She is not as tall as me. I come up to the line of fourth and fifth bulkhead plates. Her eyes are very dark, I think brown, but perhaps they are black. She has dark under her eyes and her cheeks are not full. Her arms and legs are much thinner than mine. She has much longer hair than mine, it comes down her back and it is that dark brown like her eyes. Yes, now I decide her eyes are brown, not black. She has hair between her legs like me but she does not have a penis or scrotum sac. She has larger breasts than me, with very large nipples that stand out, and dark brown slightly-flattened circles around them. There are other differences between us: her fingers are thinner than mine, and longer, and aside from the hair on her head that hangs so long, and the hair between her legs and in her armpits, she has no other hair on her body. Or if she does, it is very fine and pale and I can’t see it.

Then I suddenly realize what she has said. So that’s what the words dimming on the hull of Ship mean. It is a name. Ship is called Starfighter 31 and the female human operator lives in Starfighter 88.

There are ninety-eight other chances. Yes.

Now, as if she is reading my thoughts, trying to answer questions I haven’t yet asked, she says, “Starfighter Eighty-eight has told me to tell you that I am vicious, that I get more vicious every day…” and it answers the thought I have just had—with the memory of my father’s frightened face in the days before he was killed—of my father saying, When Ship says vicious, Ship means smarter.

I know! I suppose I have always known, because I have always wanted to leave Ship and go to those brilliant lights that are stars. But I now make the hook-up.