Fred was fun, quick to laugh, accepting of the media and government as purveyors of fine truths, close to his parents, loyal. People flocked to him all the time because he was that kind of guy. Shell has a different relationship with people, and that created a paradox. Nobody flocks to Shell because she knows things and lets people know that she knows. She and Fred were opposite poles of a magnet: stronger together, but, when it came to interacting with others, confusing. They came for Fred and left because of Shell. It wasn’t a problem at first, Fred being willing and able to smooth troubled waters, but the closer Shell got to the end of her training, the more intense she was. It’s difficult to understand if you’re on the outside, and perhaps it was her mistake to date someone… uninitiated, but the sex was good, the conversation better, and she needed a break from understanding radiation shielding.

“You don’t have to say everything you know, Shell,” Fred said. They were driving home from a disastrous dinner. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

Yeah, she did. She’d had to prove herself from a very young age. To everyone. Fuck them.

“Fred, the Dark Side of the moon isn’t dark. I thought everyone knew this.”

“I didn’t,” said Fred.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t.

“Well, then you’re an idiot. We’re in a solar system. How could that possibly be the case?”

Shouldn’t have said that.

Shell apologised, but in retrospect that was the moment the relationship ended. They stumbled on for another year, fulfilling the bare minimum of interaction required. Conversation died, so did the sex, but neither Fred nor she could pull the trigger.

Ultimately, it fizzled, going out with a whimper rather than bang. It still hurt when he stopped calling, or when she saw him with someone else. Tara, her name was. Nice girl, no dark secrets, shame about the hair.

Shell did what she always does and threw herself into work. Whenever anyone asked about That Guy, she changed the subject.

When the Operations Officer of MaxGalactix US called her in, she hadn’t spoken to another human outside the training for six weeks straight, not even her brothers.

“What are your plans?” he asked.

“Well, I’ll know in two months if I qualify for—”

“You’re going to qualify. What are your plans?”

“I was thinking NASA.”

“Why?”

“Sheer breadth of experience. Resources. Vision.”

He laughed at that. “You’ll run tests for a few months, then you’ll go into orbit, run more tests there, come back, they’ll consider you for Mars, pass you over, then accept you, but by then you’ll have a hard-on for interstellar work. Not that you don’t have it now, but you need to know an acceptable outlet – a sublimation of your erection, so to speak. You follow?”