The Sirens of Space by Jeffrey Caminsky

Winnie”
Weatherlee for another turn was a blessing. Besides, Looking Glass
never looked better. Not since the day that Admiral Clay turned it
over to Miriam Wright.
    “ You think Fitz is of a mind to settle
down now?” Chandler asked with a wicked grin. “Now that he’ll have
a ring through his nose, I doubt he’ll want to be joining us for a
romp on the planet. I expect he’ll have little use for the girlies
of Ishtar, now that he’ll be taking orders from Commodore
Wright.”
    “ Well, I wouldn’t want to infect her
base now, Tommy,” Fitz replied, able to resist no longer. As his
choking friends spat their last bite of lunch all over the table,
he smugly reached for a glass of wine. He often thought that good
food was wasted on line officers. The cuisine aboard the typical
starship made plasterboard seem tasty, and starships had the finest
galleys on any ships of the line. But he could usually coax his
taste buds back to life by the end of liberty, and Ishtar Command
boasted better chow than any starbase this side of New
Babylon.
    After dinner, the three friends walked from
the restaurant down the central concourse toward Corridor C. Fitz
always marveled at the immensity of the spanning archways of
IshCom. A starship’s hexagonal hallways and corridors seemed
cramped by comparison. After endless months in space even the
illusory roominess of a starbase gave a feeling of freedom that
land dwellers—“groundtoads” in spacer’s jargon—could never
understand. Spaceflight freed Man from earthly bounds only to
impose others from which he could not escape. Few content with life
on land could comprehend existence inside the constraints that
space pressed upon the fragile hulls protecting spacers from the
blackness through which they sailed.
    But today the three friends were not in a
philosophical mood. Neither space nor the Guard had much use for
philosophy, and they had more pressing concerns.
    “ You sure, Fitz?” Tanana asked, his
wispy eyebrows raised in amazement.
    “ Yeah, you guys go ahead without me. I
have other things to do.”
    They neared the Corridor C pneumatic tube
station, the largest on the base, with shuttles to every corner of
the starbase.
    “ Madame Tarneaux will be
disappointed,” Chandler said. The last time the three of them got
together, she’d kicked them out of her establishment for starting a
fight with a squad of drunken security guards. Fortunately,
CosGuard captains were her favorite customers—profitable to a
fault, thanks to regulations which frowned on commanders sleeping
with members of their own crews—and she’d promised them special
treatment the next time they called.
    “ I’ve got other things on my mind,”
replied Fitz. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
    After his friends left, he walked toward the
fountain in the middle of the concourse. The statue in the middle
was hardly worth the bother—the modernist school had such jagged
edges, reminding Fitz of the grotesque sculptures of the late
1900s—but running water held a magical fascination for him. He’d
spent half his adult life in enclosures where every drop was
captured and recycled, and crewmen had standing orders to hold
their bladders until they returned to ship. Now even the meager
abundance of a starbase fountain held him in thrall, returning him
to younger days along the Demetrian shores, where wind and water
were details of life that passed unnoticed and unappreciated.
    After what seemed an eternity, he rose and
walked once more toward the tube, his footsteps lost amid the daily
shuffle of those who called the base home. He checked the screen
for destination listings and punched in the code for Z-Deck,
Northeast Quadrant. His ex-wife had recently moved to IshCom, and
he’d never seen her new quarters. Besides, it had been ages since
he’d seen their son.
     
    * * *
    Sitting back in his chair,
Admiral Clay yawned. Official reports might be his last link with
the old days, he thought, but they