It wasn’t going to happen. Ivan looked at his hands. Chrome, all the way up. There was no cure for this. And it probably wasn’t going to stop. He was dead, for all practical purposes. He poked the interface on his chest, the point where flesh met metal. The difference in texture was obvious.

From the inside, it felt no different. He could feel his fingers poking the chrome part of his chest. The sensation was neither more nor less sensitive, or odd in any way. Even his fingers seemed to have the same sense of touch. But from the outside…

Ivan stared at his fingers for several seconds more, then slowly moved the keyboard and put his head down on the desk. His shoulders shook, then his hands. Within seconds, he was sobbing, his cheeks pulled back in a rictus of emotional overload.

Between ragged breaths, he kept repeating, “Oh, God, Judy, I love you. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Eventually, wrung out, he threw himself on his bunk and was unconscious within seconds.

20.ICDC

20.ICDC

Dr. Madhur Narang looked up from the file. “Is this a joke?” She noted in passing that the slight lilt in her voice from her New Delhi origins had become more pronounced. That happened when she became excited, which made her a truly awful poker player.

“I wish it was.” Dr. Karin Laakkonen, ICDC director and Narang’s immediate boss, waved a hand toward the folder. “We received this yesterday, and we’ve verified the source. It’s a class-IV Chrysler-Morrison mining ship, the Mad Astra, returning early from a tour of the belt. They have recently registered a large strike, so are not motivated to casually create any kind of controversy. I’ve had some people look at the supporting documentation, and it’s not obviously faked.”

“What are we planning to do?”

“Well, we do have plans in place for isolating incoming space ships. Thus the word Interplanetary at the beginning of our name. I’ve asked the Isolation Systems people to have something ready, and we’ve sent orders to the Astra to proceed to the specified coordinates.”

Laakkonen poked at her tablet. “Which brings us to this meeting, Madhur. I’m putting you in charge of the case. Benton is more senior than you, but she is somewhat unimaginative and by-the-book. I don’t think that’s optimal for this particular situation.”

Narang grinned at her boss, silently agreeing. Dr. Sydney Benton was a knowledgeable doctor and an excellent technician, but far too inclined to retreat into standard procedures when things went off the rails.

Her tablet beeped, and Dr. Narang looked down to see the file that her boss had just sent. She quickly flipped through it. Travel itinerary, authorizations, contacts… Narang smiled. She was going into space.

Dr. Laakkonen chuckled, correctly guessing the reason for Narang’s expression. “This is your first time, isn’t it?”