As I stepped out of the dock to meet Vulka and Nate – Vulka offering small talk, Nate staring at him in polite confusion – my thoughts were so consumed by what Helga had said that I almost walked right past them. Thankfully, Vulka grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.

“Think you can get away from us so soon?” he asked jovially. 

I shook my head in an effort to clear it. “No, sorry, I’m just distracted.”

“What happened in there?” Nate asked, eyes radiating concern.

“She just apologized, that’s all,” I said.

Nate straightened up in surprise. “Huh. Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t have expected that either. Why didn’t she want me there? I was the one–”

He shut up as Helga came through the door. She nodded at us – eyes resting on Nate for a little longer – then turned and left down the corridor without a word. Nate frowned.

“I was the one she was being rude to,” he pouted.

Vulka patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, she will warm up to you soon, I’m sure.”

Nate looked to me for translation, but I was staring into space. “Uh, Case?” he prompted.

I looked up at him, still blank faced. “What?” I asked.

“Vulka told me something, but I don’t know what,” Nate said. “I think he was consoling me. Did you not hear it?”

“Ugh, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t, could you… Oh!”

It finally occurred to me that I was holding the Outer Lingua. I held it up to Nate so he could see.

“Helga gave me this, too,” I said. “You know how I can understand everyone, but you can’t?”

“Yes?” Nate said. “The Intra something?”

I nodded, then explained how the Intra Lingua worked, with some help from Vulka. Nate was confused at first, but seemed to grasp the idea pretty quickly. Figuring out how to describe the speech doubling was the hardest part, since Vulka and I experienced it differently. The idea that our words turned into his strange static was fascinating to me. I had never stopped to think about it before.

“So that’s an Intra Lingua?” Nate asked, when we had finished.

“Apparently, it’s called an ‘Outer Lingua’,” I said, pressing the power button. “Same idea, just outside your head.”

The screen lit up, showing the same interlocking circles that were stamped on the back. Afterwards, it just went blank. Still lit, but there was nothing on the screen. I squinted at it.

“It’s not doing anything,” I said, too soon.

“What are those buttons on it for?” Vulka asked.

The screen lit up, displaying what Vulka had said in plain Ulthean. There was even an impression of curiosity radiating from the words on the device.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “It just works.”

I handed the Outer Lingua to Nate. He turned it over in his hands like I had, inspecting it. “What does ‘active’ and ‘passive’ mean?” he asked.

“Active translation and passive translation, I would guess,” Vulka said. “But I don’t know what difference that could be.”

Nate’s face brightened as he looked at the translator. “It does work!” he said. “How does it work? Why could I tell that he was curious?”

“Not important!” Vulka said. “Flux engineering is nonsense and is definitely not food.”

Nate and I laughed (he was slightly delayed, due to the fact he had to read first), and I felt a pang in my chest as I remembered how good it felt to laugh with him. “Okay, okay, let’s go,” I said.

The walk to the canteen wasn’t too far. I was thankful for that, as the patches on Nate’s jacket – the Ulthean flag and his rank – were drawing a lot of attention. It might have been my imagination, but I got the strong impression that we wouldn’t have made it to the canteen so easily without our security detail. Maybe Helga had put more thought into this than I knew.

When we entered the canteen, the noise level lowered, for just a moment. It quickly returned to its previous state, but I could tell Nate caught a few less-than-gentle stares.

“What was that?” Nate murmured out the side of his mouth. “Did you get this treatment?”

“Ulthea isn’t popular here,” I whispered back. “We kind of stand out. Let’s just eat, and then we can go to the Benevolence.”

The three of us picked up food and found some relatively isolated seats, which wasn’t easy. Since it was around the time most of the crew stopped work as well, we had to contend with plenty of curious spectators regardless of where we sat. 

Nate sat next to me, with Vulka on the other side of the table. Vulka, for his dinner, had a nutritional slurry (Space Walkers had simple needs).

“It looks like normal food,” Nate said, inspecting the meat and vegetables on the plate in front of him. 

“Wait until you eat some,” I said. I felt hyper aware of all the eyes on us, but tried not to let it show. “You’ll get it.”

Nate cut into his meat, and carefully took a bite. As he chewed, his face went through a range of emotion that mine probably had, alone in my room on that first day out of Dr. Skisk’s medbay. Shock, uncertainty, bemusement, acceptance, swallow. I realized I was hearing short, quiet bursts of static from Vulka, and I gently kicked him under the table.

“Blessed, what is that?” Nate asked. “It’s like, not bad exactly, but it’s weirding me out. There’s more… bite.”

“Yeah,” I said, eating some of my own food. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe,” Nate said, sounding uncertain.

“So,” Vulka said, while slurping at his metal straw through an intake port in his helmet. “Casey tells me you two tried dating before?”

I buried my face in my hands, and once Nate had finished reading, he sat up straight in embarrassment as well. “Why did that have to be your first question?” I asked.

“Well, now that I’ve seen Nate, it explains how you look at Helga when you think no one is looking,” Vulka explained placidly.

I froze. Nate’s reaction came a second later (once he had read Vulka’s betrayal) when he inhaled the piece of food he was eating, and we had to make sure he wasn’t going to choke before continuing.

“You–” Nate tried to say, before coughing again. “You’ve been hitting on her? Her?”

“I’m not hitting on my boss!” I insisted. “I’m sure not looking at– I mean, what?”

“I’m not judging,” Vulka said, enjoying himself immensely. “Nate and Helga are both quite strong looking. No matter how I try, I can’t seem to match…”

He wiggled one of his arms for emphasis. I was mortified, but Nate rallied well. “Thanks, but she looks like she could break me in half with a couple fingers,” he said. “If I have that kind of competition, I might as well give up.”

“Blessed, please just kill me…” I moaned, head down on the table. Vulka and Nate were maybe getting on too well. “Okay, fine, yes, sometimes I ‘look’ at Helga. I don’t think that’s wrong! I’m not trying to date her!”

“I mean, she’s a little prickly,” Nate said. “But hey, maybe if that doesn’t work out, we could give it another try? They might be willing to review our application again if we hold different positions.”

“Excuse me?” Vulka asked. “Application?”

“You have to apply to start a relationship to avoid any conflicts or personality clashes,” I explained, lifting my head. “Past a certain age, you just get assigned someone if you can’t make a decision. Like I said, we tried to date, but we had to just stay friends.”

“Well, no applications out here,” Vulka said. He took a long drag from his nutrient paste. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Hah, cute,” Nate said. “We’ll see. It seems like a lot of people don’t seem to be as happy to have me.”

Now that things were moving away from teasing me, I jumped at the chance to change the subject. “How long do I have to convince you to stay?” I asked Nate.

“I was wondering as well,” Vulka said. “I can’t imagine your Blessed are too patient?”

Nate’s mouth moved slightly as he read the Outer Lingua, then he looked up at us. “Actually, Blessed Lawsek gave me a month, which I think is the same amount of time out here, too?”

“A whole month?” I asked. “That’s way longer than I expected.”

“Well, I spent about four days getting here,” Nate explained. “So it’s probably closer to twenty days, given time for us to return.”

I really didn’t like his use of ‘us’. It must have shown, because I felt Vulka suddenly jab me in the side from under the table. From across the table. He made subtle motions with his head that told me ‘say something already’. With a sigh, I relented.

“Nate, we–” I began, but was interrupted as someone slammed into Nate’s back.

Intentionally or not, the tray Nate’s assailant was carrying spilled food down his jacket, making him shout in surprise. He jumped to his feet and swiped at his neck, trying to get the food off. I stood and did my best to help, but it was all over him. Nate’s guards immediately jumped to grab the person who had run into him, a colorfully feathered Avi. From his jumpsuit, I could see he worked in the shipping docks.

“Whoa, whoa, it was just an accident!” the Avi protested, grinning maliciously. Now we had the whole canteen’s attention on us, and more than a few people were laughing. “I’m sorry, big guy. Really.”

Nate glanced down at the Outer Lingua on the table. With an angry frown, he looked back up at the Avi. “You’re not, but I’m not here to start a fight.”

“Sir Urthstripe’s orders were to leave the Ulthean visitor alone,” one of the guards said, shoving the Avi away from our table. “Don’t try it again.”

“Alright, alright,” the Avi chuckled. “See you later, soldier boy!”

With the show over, most of the people in the canteen returned to their food and conversation, but the energy in the room had shifted. I could tell there were plenty that were just waiting for whatever might happen next. Nate was opening and closing his fists, his shoulders tight, now very aware of what the room thought of him. Soup still dripped off of his jacket.

“Nate, are you okay?” I asked. “We can get your clothes cleaned.”

“That ▓░▓▒▓░,” Vulka said. “I know him, he is huge pain in exhaust port. On track to be demoted to janitorial.”

Nate didn’t say anything. He watched the Avi go, then looked down at his food, his face dark. I had never seen him so upset, and that nervous pit in my stomach returned. Then he spoke.

“You know what, I’m just gonna go eat the food on my ship,” Nate said. “I’ve got a headache, and I’m sick of being treated like this.”

“Are you okay? We can come with you,” I said. I reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled away.

“No, it’s fine,” Nate said. “I’m fine. Just finish your dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Vulka and I watched him leave, guards behind him. All eyes in the canteen did the same. I looked at Vulka with despair.

For once, he didn’t have anything to say.