Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to First Lines 1000's Challenge #4.

Dean stood by the window, his fingertips pressing against the cold glass.

"Somethin', ain't it?" said the spacer behind him. "Bet you haven't seen it since we arrived, have we?"

Dean shook his head. The great yellow-brown sphere of Eta Vulpeculae 2 crept into the view, slowly, as the lander left Skyhook en route to the starbase. The planet itself looked, to put it kindly, like a yellow puffball mushroom in that perspective. It wasn't a water world like Earth, and the northern hemisphere was in the middle of its long summer. One of the other Vulpeculae stars on the far side of the grouping went dark behind EV2 as the lander's trajectory took it on a curve.

"What're you coming up here for?" the spacer continued.

Everyone kept asking Dean that. He wasn't really sure. If he said "it seemed like a good idea" he wasn't sure of the response he'd get. He wasn't even sure why he was there, on the lander, heading to the starbase.

"You better strap in," he heard. "If you're not, you'll get in trouble when we land. Plus there might be a bump or two."

Which probably meant the pilot would attempt a good rough landing to shake the passengers up. Dean crossed to his seat in the cramped cabin and buckled into the safety harness.

He couldn't see much from where he was, so he had no idea if they were close or not, what the starbase looked like, how many other ships were there; the situation suddenly reminded him of the Exodus, when he mostly slept through the journey from Earth because there wasn't much to look at or do. But then there was a soft bump, and the two crewmen said it was safe to exit.

Dean wasn't the only one on this lander trip, but he seemed to be the only one who didn't have space experience. Still, it didn't appear that hard; he adjusted to the slight gravitational and centrifugal forces aboard the starbase easily, and ignored them from that point.

Once on board, of course, he wasn't even sure where he was going, or what he wanted to do. At first he had thought of just going away for a while, and then the roommate thing came up, and then he remembered that someone had a spacer roommate, and at that point his whole thought had been on replacing the spacer. No, he didn't know anything about these people; but spacers were gone for weeks or months at a time, and if the spacer came home, well, Dean figured he could always crash on someone's couch for a few days until the spacer went back into the stars.

But now he was in orbit himself, not exactly where he should be, and debating whether he should try the space-crew career. It would certainly be different. He probably should have called in absent to work before he left, though, he realized.

The spacer community looked different than those on the planet – "groundlings," he'd heard they were called. "They" including him, of course. Blue and silver were the color themes, uniforms all of a similar cut, nametags sewn on their jackets. But what seemed oddest were that they all looked vaguely alike, the more Dean watched them as they moved about the great open atrium of the starbase. They returned his interested gaze.

Not identical, of course. Here and there were some clones from the same series, but for the most part there wasn't a lot of redundancy. No, it was the hair and skin that made them look more like blood relatives. Many of the spacers were getting sort of an orangey look to their skin, and bleached-looking hair. Some of them had distinct "goggle masks" of white skin around their eyes.

Dean chewed the inside corner of his lower lip thoughtfully. Radiation. Had to be. Lots of solar rads that even the shielding wouldn't block completely, especially through windows. Spend enough time up here, months or years, and yeah, you'd probably start looking different. It made sense, anyway. Whether he was right or not was something else. Radiation was probably something to keep track of, up here.

The bleached hair looked cool, though.

Dean stopped looking about like a tourist and started looking for the commander's office. He might as well at least find out what he'd be getting into, if he wanted to go this route. Okay, radiation. But what else? He had no real idea about the ships: were they antigrav in the cabins, or with full or partial gravity? What on EV2 did the ships do? It wasn't like they did much besides patrol... well, they must have something else to do, because it seemed like a waste to just patrol empty space.

"Arrival at docking station 19: Perro Pequeño. Final boarding call for Terminus at docking station 5." The voice that repeated the public-address message was female. Dean stared at the speaker for a moment. A woman? Here? Then he relaxed: No, it was just a computerized voice. He did wonder why they chose a female voice up here, though, when to the best of his (admittedly limited) knowledge, the spacer culture was entirely male.

There – that looked like someone bureaucratic – he'd ask over there where the commander's office was, and see about this whole spacer thing. As he walked, he wondered where Nick was, what he was doing. It was technically mid-morning back in South Ridge, now, which meant he'd been gone all night. Hm. Probably should've borrowed some toiletries from someone along the way here. He ran his hand through his hair. Ah, good enough for another day before it roosters. Toothbrush'd be handy, though.

It would take some adjusting, of course, after years of one roommate and career, but one thing Androsynth were good at was adjusting. Dean was sure Nick would adjust too.

"Hi," Dean grinned at the (he presumed) officer on duty. "I'm interested in becoming a spacer."

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com