Leisa

Block after block of helium3 would have been fired out of the launch tube, leaving a breadcrumb trail of fuel for the future inhabitants of Plotinus 4, the terrestrial world in the system that the WSC had earmarked for terraforming. The building of a new earth would have gone on with buoyant hopes and geological slowness while Jose sipped martinis from a jetty over his beloved waters of Palma. If only he could have gone home. If only the relief ships were not eighteen years overdue.

"You alive over there?"

Jose turned to face the stooped figure of Willis crane.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." Jose managed and wiped the moisture from his eyes with a gesture meant to like as though he were wiping his nose.

"Carhart finally got the door to the storage room open. We better get started."

Jose nodded and clicked off the viewing port.

"I was surprised to find you by yourself as often as Leisa follows you into this place."

"She likes the view. She likes–"

"She’s a robot." Crane said in a voice that was even more gravelly than normal. "She’s not supposed to have preferences."

"Your right… I mean I know she doesn’t really enjoy it. Not like we do."

"Really? You know that, do you? Then why does she spend so much time with you? Why doesn’t she follow me around for once?"

"I don’t know. Have you ever asked her to?"

Crane scoffed. "I wouldn’t think of asking her. You know what she told me the other night? Do you know what she said? I asked her to sleep in with me. I just wanted some of her ambient heat for God’s sake." Crane stopped to catch his breath. His right arm was beginning to tremble again. "She said that my night ended at o’six hundred. Said it was the rules. An old man gets cold, Joe. You wouldn’t understand, not even fifty yet. You just wait. Course she’ll stay for you as long as you want."

"She leaves in the morning on my nights too, Willis."

Crane’s face crinkled as if he had just caught a smell of something sharp and pungent. "And what is she doing in here at all? I thought she was supposed to stay still when she’s not with one of us. Minimize wear on parts, all that."

"Well." Jose stammered. "We never really made that a hard and fast rule. I mean it’s not like she’s doing anything strenuous."

Crane let out another scoffing sound and started down the hall.

Only one of the five spokes was still open and heated. The other four had been sealed shut to conserve power. Normally Jose hated the claustrophobic tightness of his world and its single main hallway. There were times when he would endure the smell of the algae vats at the center of the station just for the pleasant, open-air quality of the green room. Today, for Willis’ sake, he was thankful that they only had to walk a few hundred feet. Crane was the oldest of their number, seventy-two, and walked as if someone had powered up one of the androids that Jose had been using for spare parts. Willis was breathing heavily by the time that they reached the open door but he would never have asked Jose for a shoulder; he bore the pride of someone who had outlived sixteen men and woman who had each been younger than he. He squinted into the darkness of the storage room, "Which one is she?"

Jose called for the maximum lighting and eyed the nearly sixty human-looking corpses – all seated against the walls – that lined both sides of the long, narrow space.