But my parents had died en route to Ceres; only I survived the crash. Now I worked shifts at the radio astronomy dish, four hours on, twelve hours off. It sounds exotic, until you understand that my primary function is to make sure the air filtering system operates smoothly--the task a curse of a specialty in environmental schematics. I could operate and repair almost anything in the observatory that related to air quality and filtration. But I had to go to one of the six Bubbles to see the naked stars.

The Bubbles--or Recreational Observation Posts, if you speak bureaucrat--are set into the rock of Ceres, with openings below into the tunnel network, and are as safe as anything can be made safe on an asteroid. Space and mass restrictions had prevented me from bringing along a diary into which I might pour my daily lamentations of solitude, but I might at least pretend that the stars cared about a gangly blonde loner. And Bubbles are intended for an occupancy of one, which suited me fine . . .

Probably this fact had slipped Petranka's mind as she crawled in beside me. I turned the telescope aside and scrunched over to make room for her.

Petranka Ivanova is a pale wispy girl from Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She speaks six languages, including math. But apparently the word "no" was not on any of her vocabulary lists.

"I'm pregnant, Quinx," she said, after a long and increasingly uncomfortable silence. She did not look at me when she said it.

I'd never been addicted to entertainment 'gram sitcoms. No snappy retorts, no witty rejoinders, came to mind. "Did Doc Beutjer say--?"

Petranka shook her head violently. Her ponytail shimmied like a golden belly dancer down her back.

I said, "Missing a period or two is not unusual up here, Trank. Sometimes it takes a year for all the biorhythms to adjust. I skipped three in a row after I got here, and there is no way I could be--"

"I'm sure, okay?" Petranka began to tremble, and tears thickened her voice. "I'm sure and I'm scared, okay?"

"I think that's normal--"

"Not in space, Quinx." She jostled me as she twisted on the bench. Eyes the color of rainwater searched mine for answers, or for solace. "Nobody's ever been born in space. Who knows what normal is? That's why contraceptives are standard issue for adults. Nobody knows what would happen if . . . if . . ." Her tone filled with bitter acid. "But they didn't issue anything to us, did they? There's no place for us kids to sneak off to, is there?"

"When your parents are working, the warren is yours," I pointed out--and in return received one of those looks usually reserved for adults. I can't win. "So where did you sneak off to?"

She looked away. "We did it in a Bubble."

"There's no room!"

"Oh, Quinx . . . all that imagination, gone to waste."

My face felt hot. "I use it for other things," I protested.

"Yeh . . . so I've heard." She fingered the telescope eyepiece. "What are you looking at?"

"The Red Spot. But don't change the subject, Trank."

"The eye of Jupiter?" She pronounced it "Jupitor," as if it were a zombie from an anime cartoon. "Everyone is watching that these days. Why is it so bright, do you think?"

I sighed. "Trank . . ."

"Yeh, yeh, why tell you?" A deep breath signaled that she'd made up her mind. "Because . . . they trust you. You can get me some mifepristone from the pharmacy and--"

"No! Absolutely not."

Petranka glared at me. "Why not? What do you care? It's my choice."

I wanted to tell her that she'd already made her choice, but her implied intimacy of sisters sharing troubles had been a fabrication. Another shoe was about to drop. I had no idea what it might be.

"If you don't help me," said Petranka, her expression grim now, "I'll tell everyone that you came on to me."

"Trank . . . you can't mean that. Nobody'll believe you."

She nodded solemnly. "They'll believe me. They already know about you and Julene."

Doctor Julene Gossard had misinterpreted the distance between me and others my age as aloofness, and speculated that the source of it might be my orientation. During a shift in the RA dish she approached me, rather indelicately. Too astonished to reply coherently, I managed only the feeble suggestion that, at twice my age, she was too old for me. Afterwards I discovered that anything short of a resounding "No!" left the door ajar. During subsequent shifts Julene and I fell into a sort of awkward tolerance for one another. But I'd been mistaken in thinking that no one else had noticed.

"Nothing happened between us."

"Oh, I believe you, Quinx. Truly I do. But I think you'd better get me what I want." And with that she slid open the deckdoor and climbed back down to the tunnels.

As I said, whom would I tell?

But I was too upset to hold the telescope steady, and all too soon my hour was up. I crawled back to my warren and sealed the hatch, a tortoise clamping the shell shut for a brief hibernation. Quinx Terwilliger, girl hermit.

In the fourth hour of my next tour of duty at the RA dish's OpCen I received two e-coms. One was from Petranka, a pointed reminder that she was still in need of a pharmaceutical coathanger. The other came from Doctor Gossard, who was working a station across the room from me. It read: OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT, YOU AND I. TRY AGAIN?

She had a smile ready for me when I glanced up from the monitor screen. Inside, I felt airy, as if I were waiting for the elevator to drop, knowing my stomach would lurch. Before I knew it, she had drift-hopped across the room and was standing beside me, not too close.

"Doctor Gossard," she said, extending her hand. "Call me Julene."

I touched her hand briefly. In the monitor, the e-com messages defaulted back to the live webcam, a huge scarlet oval, the bloody wound in Jupiter's atmosphere. I'd conducted a color-intensity study in my spare time, patching in the spectral software I'd cobbled together.

"We've met," I answered, a reminder I hoped would inform her that my orientation had not altered in the interim.

Her blue eyes lost some of their sparkle--she understood me well enough. Her lower lip caught on an upper incisor, and for a moment I thought she was on the verge of tears. It occurred to me then that I was the only person I'd ever seen her talking with outside the line of duty. And that for the past three hours I hadn't said a word to her, though we'd been working in proximity. Educated as an adult, I was outcast by my adolescent peers, but I hadn't deserved the isolation. Neither had she.

Static hissed as my pointing finger approached the screen too closely. "It's even redder now," I said.

Julene drifted in beside me. I hadn't realized I was taller by half a head--but smaller adults equate to less mass at liftoff, a factor undoubtedly among the acceptance criteria of NASA/ESA's early days. She leaned closer to inspect my settings. Light from the overhead panels gave her short jet-black hair blue highlights. "You created these intensity scales?"

"Based on standard pixellation intensity. The only frame of reference I had was dpi, and I set 1200 arbitrarily, assuming arithmetic increases."

"I'm impressed."

I gave her a desultory shrug. "It was something to do."

"Such modesty, Quinx. Tell me, why did you set the max at 3000 dpi?"

Already the reading had reached 2770. "I had to set it somewhere," I told her. "Apparently I underestimated the intensity potential. If there's time on my next shift, I'll patch in some software to recalibrate it."

"And why is it so red, do you think?"

I shrugged ignorance. "Judging from the observations of the past, the Spot is already redder than it has ever been."

A short buzzer indicated the end of the shift, and her next question was lost in the shrill vibration. Having reserved another hour of observation in a Bubble, I gathered up the few materials I'd brought and prepared to leave. The hatch slid open, and Doctors Scott, Kashima, and Jamilkowski burst into the Operations Center, gesticulating excitedly. I caught snatches of terminology, something about electrical discharges in the Red Spot and anomalous increases in density. Doctor Gossard looked at them, and looked at me. Clearly she wanted to remain past duty hours, and in any case it was none of my concern, but she said, "Wait up, Quinx. I'll walk you to Bubble Five."

I hadn't realized she'd kept track of my movements and activities. I'm just not that interesting--see all my friends?

"I know the way," I said.

The pause before she said, "I understand," got to me. It meant she accepted our different outlooks. The thermos in her hand clinched the deal. "Real coffee," she assured me, as we stepped into the passageway and began drift-hopping in Ceres' minimal gravity toward the Bubble. "Not decaf. And I even have two siphons."

"Semper parata."

Julene laughed. "They wouldn't accept me into the Girl Scouts. For obvious reasons."

But I scarcely heard her. Petranka Ivanova was drifting toward us through the corridor, on her way to the cafeteria. As she passed, she stared hard at Julene, then gave me a twisted, knowing smile. Furious, I threw an arm in front of Julene, halting her progress. When she turned to question me, I kissed her full on the mouth, drawing back only when I felt her lips start to blossom. Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of Petranka, her pale face now clenched like a fist, and redder than the Eye of Jupiter. She stalked off so angrily that she bumped her skull on the overhead.

Julene's voice came shakily. "What was that for?"

"I can't tell you . . . Never mind." I dragged on her arm as we reached an intersection. "Bubble Five is this way."

"Quinx, you can talk to me."

But I kept silent until we were inside the Bubble.

Wired on caffeine, Julene and I took turns eyeing Jupiter for the next hour. From the five Bubbles surrounding us I saw other telescopes protruding, gleaming, as if a herd of unicorns had been trapped in Ceres' underground, so that only their horns betrayed their location. All aimed at the same spot. The Spot.

"They're about to send a signal to launch a probe from Callisto," said Julene, tilting the thermos so that I might reach the siphon. It was almost empty, and our hour was almost up. "Doctor Kashima calibrated telemetry sensors with the Institute on his last shift. They're going to bounce some waves around in there."

I peered through the lens one last time. The Spot had darkened from scarlet to crimson. "Like an MRI on the atmosphere?"

"Something like that. Microwaves, of course. And a low-yield nuclear device, to test for seismic potential."

That stumped me. "They think something solid's in there?"

"It would explain the anomalies of higher density." With so little room in the Bubble, we were almost touching. Even so, her hand on my shoulder startled me.

"Quinx . . . about Petranka . . ."

Whom would I tell? My parents were dead. The Stationmaster had promised to assign me a guardian, then put the decision on his low-priority to-do list. The right words came with great difficulty--sexuality should be discussed with one's peers--but I was also concerned for what Petranka might do to herself. That was the adult in me thinking, and talking. And all the while I was very careful not to touch Julene.

When I had finished, she said, "So you kissed me to demonstrate that you did not care which rumors she spread about you."

I hadn't mentioned the kiss. I felt my face warm, for no reason. "On impulse only, honest. I had to try something."

"It wasn't a bad idea." She chuckled, and added, "Nor a bad kiss."

My face was still scalding. "It felt funny. Not what I expected. I was . . . I don't know . . . sweet and bubbly inside."

"Ah, yes, that grape soda feeling that accompanies the first kiss."

"Not my first. And this felt more like a bicarb."

"Great, now I'm an aid to indigestion."

In that moment I knew we had become friends. And in the next, Petranka Ivanova slid the hatch open and peered inside. Wild haunted eyes found me. Her face was blanched and drawn. She tried to scream at me, but it came out a hoarse whisper. "See what you made me do? You see what you did to me?" And she slipped from the rungs and landed on the floor of the tunnel.

Julene scrambled down after her, and I followed. Petranka was lying on her back on the hard plastic decking. A thick ribbon of blood trailed to the intersection, and surely beyond. I did not have to see where it flowed from to know what she had done to herself.

Acid scalded the back of my throat as I sat down tailor-fashion and cradled Petranka's head in my lap, while Julene felt for her pulse.

"Quinx," whispered Petranka.

"Right here, Trank." I looked around, at the overhead lights, at the com monitor that was now showing a zoom shot of Jupiter's Red Spot, at the entrance to the Bubble we had just vacated, anywhere but at the girl on the floor. My eyes went to the monitor again and held fast. Suddenly I felt a reckoning, an intuition. "They have to stop the probe," I yelled at Julene. "Go tell them to stop the probe."

Huge pale eyes stared back at me. "Quinx, I can't do that. Why should they do that?"

In my lap, Petranka moaned. I forced myself calm. "I'm not sure. But it has to be stopped. Go find someone. Doctor Kajima, he has authority. Go now! He has to stop that probe."

While Julene made as much haste as the gravity of Ceres would allow, Petranka's fingertips dimpled the skin of my hand, making pale ovals there. Her voice came from the bottom of a well. "I did a very bad thing, Quinx."

I bent and kissed her forehead. Her hand clutched mine even tighter as she fought pain . . . or sought comfort.

"But I didn't tell anyone about you and . . . you know," she said, still hollow. "So I did a good thing, too. I did something good."

I saw a tear splash onto her cheek, and felt another roll to the tip of my nose. "You did something good, Trank."

Her eyes closed. Her face whitened. And then she was gone.

I don't know how long I sat there before the paramedics arrived. No more than minutes, surely, though I felt years older. Behind them someone in white had begun to swab the blood from the floor. I caught a whiff of antiseptic. Petranka's head lolled when they lifted her from my lap and set her tenderly on the stretcher, her ponytail as limp as the rest of her. She looked so small . . .

Someone gasped, and I looked up. In the monitor, a vast scarlet sphere gradually emerged from Jupiter's eye. Behind it trailed streamers of cold gases, an umbilical of white plumes. Impossible to gauge the new moon's velocity, but it seemed to be curling into a rough orbit. And I thought: so that's where they come from.

And already the Red Spot was fading.

Several days later Doctor Kajima summoned me to his office, where he and Stationmaster Gilliatt thanked me personally for urging that the probe be aborted. The nuclear device would have ruined the chances of studying the new world in a pristine condition, and forced scientists and telemetry to cope instead with unnatural radiation readings, atmospheric disturbances, and so forth. I nodded absently and paid scant attention, still mourning Petranka.

And after several more days, Julene invited me to her warren for coffee following our shift. We sat on her sleeping pad and made small talk and siphoned one thermos empty, and in the middle of the second she said, "They want you to name the moon, Quinx. It's your honor. You were the first to grasp its existence."

"It was just a mad intuition that proved out."

She thought about that as she popped open a plastic container. "As are most discoveries. Would you care for some freeze-dried pastries?"

I probed a finger among the nodules. "Something with cinnamon, I hope."

"Try a Danish. Well, then?"

"Iphigenia." Julene just looked at me. "From The Iliad?" I went on. "The daughter who was sacrificed to the gods, that the ships might sail to Troy?"

She hoisted a small glazed twisty in a mock toast that acknowledged the christening. "And thanks to you, ships will once again sail, this time to Iphigenia. I think we will learn much from the new moon."

The Red Spot had vanished after giving birth to Iphigenia. But I still saw a ribbon of red on the tunnel floor, a ribbon that need not have flowed. From the new moon we might learn much, but we still had much to learn about ourselves . . .

. . . and about each other, I thought, and toasted her back with my Danish.