Free Starship Summer by Eric Brown

amiably about nothing in particular for a while, the comfortable banter of friends who have known each other for years. Oddly, even though I’d been on the planet for less than a week, I was made to feel part of the group, as if I too had known each of them for years.
    At one point I mentioned I was looking for a part-time job—more, I joked, to keep me out of the Fighting Jackeral.
    “I don’t see what’s wrong with spending half one’s life in the Jackeral,” Maddie said. “Look at me…”
    This was open invitation for Hawk to say, “Yeah, just look. Fair warning, David—get that job or you’ll end up like Maddie.”
    “We all have our foibles,” Maddie said primly. “Mine is the steady consumption of alcohol in pleasant company. Just because I don’t share your predilection for pre-pubescent alien girls.”
    I looked at Hawk to see how he’d take this. He laughed. “Kee is an adult, Maddie. You know that. And anyway, we don’t have sex.”
    Maddie stared at him. “You don’t? You never told me that.”
    “I don’t tell you everything I don’t do, Maddie.” He shrugged. “Our relationship is platonic. It’s more like… I suppose like having a daughter.”
    “But you told me you loved her?” Maddie said.
    Hawk said, “So? You can love someone like a daughter, even if she isn’t technically your daughter.”
    I looked at Maddie, wondering if her condition, her physical isolation, had over the years worked to deaden her empathy.
    She said to me, “Do you understand that, David?”
    I looked past her, to the holocube of the laughing blonde girl. I was overcome, suddenly, by the recollection of the love I had felt for my daughter. I nodded. “Of course. We can love anyone. If we can love someone, without physical intimacy, then isn’t that something to be cherished?”
    In the quick ensuing silence I caught the bitter look on Maddie’s face as she stared across at Hawk, who was self-consciously gazing through the viewscreen at the Ring.
    Matt broke the uneasy silence. “David, you said you were looking for work. What were you thinking of?”
    I shrugged. “Something that’d keep me active for a couple of days a week. Nothing too stressful.”
    “How about some courier work? The company I used went bust recently—they delivered my work materials once a week from MacIntyre and took my completed work back to the Telemass Station.”
    So it’d be two days a week, a couple of trips down the coast to the capital. They charged me a couple of hundred a week. I’ll match that, if you’re interested.”
    “That sounds perfect,” I said. The thought of getting down to the capital twice a week, and getting paid for the effort, appealed to me.
    Hawk and Maddie were on speaking terms again. “Have you seen these apparitions?” Maddie was asking him.
    Hawk shook his head. “Only David has.”
    “What were they like?”
    I told her. “Pretty archetypal aliens—before we met the Qlax and the Zexu, that is. Green, slim, amphibian-looking.”
    “When did they appear?”
    “I’m not sure. I’d been asleep a while. One, two-ish, maybe.”
    She looked around the group. “It’s midnight now,” she said. “How about we dim the lights, keep quiet and wait for the alien spooks to show themselves?”
    Matt laughed. “I feel twelve years old again, spending the night in the old Hooper place on the hill…”
    “Why not?” Hawk shrugged. “It might help us work out where the projections come from.”
    Maddie said to me, “You weren’t wanting to get rid of us and have an early night, David?”
    “You kidding? And miss a ghost hunt with friends? I’ll get another bottle.”
    I slipped into the galley, fumbled a bottle of wine from the rack—almost dropping it in the process—and staggered back to the lounge. Until I’d stood up, I didn’t know how drunk I was.
    I opened the bottle and refilled glasses. I raised mine, “To the good ship Mantis and all who haunt her!”
    We toasted the