Isabel raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re allowed to switch it off?’

Kiku gave a mischievous shrug. ‘Not officially.’

‘We’ll stick with grav,’ Tamsin said. ‘I like to feel like I’m actually upside down.’

‘You got it,’ Kiku said. She leaned into the vox. ‘Sunside One, requesting a spot in line.’

‘Granted, Sunside One,’ the traffic controller replied. ‘Have fun.’

The skiff pulled out and headed for the nearest airlock exit. A queue of private shuttles and long-haul transports each waited their turn. ‘It’ll be about half an hour until we reach the course,’ Kiku said, easing into the queue. ‘So just kick back and relax.’ She took a hand away from the controls and dug around in a storage box strapped to the side of her seat. ‘Either of you like salt toffee?’

Tamsin and Isabel spoke in tandem: ‘Yes.’ Kiku grinned, retrieved a tin, and gestured at her controls. A cleanerbot deployed itself from its dock in the corner of the craft, its tiny stabiliser jets firing friendly green. It hummed over to Kiku, who balanced the tin on its flat housing. ‘Second row,’ she commanded, and the bot complied, uncaring of the extra cargo.

‘Now that’s a creative use for a cleanerbot,’ Tamsin said, retrieving the tin from the idling machine.

‘Works, yeah?’ Kiku said.

‘Sure does.’ Tamsin looked at Isabel as she opened the tin. ‘I’m never getting up to fetch you something ever again.’

The queue moved forward without much wait, and the skiff entered the airlock. One gate slid shut behind them, another opened ahead. Metal made way for space and starlight. Tamsin held her hand a little tighter, and Isabel didn’t need to look at her to know she was smiling. She shared the feeling. The open was always beautiful.

And so they made their way to that old classic: the Sunside Joyride. A break-neck, full-throttle, sun-facing jaunt through whichever designated patch of rock the Fleet was orbiting closest to. A just-for-fun extravagance unveiled after GC citizenship expanded trade routes, and maintained by private donations after it became obvious that resources weren’t as freely flowing as hoped. The courses were safe, obviously. They were mapped out well in advance, and every rock was equipped with proximity alarms and backup proximity alarms and stabilisation thrusters that kept them from straying into the track. The pilots were exhaustively trained, and traffic control back home watched their every move on the tracking map. But none of that changed the way it felt to be strapped into a small craft, looping and leaping in three dimensions, the clear wall around you playing the convincing trick that there was nothing between you and open sky. Some people hated it. Some people tried it once and decided they preferred keeping their lunch down.

Some people were no fun.

‘What course are we hitting tonight?’ Isabel asked.

‘The Ten-Drop Twister,’ Kiku said.

Tamsin looked at Isabel. ‘I don’t remember that one.’

‘It’s new,’ Kiku said. ‘Replaced the Devil Dive.’

‘Aw, really? That one was great.’

The pilot nodded with sympathetic agreement. ‘Yeah, but they found tungsten in that one.’

‘Hard to argue that,’ said Tamsin.

‘Don’t worry,’ Kiku said. She put on a pair of pilot’s gloves, the kind you only wore for manual control. Isabel’s heart raced with anticipation. ‘The Ten-Drop’s a real kick in the pants. You won’t be disappointed.’

The skiff pulled up to an asteroid patch, filled with tell-tale lights and markers. A big circle of light buoys wreathed the entrance point, blinking in an assortment of colours. Kiku activated her hud. The engines burned loud and hot. ‘You two strapped in?’

Isabel tugged on her restraints, and her wife did the same. This had scared Tamsin the first time, Isabel remembered. She remembered a row of painful semi-circles embedded in her palm, where Tamsin had gripped tightly in fear. She remembered rubbing her then-girlfriend’s back as she threw up on the dock the second they left the skiff. And she remembered the next day, when she awoke to find Tamsin’s open eyes looking back from the pillow beside her, a who-cares grin in her voice as she asked Isabel if she wanted to go again.

Isabel had. From then on, if Tamsin was there, she’d be right alongside.

The engines roared, and the skiff ripped forward. ‘Ohhhhhh nooooo!’ Tamsin yelled, the last vowels blooming into a cackling yelp. Isabel yelled too, a screaming, living laugh as their skiff ducked and slid and jived.

‘Faster!’ Tamsin called.

‘Faster!’ Isabel echoed.

From behind, Isabel could see Kiku’s cheeks pull into a huge smile. ‘You got it,’ she said, and they went faster, louder, upside down and circling sharp. Giant rocks floated beyond the windowed walls, looming one moment, then behind them in a blink. Stars flew by in a confettied blur. Tamsin was laughing so hard she was crying, and it was impossible not to laugh along. Isabel could feel nothing but motion, joy, heartbeat. It was as good as it’d been the first time, as good as it had always been. She shut her eyes, and she cheered.

Eyas

A canyon rose up around her, arches crumbling and rocks stained red. The sky was so far away, a swath of intangible blue beyond the grass-tufted clifftops. Below, birds nested in whatever cracks and crevices they could find. They darted around the shady space with breathtaking speed, turning to catch beakfuls of the insects that filled the hot air.