Outside, it is raining. Hard. Not impossible to walk through, but the kind of weather where you'd get drenched within a couple of minutes unless you had the right clothes. They are obviously in a city, and a major one at that; although Cormond is built on the salt-flats, overpopulation has meant that people build up, and given one side of the ( Read more... )

from here:Esfir leads Cal into to her room and shuts the door behind them. Her room has changed from the last time he was here - she's been building bookcases, and even though one is incomplete with tools and pieces of wood on the floor, the room looks more homey ( Read more... )

When Esfir arrived at Milliways, it had been after several years of cosmonaut training and, no, it wasn't all maths and computers. They had to be able to withstand the g-force of a launch, had to be able to push their bodies until they knew exactly when they started to pass out. She was, in short, exceedingly fit when she arrived, and even if ( Read more... )

"Lock the door behind you," Esfir says to Cal, heading straight for the bathroom.

Her room is a normal, hotel-style room; plush carpet, plain curtains framing large windows, of which one is open. But it's very....neat. She's an astronaut, and they are always neat people, but it's still a little too neat. As if she's not planning on staying ( Read more... )