Music of the Spheres by Valmore Daniels Page A

that thing doesn’t have X-ray vision or something?”
    Justine laughed. “No excuses. Get ready to be humiliated.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Here’s my other ‘three’. Eighteen.”
    With an exaggerated motion, Justine placed her own ‘three’
down. “Twenty-one for two. And game.”
    Clicking his tongue, the lieutenant flipped over his last
card. “I had a ‘five’.”
    “I had you either way.” Justine showed him her ‘four’.
    Throwing down his card in mock outrage, the lieutenant said,
“I can’t let you get away with that. One more?”
    “I wish I could, but you won’t have much competition against
an icicle.” Justine chuckled and slipped her thick sweater over her head, reducing
her vision to the regular optilink level. “It’s time for me to make a round
anyway. Did you need anything?”
    “No thanks,” he said. “Hey, I know this must be the worst
assignment you’ve ever had.”
    “Not the worst,” Justine said with an equivocal smile.
    “Compared to flying to Pluto?” he asked while packing up the
crib board. “Working as a hostess must be difficult.”
    Rubbing her hands together to get the circulation flowing,
Justine gave a half-shrug. “It may not be as exciting,” she said, “but at least
at I get to tell tall tales, and they pay me for it.”
    She got up and, after polling the other soldiers for their
orders, made her way to the elevator and up to the kitchenette.
    Besides the flight crew and the hospitality staff, no one
else knew Justine was on board. She was recognizable, and if any of the
passengers saw her, it might lead to questions NASA and the military didn’t
want to answer.
    While she was loading a cart with snacks and drinks, one of
the stewardesses, Brandi, popped into the cramped room and walked directly
toward her. Justine couldn’t see the look on her colleague’s face, but the
woman’s voice was a mix of concern and puzzlement.
    “There’s a call for you,” Brandi said.
    Justine shook her head. “No one knows I’m here. Are you sure
it’s for me?”
    Brandi nodded.
    “Who is it?” Justine asked.
    “Don’t know. It’s encoded.”
    Thinking it might be Director Mathers checking in with her, Justine
nodded to Brandi. “Thanks.”
    After securing the food cart in the walk-in cooler, Justine
made her way toward the cabin, outside of which there was a tiny communications
cubical.
    It was a video chat, so there was no need for Justine to
take her sweater off. The regular optilink sensor could translate the digital images
on the screen as if she had normal vision.
    She stepped inside the cubicle, closed the door and turned
on the holoslate.
    A familiar but unexpected face appeared, and Justine was
momentarily taken aback.
    “Clive?”
    When Alex had returned from Centauri, Justine had wanted to
be there on the Moon when Alex got back, and had spent a few hours catching up
with him. After Alex was whisked off by NASA officials back to Earth, Justine
had remained for a few days for a debriefing with Clive Wexhall, who was still
NASA’s liaison on the Moon.
    The first evening, he had invited her out for dinner.
Justine didn’t know whether it was her euphoria at having Alex back safe and
sound, or her own sense of isolation because of her blindness and demotion from
flight status, or if it was just too many glasses of wine, but she had ended up
spending that night—and every subsequent night during her visit—with Clive.
    Once she had returned to Earth, she had chalked it up to
nothing more than a brief fling, but Clive wanted to see her again.
    Despite his regular calls to her afterwards, she had tried
to keep her emotions in check, and keep their relationship on a casual level.
    When she had secured her job with Lunar Lines six months
ago, Clive had somehow found out and had been waiting for her the first time
she docked at Luna Station.
    They had spent every moment of the two-day layover together
as if they had never been apart. Justine had told