Aliens

"Since you're so taken with me, how about a wild guess where I'm from?"

Forcing my gaze upwards did not provide fewer distractions. Odyssa's friendly smile with four huge fangs only worsened my gawping. Still, the cogs turned in response to her question and I said "Not gonna be anywhere in the Core with that pigmentation, is it?"

"I was born on Ringworld," she said, "And raised on Enceladus. Whence the low lights and such."

"Enceladus? The Ice Moon?"

"Yup."

"You must have fallen from grace."

Odyssa shrugged. "Not really," she said, and blinked, an impressive motion on her face. I waited for her to elaborate, but instead she grinned again, and half-turned in the doorway. "We'll talk of me more soon I expect. Stay here, I'll be back in a moment."

My comment on not having a choice never reached her. First because she vanished too quickly to catch it, and second because I ran out of vocal cords mid-sentence, cue more coughing and spluttering.

Enceladus is a moon of Saturn, roughly 500 kilometres across, and covered in ice, as the nickname suggests. It is the last remaining celestial body around that size currently orbiting the ringed gas planet. All of the bigger and more desirable colonies were destroyed millennia ago during the Solaric Empire's expansion. The Ice Moon, tiny little thing, escaped via innovation: its people were the first to develop workable energy screens. By the time everybody else caught up, conquering them was no longer worth the trouble.

Precious few in the entire solar system knew what humans from Enceladus looked like, and even fewer were willing to share. The long period that the planetoid had to be constantly shielded from attack created an extremely isolationist pocket-civilization. The bulk of the population lived somewhere under the ice, and the inhabitants on the surface only manned the one spaceport and many defensive installations. Naturally, legends flourished concerning the nature of life for this hidden society. Some mentioned cities floating like enormous inhabited whales, drifting endlessly through the subsurface ocean. Some claimed they live sprawled on the bottom, in great isonon domes, clustered around thermal vents in the crust. Either of these appeared plausible to me given what improbably strong materials the Outworlders are known to wield compared to resources down here in the Core. There is no such hint of believability when it comes the inhabitants themselves. The least preposterous image I saw resembled a species of Terran marine mammals called porpoises, only with arms and legs. Odyssa's promised to be a strange tale, as she would be an extra rare example of an outsider who was allowed into the fabled mystery ball, and came out again. Now she was here, where the most people lived who had no clue at all what her home might possibly be like.

While I was thinking, the watertight door swung slowly back towards its closed position. As it stalled just short of the seam, Odyssa returned, shoving it open again. Close behind followed a young woman who was around my age, around my size and proportions and with similar colours. In spite of not ostensibly being from some distant world, this "Charly" presented a more bizarre and unusual image than her genuine alien companion. Words escaped me without the slightest filter.

"Why even wear anything?" I blurted, making no attempt to avoid staring. At first it looked as though she were wearing nothing, completely bare. Her large round breasts swayed naturally from side to side with her gait. That simple nakedness would have made a lesser impression, but it was not so. Wafer thin seams at the extremities, a zipper down the middle, and an almost imperceptible shimmering effect across all the enveloped skin betrayed the presence of some impossibly exotic fabric. It was like the gown Carmencita made me wear taken to its ****.

"Like, what's the point?" I continued, and only now spared a thought to look the newcomer in the eye when speaking to her, "It's a bit redundant, isn't it..? Oh never mind."

The girl shrugged, looking down at herself, and while I was busy trying to recognize her, spoke. "I fell in the canal recently, and this is all Odyssa brought with her that could fit me. It's very warm, actually, and it would only be until my stuff dries. We weren't expecting to run into you, Frank."

Odyssa narrowed her eyes at both of us at once, not a difficult expression for her. "You've met before then?"

"He's my cousin. It's his mother what called me earlier. She called me a freak when I asked for moral support. But that's a mistake I'll only make once."

Charlotte moved closer, staring at me where I lay helpless. "We can't possibly trust him," she said, "You should have hit him harder, Odyssa."