley asked. "I checked the manifest. Oh, don't worry, I wasn't spying. I'm training to fly the shuttles. I'm hoping to fly the bigger space transports." She smiled like a child whose dreams had all come true. Or were about to.
"That sounds like fun." I tried to seem enthusiastic, but I'd never had much affinity with machinery.
"Doesn't it?" she agreed. "There's nothing like flying. I started with small planes when I was younger and—" She rattled on while I watched the world go by.
"So, why are you going to Agus?" she asked.
When I told her, she all but bounced in her chair. "It's good to know I would be in good hands if I got sick," she said.
"You might be," I replied modestly. "I mean, I do my best." I loved my job and knew I did it well, but I might be out of my depth dealing with other species.
I watched two women walk past the table. One, who I assumed was from Frey-T, had skin lighter than Danec and dark, pin-straight hair. The green-skinned woman from Agus had antennas and scales across her chest and up the sides of her neck. Both were slender and taller than me.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Brinley said softly. "I wish I was that tall. And thin."
I pursed my lips. Even the prettiest amongst us was unhappy about some aspect of ourselves. Did the aliens feel the same way? Was 'alien' even the right word? We were as alien as they were.
IF,I reminded myself. We're all IF.
"From what I know of their physiology, they have narrower, longer bones," I said. "We couldn't look like that if we tried. Besides, if you were too tall, you wouldn't fit into the cockpit." I was guessing, but cockpits always seemed small to me.
Apparently it was the right thing to say, because she smiled.
"That's true, but if I was any shorter, I wouldn't touch the floor while sitting in a pilot's chair either."
"I'm sure you would find a way," I assured her. She didn't seem like the kind of woman who let a thing like height stop her from doing what she wanted.
"Yes, I suppose I would," she said thoughtfully. "Did you know there isn't any meat on the Moon Station? Apart from human meat, that is."
I wasn't sure if I should feel whiplashed from the sudden change of topic, or sickened at the idea of people being meat. Maybe both.
I shook my head. "I suppose it's hard to farm up here, apart from grains and vegetables."
