For most known intelligent species – or at least those similar enough to humans that we’re able to relate on a fundamental level – water truly is life. The Sedalai word for snow sounds the same as the one for father; the Ripali, like Earth’s pre-war salmon, are drawn back to the waters where they first hatched, there to be drowned and reborn in their second form.

The Potluck itself – humanity’s savior and bane – was founded when the newly spacefaring Kithari traded the matter converters that fed their planet in the wake of famine to a people who’d mastered the art of hopping through space at unholy speeds but who were desperate to solve a water crisis. It was water, not guns or gold or spaceships, that helped the Kithari most on their path to power and yet this very plenty seems to have fostered an obsession with that which can’t be replicated.

Soil, water, air, and the hands that grow are all part of what the Kithari call ‘papoallai’, the parts that make a unique whole, somewhat equivalent to the Earthen idea of terroir. The more technologically advanced the Potluck’s founding species becomes, the more they long to experience new papoallai.

Considering that, the expensive bargain they drove with humanity for the right to clean up our planet and receive regular shipments of food in return makes remarkable sense.

-the Interstellar Love of Cooking, Volume One

* * *

The Lunar Queen’s lights were turned down low at night, track lighting on the floor a dim lavender with bright white lavatory signs above and the faint glow of stars shining through the windows.

If the Sedalai ship had been a sort of cozy family room and the Diamond Kiss a prison, the Lunar Queen was a space-age passenger train, comfortable enough for our three-week stay but used more often for short trips. It was pleasant but not luxurious, a practical space cruiser run by an alliance of corporate powers who also happened to be some of the larger rivals to my family’s power in free space.

It stopped at every ex-Earthen station along the way in a slow, meandering journey. Passengers left and others entered, wandering past with tired, incurious faces and settling into the first open seats they saw, for all the world like any commuter headed home on a packed evening bus.

We flew from glittering high tech complexes to warty domes poking out of rocky asteroids, from cavernous colony ships to filthy manufacturing facilities. Massive metallic stations set into permanent orbit around one celestial body or another seemed to be the most common way to live, and I hoped they were more pleasant to look at on the inside than they were from without.

We’d paid for private, capsule-like bunks with a small shared sitting area for daytime use, but we were allowed to use the public areas as well and I quickly decided that the observatory next to the exit was the best part of the ship. Sneaking out at night to watch people and stations come and go was my secret joy, a small rebellion I wasn’t sure I could explain if anyone asked. Part of it was a petty revenge against Dove’s sudden withdrawal behind her professional wall after things changed between us on Octavia, but it also felt like something more.

Like I was inside an incubator, I thought as I gazed out the window and watched a hideous factory-like station inch into view, its orifices belching unnaturally hued gases into the void. Like the light of the stars was changing me into something new, and the longer I sat alone with them the faster it would happen.

It was a transitory time, caught between our journey and whatever I would find on New Mexico Prime, and I felt frozen in a dream. I saw a lot of things while I sat like that.

Four generations of a family including a loudly unhappy baby who exited at a depressing-looking colony ship straight out of the old recordings of the Exodus.

A noisy group of young men and women, dressed in orange coveralls and carrying heavy sacks of tools that they stashed in a messy pile behind their seats. They pulled bottles and bags of snacks out of their pockets and I got to hear all about who Cameron at headquarters was sleeping with. They got off at a corporate-looking station built into the side of an asteroid, leaving seats littered with tiny plastic bottles and chip crumbs and a distinct funk of booze, sweat, and oil in the air.

A trio of couples around my mom’s age, already dressed for whatever retirement station they were headed to and high on life – probably high on something else, too. They took the row of seats across the aisle and I listened with fascination as they discussed which casino they should check out first. I was disappointed when they wove their unsteady way to the dining hall for refreshments, since they’d been reading reviews of hotel buffets aloud and I wanted to hear more.

What didn’t I see? Aliens, or any sort of planet that looked like it could sustain human life. We were all thoroughly human, crew and passengers alike, and I suspected there might not even be another Earthen on board outside of our little party. A weary nonchalance hung over the ship that felt travel-worn and broken in. These were people who hadn’t ventured out from inside a ship or dome in years, and it showed.

Tonight, I watched as an unusually quiet group was herded into the observatory by a cluster of uniformed men. I hunched down and hoped I wasn’t about to regret my illicit wanderings. Dove had been clear that none of us should go out alone, and I’d been intentionally flaunting her rules in a way I knew was stupid but couldn’t resist doing anyway.

I slid further into the shadows and watched them walk by, noting the lined faces – most seemed older than me – and simple, identical clothing, bland gray shirts and tops with slip-on shoes that screamed institutional. One muttered to himself as he passed, a rambling of nonsensical phrases that didn’t make any sense until I let the rhythm of it wash over me and become something more.

The stars are my stars are your stars are you coming are you coming are you coming for dinner it’s time to get ready for the party best put your dress on.

The asterimaniacs on the Diamond Kiss had gone on incessantly about a party, too. The words jerked me upright and I saw a skinny, balding man looking back over his shoulder.

He beamed widely as he saw that he’d caught my attention, giving me a thumbs up before the nearest guard gave him a shove and kept him moving till he was swallowed up by the larger group. But then they were all repeating it as they walked by, conspiratorial whispers and soft brushes on my arm as they passed my seat. The guard tailing them eyed me suspiciously but I sank further into the shadows and he moved on, following the group to where they waited near the exit doors.

Then something moved out of the darkness behind me and slid into the empty seat I’d left near the aisle. I smelled cinnamon and any trace of fear left me, even though I knew I should be worried about how she would react to my late night wandering. She surprised me, though, and didn’t say a thing, just sat down and watched the group at the exit with careful attention.

I thought it over, then came to a distasteful conclusion. “Have you been following me every time I come here?”

“Probably,” Dove told me calmly. “I’ve got an alert set on the door. It’s my job.”

I nodded and tried not to feel embarrassed. She’d been humoring me, following me around like I was a toddler who might fall down the stairs or stick my finger in an electrical socket. And yet she was right – it was her job, even if it meant she’d been going light on sleep because of it. No wonder she didn’t want to get involved with someone she was working for. I sighed, and the embarrassment changed to guilt.

“Don’t apologize,” Dove said. She must have heard me draw a breath and guessed what was coming. “I get it, but that doesn’t mean I could risk leaving you here alone. Anyone could snatch you, pull you off onto one of these hell holes.”

She nodded at the factory out the window and we watched in silence as the docking clamps extended and attached to the ship’s access hatch. I looked back at the cluster of gray-clothed people who waited near the exit and shuddered.

“Shouldn’t they be going to a care facility?” I asked, already afraid of the answer. “Why drop a bunch of asterimaniacs in a place like this?”

Dove reached out and touched my hand briefly, something she hadn’t done since Octavia. She’d pulled into herself both physically and emotionally, and though she still spoke civilly enough there was a new distance that made me feel miserable and vaguely ashamed, as though I’d forced myself on her all unwilling. I had to keep reminding myself of all the ways she’d pushed at our friendship. As far as I could tell, I was just the criminal who’d asked her to talk about it.

“I don’t know,” she answered after a delay, “but I can guess. Ask Emiliano.”

The dimly lit observation room stirred something reckless in me and I turned sideways to lean against the back of my seat so I could watch Dove as she scanned the room for trouble, her face studiously calm. “Maybe I should ask him what you’re so afraid of, too,” I said idly, wanting to make her show some sort of emotion, but all she did was grunt in a completely unsatisfying way.

“Public speaking,” she told me flatly. “And millipedes.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Is that why you like space so much? You don’t have to worry about millipedes?”

Her lips twitched. “If that’s what you think, you clearly haven’t watched enough classic sci-fi. We’re going to have to remedy that.”

“That sounds fun.” I sighed, because the vivid mental image her words conjured up – our bodies twined together on a sofa, bowl of popcorn on our laps, some ridiculous sci-fi movie on the screen – was all too tempting. “But you know that’s not what I meant.”

She didn’t say anything for a while, and I’d gone back to looking out the window when she cleared her throat. “I really do hate public speaking. All those people looking at me and judging, and I never know what expression I should have on my face. What about you?”

I should have had a reply ready, considering how much time I usually spent worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong, but here – flying through the space between stars – the usual answers didn’t seem to apply.

I turned to her as I remembered the last time I’d been truly afraid. “I never want to be trapped,” I told her, thinking of the rungs of the ladder slippery in my grasp, the feel of hands dragging me down. It had been too much like that time in the grocery store parking lot, too much like being a kid at church, and I never wanted to be in that position again. “I’m afraid of being alone and defenseless.”

Dove nodded. “I’ll teach you everything I can,” she promised.

“And I’ll try not to make you do any public speaking,” I answered, and was pleased to hear her chuckling behind me as we headed back to our bunks.