[b]Space, ~20 AU From Brahma[/b]

"So you never have?" Laz teased. He tried to sound playful, but he was really surprised. She was older than him, after all.

"It isn't THAT hard to believe." she blushed. She was young, with dull red hair and skin made ivory pale from years aboard a dimly lit space station. She was cute. The fact that she was long in the face somehow made her cuter. It made it all the more surprising.

"You've HAD To have thought about it, though." he prodded playfully. "Some cute astrophysicist. Maybe a young guy bartending at the Catina."

"There were a few..." she said, looking at him tentatively as if she was weighing whether or not she could trust him. "Okay, so as few years ago I assisted a senior astrophysicist in studying the fluctuation or radiation levels on the Shiva's pole during some sort of proto-solar storm. He was so different than the other men I had worked with. So... I don't know, passionate about his work. He would look out at her, Shiva that is, and say things. He would quote the bible, or he would quote old Hindi poetry." She paused for a second and looked Laz in the eyes, and he felt his heart flutter at the lively girlishness in hers. Seeing his smirk, she giggled. "It's corny, I know... but I hadn't seen that in a man, really. Not about our work. Not about what we did."

"So... what did you do?"

"I flirted... I think. I didn't really grow up like that, when I was a teen I spent most of my free time studying. But I tried to get his attention. I complimented him a lot, brought him his lunch so he didn't have to get it..."

"Assistant stuff." Laz said.

"I wore a tighter jumpsuit." she retorted, "Not the grey uniform one. It was shiny, sort of silver."

"And he didn't notice." 

"No." she answered, remembering her past frustration. "He kept talking about Shiva."

Laz laughed. "I'm sorry you lost out to a brown dwarf, Dr. Florin."

"I'm Eury" she corrected, brushing back her hair. 

"Eury" Laz smiled warmly.

Eury's story was not as surprising when he considered the way the people on Shiva Station carried themselves. It was a place where, even when people were off duty, they were expected to be working in some way. To do anything else, like having a life, was the surest way to stall your career. Working on Shiva Station was one of the highest honors solar scientists could attain. The station monitored the brown dwarf Shiva and it's twin Kali, who orbited each other as they orbited their main star. From way out there, in the farthest depths of human space after the listeners had silenced the other worlds, Kali was the brightest object in the star-filled blackness of space surrounding Shiva. Even Indus, the sun at the center of the system, was dimmer than the Shiva's twin. They were distant and alone, so isolated that it was difficult to fathom. Two hundred and fifteen billion miles from Brahma. To pick it as a home, to sacrifice so much of one's life in the name of science, was hard for a boy who had spent most of his life in the Safe Zone to understand. 

Though Laz couldn't wrap his head around the obsession scientists had with it, he couldn't argue that Shiva was something special. She was the red-purple color of a fresh bruise, much darker than Brahmapura, and even with nothing but an orbital station to compare her too Laz could somehow tell that she was much bigger than the giant that dominated Brahma's sky. She looked like a gas planet despite the fact she was technically a star. Cloudy strips of gas banded around her, twisting and shifting across her surface at a rate so slow that you could only see it in sped up footage. The detail that hinted to her solar status was the glow she gave out. It wasn't the same familiar omnipresent glow that all heavenly bodies exuded. This was deeper, like a fire raging deep beneath her clouds, and the darkness of the distant corner of space made it all the more noticeable. She looked like a massive paper lamp, like those found in the silent zen garden on the edge of Nai Kolkata. The scientists on Shiva Station called their star a 'she', and the pronoun hadn't been lifted from the masculine Hindu God it shared a name with. There was a living quality to her. A breathing, fiery calm. Though they had only stayed for a week, it had felt somber leaving her behind. Laz wondered what it had felt like for the scientists that had chose to come back with them on the return journey. Many would go back to their beloved star soon enough. Some, however, had seen her for the last time.

Several of their passengers, including Doctor Eury Florin, had chosen to stay on the bridge. For them, the bridge might as well have been a viewing deck. Shaped like an elongated semicircle, It was big enough to fit several dozen people, and all but the back wall was acrylic glass so that a panorama of space appeared before them. The ceilings and floors, as well as the back wall, were eggshell-white panels that glowed and filled the room with a soft light. Crew members paced the room, many holding sleek computerized tablets, while others worked from kiosks or talked amongst themselves. The room was filled with people, but it was quiet. In the same way the surfaces of the room controlled the lighting, they also soaked up sound. It gave the room a library-like atmosphere, even when it was hectic. Laz could see why it would be practical. There were fewer distractions up here, making it easier to focus, and this was a place where focus was vital. 

Laz's place was simple. He was a guard, though oftentimes he felt like a babysitter. His job was, more often than not, to intervene in simple disagreements. Canteen guards had it the worst, where they were faced with drunkeness on top of the regular problems. Guarding the bridge, however, was one of the easier tasks. It was nearly ceremonial, and Laz found himself socializing or reading most of the time. At first, he had enjoyed conversing with the ship's Captain, Kgosi. A self-described intellectual, he talked like a professor and carried himself like a soldier. Laz had learned how Kgosi fled to Nai Kolkata with his mother after his father and brother were murdered, pushed into the KangChai sinkhole by rivals jealous of his father's position in the company. He also learned how Kgosi had started out as a cook before working his way up the chain of command and getting his own vessel. This was his, the IUSS Aro, a refitted Solar Barque that had been upgraded to endure long distance trips. Like most Barques, its missions usually were usually supply and delivery. Kgosi reckoned he had been to every station in the Indus system.

It had only taken one indiscretion with the Captain's daughter to cool their relationship, but Laz had found ways to pass the time none the same. Eury was one of his latest.

"What are your plans?" he asked.

"What?"

"Your plans, when we reach Brahma. You left Shiva Station for something." he explained.

"Honestly, it's just been so long..." she leaned against a fold-out surface, the blue strip of light along its lip, giving her fingers a ghastly glow. Space, infinite and endlessly dark between millions of far away stars, was her backdrop. "My grandparents... they raised us after our parents died, my sister and me, they are getting older now. My grandfather just turned one hundred and five a few months ago. I want to see them, before they go."

Laz whistled. "The things he must've seen."

Eury stared out, her eyes focusing on something beyond the stars. She smiled warmly. "He used to tell me stories of Earth. He told me about how he hiked the Great Wall before they closed it to the public. I'm not even sure..." she paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "The way he explained it, when he talked about how fresh the air was that far out of urban China, and how weeds were overtaking the stone. I felt like I was somehow... like I was somehow there, though I have never been within a light year of Earth, let alone on it. He told me Earth was in our blood, that our primeval souls were born and made on our home planet and that no human would forget it."

"I like that." Laz replied.

Eury smiled. "So do I."