I expected him to make one of the classic moves at that moment: casually bumping against me, or touching my shoulder to direct my attention toward something, or taking my hand to lead me across a rough patch of ground... but he kept both hands thrust firmly into the deep pockets of his work pants, and as we started walking again, he scrupulously avoided accidental contact.

That irked me.

I mean, he’d been alone and celibate on Caproche for several years. In many circles, I’m considered sexy; when I sang with the Mootikki Spiders on Trash and Thrash, the reviewer from Mind Spurs Weekly  singled out “the hot brunette on the bicycle” as the high point of the album. It was insulting that this desperate man didn’t even try to...

He touched my shoulder.

I turned to look at him, relieved and preparing my “thanks but no thanks” speech.

He looked away. A moment later, he mumbled, “Over here. There’s something you might like.”

I followed him to a low wall built from fat bricks. Once upon a time those bricks might have been sandbags, but the bags had rotted and the sand left behind had hardened like concrete.

Splayed over the wall grew a mat of snarled threads, each thread porcelain-white under the stars. I could see more patches of the stuff beyond the wall, on rocks, on the grass, even streaked up the trunks of trees.

“I call it the Silk,” Jerith said.

“Some sort of fungus?” I asked.

“No, it photosynthesizes,” he answered. “It lives on UV light — I had it analyzed. Now watch this.”

He poked at a strand with his finger. A moment later, the Silk made a sharp <SPLINK> sound and shattered with a forceful eruption that sent a cloud of powder into the air. I’d been watching so closely, the dust sprayed all over my face. It had a grimy feel, a little moist and gluey. I rubbed at it vigorously, trying to wipe it off.