“The hardest thing was getting used to sharing the body,” Janice said. “But we’d worked together for a long time, in the corps and then private, so even that was easier than it could have been. We shift control back and forth pretty effortlessly nowadays, and we can even share sometimes, one of us on the left arm, one on the right, and, of course–”

“We can sing in harmony,” they said simultaneously, and then both chuckled.

Janice went on. “We got sick of being professional lab rats, so we started answering ads for pilots and navigation and communications specialists, presenting ourselves as a package deal, like married couples do sometimes. Lots of captains like hiring couples because they usually work well together, and since they fraternize with themselves, they don’t fraternize with others, which is good for crew dynamics. Of course, all the captains who were interested stopped being interested once they got a look at us. Except Callie. She didn’t blink.”

Callie shrugged. “I’d already been crewed up with Ashok for two years by then. Nobody’s all that strange after that. Besides, a pilot and a navigator who only need one berth on the ship, saving the other room for paying customers? What a bargain.”

“If you don’t mind me asking… were you a couple?” Elena said. “You have such a deep rapport.”

“I’m gay,” Drake said. “Though I don’t date much nowadays.”

“I never saw the point of sex with anybody,” Janice said. “Except occasionally with myself. Also romance is stupid.”

“We were both always pretty self-contained,” Drake said. “You don’t get into the business of long-haul exploration missions unless you’re happy being alone for a while. I do miss having a more active social life during my down time, but the obvious disadvantages of our situation aside, there are some compensations. For one thing, we have an exceptional level of voluntary control over systems that are usually involuntary.”

“What he means is, when we get sad, we can dump all kinds of happy chemicals into our brain, and when we want to have orgasms, we just have them. I know what his feel like and he knows what mine feel like, which is something a lot of people envy. I doubt many of them would be willing to trade with us, though.”

“I’m very glad to meet you both,” Elena said. “I’m sorry I got you into all this mess. I’m sure encountering more aliens was the last thing in the world you wanted.”