"When I'm not about to beat the shit out of anyone? When I'm acting like a rational human being? If we'd had this conversation back at Beebe we'd be throwing things at each other by now." He falls silent for a moment. Something changes in his posture. "Or do you miss that, somehow?"

"No. Of course not," she says, surprised at the thought.

"Well, then—"

"Please. Just— indulge me. What harm can it do?"

He doesn't answer. But she has a sneaking suspicion that he could.

* * *

She has to give him credit. His reluctance shows in every move, but he's even first through the airlock. Something happens to him as it drains, though; the air rushes into him and — displaces something else, somehow. She can't quite put her finger on it. She wonders why she's never noticed it before.

As a reward, she takes him directly into her cubby. He fucks her up against the bulkhead, violently, with no discretion at all. Animal sounds echo through the hull. She wonders, as he comes, if the noise is bothering the others.

* * *

"Have any of you," Acton says, "thought about why things are so fucking grotty down here?"

It's a strange and wondrous occasion, as rare as a planetary conjunction. All the circadian clocks have drifted together for an hour or two, drawn everyone to dinner at the same time. Almost everyone; Lubin is nowhere to be seen. Not that he ever contributes much to the conversation anyway.

"What do you mean?" Caraco says.

"What do you think I mean? Look around, for Chrissake!" Acton waves his arm, taking in the lounge. "The place is barely big enough to stand up in. Everywhere you look there's fucking pipes and cables. It's like living in a service closet."

Brander frowns around a mouthful of rehydrated potato.

"They were on a very strict schedule," Nakata suggests. "It was important to get everything online as quickly as possible. Perhaps they just didn't have time to make everything as cushy as they could have."

Acton snorts. "Come on, Alice. How much extra time would it take to program the blueprints for decent headroom?"

"I feel a conspiracy theory coming on," Brander remarks. "So go on, Karl. Why's the GA going out of its way to make us bump our heads all the time? They breeding us for short height, maybe? So we'll eat less?"

Lenie Clarke feels Acton tensing; it's like a small shockwave pushed out by his clenching muscles, a pulse of tension that ripples through the air and breaks against her 'skin. She rests one calming hand casually on his thigh, under the table. It's a calculated risk, of course. It would piss him off even more if Acton thought he was being patronized.

This time he relaxes a little. "I think they're trying to keep us off balance. I think they deliberately designed Beebe to stress us out."

"Why?" Caraco again, tense but civil.