Phantasm 1: For the Light of the Stars (two)

Many people don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.

Laura Wilcox had been looking for the mess hall, following the direction James Silverburgh had provided her, but in the end she did not find it so much as stumble across it.

It was a large, relatively open area populated by a varied assortment of tables and chairs. The illumination here was much brighter than in the winding corridors. Glowing bulbs situated at intervals high overhead shed far-reaching artificial rays. A number of people had gathered here though the mess hall was by no means filled to capacity, not even to the point where sharing a table with a stranger might prove necessary. There was an acceptable amalgam of peoples and races here, but the ratio, predictably, showed that more humans than aliens were present. The contrasts between species interested Laura who had seen very few outlanders on Earth; the different hues of their skins and basic characteristics stood out against the more modest pale pinks and browns of human flesh. She could sense very little in the way of xenophobia here, which was reassuring; the zealots of old seemed to have been removed from civilisation at long last.

Turning her attention away from them, she found a counter where she was to queue for service. She moved over to the counter, stepping further inside. Immediately the level of noise proved to be one of the more prominent differences, as it had been in the hangar. The conversations of many unintelligible languages almost drowned out the lively hum of background music playing from invisible speakers. Both sweet and bitter scented excrement collided with foul human sweat. She reached the counter and waited her turn.

It came within only a few minutes, moving far faster than she had expected. Laura ordered from a menu, paying a modest fee with the credit chips provided for her use, then stepped to the side while her order was prepared. She was presented with a steaming tray that looked awkward to hold. Laura took it and managed to weave her way through the aisles of tables and chairs before at last reaching one that was unused. She sat, settling in with a sigh.

The food wasn’t bad, actually, a kind of hot, lumpy oatmeal with a dry texture, but it wasn’t flavourless as she had feared it might be, and there was also a small bowl of fruit. Of the fruit, the strawberries were the nicest, a healthy red colour and permeated by juices that dribbled down her chin. Simple water was her refreshment, cool to her throat as it slid all the way down.

Valuing her privacy as always, Laura kept to herself. She made sure her eyes did not stray about the room without reason, not wishing to draw any attention, but she felt the inquisitive glances from others fall upon her anyway. That was to be expected. There were very few girls or women here and it was natural for her to be closely observed. It did not matter much, though, as none approached her. Not yet.

She was munching on another plump strawberry when a shadow did finally fall upon her table. Hunched over her tray, Laura looked up to see a man balancing a tray like her own on his arm. He looked about forty from the way his hair was beginning to recede, flecked with patches of grey at the sides. His body was quite thin but well toned. Laura couldn’t see his eyes; they were obscured by a thin visor that stretched all the way across his face. A wire snaked down from the visor, leading into an armband that covered his implant ports, identical to Silverburgh’s.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked. His voice sounded cold, not harsh but devoid of feeling. It was a voice that should have belonged to a robot, or maybe an analytical, rather than a human.