Pancho was lean and stringy, with the long slim legs of her African heritage. Her skin was no darker than a good tan would produce back in west Texas, but her face was just plain ordinary, with what she considered a lantern jaw and squinty little commonplace brown eyes. She always kept her hair cut so short that the rumor had gone around that she was a lesbian. Not true. But she had a man’s strength in her long, muscled arms and legs, and she never let a man beat her in anything — unless she wanted to.

The transfer buggy that was slated to take them all back to Selene was running late. Cracked nozzle on one of the thrusters, and the last thing the flight controllers wanted was a derelict transfer vehicle carrying six rocket jocks; they would be rebuilding the buggy forty-five ways from Sunday while they coasted Moonward. So the six of them waited in the galley and talked about vacuum breathing. One of the guys claimed he’d sucked vacuum for a full minute. “That explains your IQ,” said his buddy.

“Nobody’s made it for a full minute.”

“Sixty seconds,” the man maintained stubbornly.

“Your lungs would explode.”

“I’m telling you, sixty seconds. On the dot.”

“No damage?”

He hesitated, suddenly shamefaced.

“Well?”

With an attempt at a careless shrug, he admitted, “Left lung collapsed.”

They snickered at him.

“I could prob’ly do it for sixty seconds,” Pancho announced. “You?” The man nearest her guffawed. “Now, Mandy here, she’s got the lung capacity for it.”

Amanda smiled shyly. But when she inhaled they all noticed it.

Pancho hid her anger at their ape-man attitude. “Ninety seconds,” she said flatly.

“Ninety seconds? Impossible!”