[This is not a pen. It is a prayer.]

After the meal, she stared at the logs again, and wondered if the spy would use
the main computer system at all, or whether they could just take a portable
antenna and aim it earthward. It was awfully far, and the electronic
interference of the signal jammers from the war-torn states made it difficult
to get a signal through without a lot of extra power. Unless you were trying to
send a signal into the pacific.

Ray waited for the pacific to rotate into view. The colony's radio link back to
earth came online and the logs came to life. Messages that had been queued up
for the last earth day started to spin out. Ray skimmed over them as they went
out. Just the same list that had been waiting an hour earlier, rapidly making
the second and a half long journey into the relay in the pacific ocean.

A confirmation came back for a message that hadn't been in the log going out.

Got you. I hope.

Ray stopped the flood of logs on her screen and tore into the keyboard, trying
to trace up any piece of information she could on the message. She frowned at
the address it was returning to. She squinted, and then looked up the numbers
in the database to double-check. A computer in Thea's pod. Please let there be
another explanation.

She wasn't supposed to snoop on the other colonists. She was just supposed to
watch and make sure that messages went out in a timely fashion and that nothing
got wedged during the twenty-three hours of communication blackout. But to do
that job, she had a lot of access and so far had only avoided reading people's
messages out of a combined weight of boredom at the contents and a general
respect for everyone's privacy. This cycle, that had changed.

She put a trace on every address assigned to Thea's pod and crossed her
fingers. Please.

She shut the lid to her terminal and took her comm. She'd be paged if anything
interesting came through the link, and so Ray locked the communication pod and
took off for a walk.

The only problem with living in a dome less than a thousand meters across is
that you can't be anonymous for even a few minutes. Ray cut through the pile
of storage pods, trying to avoid anyone and to think, but the reverie lasted
only a few minutes. Her sister Selene bounced up behind her.

Selene was frustratingly outgoing, the way only a child who had known
everyone in her life since birth could. She could talk incessantly about the
minutiae of the lives of every single colonist as if it were her own, and
she took every opportunity to do so. She'd taken to racing around the dome
and scooping up tidbits of gossip to share, bounding up behind people long
enough to catch a piece of conversation before racing off, long stride after
long stride.

Ray envied her energy at least. She took to the low gravity like she had
been born to it. Which she had. Ray hadn't adapted nearly so well. She could
move with the same relative ease, but after an hour or two of moving any
more vigorously than a walk, she'd be nausous and have to pause while her
stomach did somersaults. She was never sure if it was the low gravity or the
food.

------

Ray stirred in her sleep. Her aunt was leaning over her, whispering. "I have
a treat for you. The store had a shipment of bananas!" She could taste them
already, the cherished and exotic flavor, but then she woke. The familiar
heavy feeling of being on earth as a child vanished and she sat up quickly
enough to bounce into the ceiling of her bunk.

She cursed and glanced at the clock on her comm. Nearly lightside again.