There once was a settlement on Arizon’, 20 kliks from a ruined moonbase at the far edge of what the Space Cowboy Coalition called the 66th Quadrant. The planet to which Arizon’ had been attached is as long-gone and forgotten as its name. By all that’s natural and what we believe to be the laws of science, the tiny golden moon Arizon’ should have spun off and disappeared as well. But there she sits, spinning slowly, holding her place in the quadrant, wreathed in pearly-gray clouds.
A transformation is occurring…


She stared through the not-quite-ice wall, relieved for the moment from the legions of strangely sexless men and women that had pestered her since she was summoned from deep sleep. Most were draped in what she assumed were the ceremonial robes and masks of their tribe, a stiff fabric of white and green, their eyes hidden behind smaller planes of not-quite-ice.