Jen and Molly went fearlessly into the forbidden. Maria lagged behind. The virtual world fed into her brain by her wireless jack glazed the plain hallway with a layer of live-band clips advertising concerts that would be simulcast over the ether. It reminded her of how Pa always complained that since jacks came along, people just sat in an empty box and pretended they were having fun. But Maria remembered what an empty box the home ship had been before she got her first jack, and was glad to have it.

Jezebel's was the place to be, Molly had said. Of all the clubs in Callisto Port, it had to be Jezebel's, the only place worth risking the hard-labor punishment Ma and Pa would sentence them to if they found out. Her cousins had slipped away the last time the family docked up. While Maria dutifully helped unload bricks of polymer and buy new stocks of rock-eating microbes, Molly and Jen had gone into Callisto Port with the provisions shopping list. They'd bought new personal dacs that were modified to keep secrets from Taurus-7's central dac. Maria had seen the log of her cousins dancing in just their corsets and short skirts. They had promised to bring her along this time.

Maria couldn't help gripping the hem of her brand-new, pleated miniskirt with both hands. In the microgravity out on the surface where the family turned rocks into plastic, a skirt would be less than useless. She didn't quite trust it to stay down, even in the spinning station's illusion of a full gee. Maria's plain shirt was still buttoned up to the throat. Molly and Jen had already undone theirs halfway. She'd put on her newest, nicest corset before they left the ship but it was nothing like the low-cut, frilly things that station women wore-corsets that couldn't stop a four-gee burn from squashing their breasts painfully flat.

Ma and Auntie, never mind Pa and Uncle, would pitch fits.

In a room called "The Parlor," they watched a chuck read poetry for a few minutes. He sat in front of tall, lace-curtained windows looking out onto a jagged sweep of Callistan mountains, Jupiter hanging grand behind it all. When Maria touched her finger to the off button on the virtual control panel, she saw only a blank wall. She turned it back on.

"There are alternate views available," Molly's p-dac, Gemmy, said in Maria's ear. "One's the Hawaiian coast, from back on Earth. Would you like to see that instead?" Maria nodded slightly.

"Let's go," Jen murmured, touching her shoulder. "Last time, there was an acoustic band in here. This's slag."

"But..." The windows were now full of lush greenery, like an impossibly rich garden room, framing a stripe of white beach and a blue, rolling thing she knew was a sea. She'd seen it in videos.

Her cousin pulled. Maria went.

They passed a sign pointing "Upstairs-VIP passes only!" and ads for three of Maria's favorite bands. "Jen! Look!" She yelled over the squealing guitar clip that ran along with the video. "Forksplitters're tomorrow!"

Jen reached for the singer's mop of black curls and put her hand through his virtual face. "Pa couldn't stay in dock an extra day, could he? I wish we had better jacks. You could probably smell his sweat in this clip... or maybe taste him?" She grinned.

"I can get a copy of the broadcast for a small fee," Gemmy volunteered.

"We should!" Jen's eyes lit up. "We can hide it in with the rest of the shopping!"

"Forksplitters?" Molly wrinkled her nose. "Oh, but for Red Sand..." She ducked past a chuck and his chickie to the next advertisement down the hall. "Dammit, the concert's next week! They'll actually be here!"

The chickie's short dress was black except for a bright yellow butterfly that flitted, as Maria watched her pass, from one hip down along the hem and up her back to alight on her shoulder blade. Her guy's black clothes didn't have any animations. "Wouldn't you love to have a dress like that?" Jen whispered, aside. "I bet they've got VIP passes. Those let you upstairs, where the real fun is. The Ballroom's good, though. Let's hit the Ballroom."

Maria lingered, watching the butterfly flit across the woman's back and over her shoulder. Full-coverage dresses were too expensive for a rock-grubber's daughter, and anyplace where chickies wore them was probably too classy, too. She was standing in a hallway in a plain white shirt, a pleated skirt and scuffed old shoes. Her short hair and long bones plainly marked her a low-gee'r.

"Come on, Maria!"

She startled alert and hurried to catch up, plunging through the virtual door after her cousins. The electronic beat poured into Maria's bones, the trembling melody skittered over her skin followed by laser beam traces. The Ballroom stretched into half-lit depths, full of spinning bodies and light-scattering smoke. A moment later, the beat shifted and the ethereal laser beams transformed into leaves made of fire and whipped up on a phantom wind into a flickering wall. As swiftly, they scattered on spinning eddies and twirled through the dance floor, bathing the dancers in flickering golden light. Everyone wore ruffles, Maria realized, knee-breeches and heavy brocade jackets cut long like in history lessons. Nobody had said it would be a costume party. She looked down at her clothes and embarrassment washed across her face.

Jen grabbed her sleeve and pulled. The bar stretched in a squiggle to the right, solid frosted glass glowing with white light, behind it racks and racks of colorful bottles stacked three and four high. It was genuine, too; Maria couldn't help turning off the illusion for a moment to see the real room, plainly lit, and the handful of 'bot bouncers that the ether had been hiding. Molly claimed three stools hugged by one serpentine coil of the bar, leaning eagerly on the marble to catch the bartender's eye with the corset-crushed cleavage framed by her open shirt. Maria trailed, still stuck on the dancing romantics and the bleached-white hair flying to the beat.

"We have to dance," Molly announced. "See anybody looking?"

Maria perched on the stool. A single row of small, round tables and chairs stood between the bar and the dance floor. There, the leaves spun and dizzied. Mist seeped up from the dance floor, into the jumping crowd, and the breeze rose again, twisting the fog into columns. If her parents could've afforded to buy her an upgrade for her jack, Maria knew she could be feeling that wind on her skin. She settled her chin on her hand to watch.

"What do you want to drink?" Jen had to shout, leaning close.

"What you're having," she answered.

Two chucks in metallic gold, decidedly too modern for the crowd, came in the door and slowed noticeably on spotting them. Molly leaned against the bar coyly, shirt gaping open over her lacy pink corset. Jen grinned. Maria fought the urge to turn away. Smirking, eyes trailing back, the two chucks moved on to an empty spot further down the bar.

"The blond's cute," Molly said.

"Never." Jen laughed. "The other chuck's cuter. Buffer, see?"

"Like you can tell who's a better dancer."

"It's not dancing that matters..."

"Oh, you never," Molly teased back.

"How would you know?"

"When?" Molly called her bluff.

Jen drew herself up. "Maybe Kael has a quiet little corner somewhere he hasn't shown you yet, clear?"

Maria's throat tightened. At that name, she remembered the blinking status lights in the dark recycler room, the too-strong reek of house wine on his breath as he pawed at her shirt. She'd struggled for leverage in the low gravity and wedged away from him, then rabbited out into the hall without so much as a glance back. Kael's fibs about showing her the flowers in the garden room hadn't been very convincing, anyhow. By the time she got back to the main room, she'd put it aside. Kael's pa was an old friend of her ma's, and they docked the ships together for meet'n'greets every few months.

"Thought you liked Jin better," Molly said. "He mails you steady."

"Heard of 'practice, ' haven't you?" Jen smirked. "And about that, aren't we here for Maria's practice? Got to get you out on that dance floor!" The smirk turned on her cousin.

Maria blushed again, but agreed. "You promised it. Must be some chuck I can start with, if this is such a sharp place." Maria leaned back against the bar, but that pressed her corset's plastic stays into her ribs so she turned to prop one elbow on it. Then she spotted, two twists of the snaky bar away, a man sitting alone with a glass of something amber in front of him. No brocade or frills for him, just button-down smoky blue, starched like the teachers in her online lessons wore, and candy-apple red hair. Not even a jack under his ear like everyone else. He seemed to have forgotten about the dark cigarette in his hand, if the ash was any indication. He watched the door, which put his line of sight across the girls' curve of the bar now and then. It seemed to linger, when it did. She wanted to move away, when she noticed, but when he neither smirked nor frowned at her, hesitated.

Molly noticed Maria and looked. "God, Maria, he's too old."

Jen looked too. The man tapped his cigarette into the silver ashtray and took a drag,

unfazed. Maria, stung, returned, "He's not old."

"He's too old for a chuck," Jen said. "The two in the gold were sharp, even if they came on the wrong night."

"What?" Maria asked.

Molly waved toward the lacy, bouncing dance floor that was now awash in blizzard-whipped snowflakes. "It's a costume night. See how they're all dressed up? Jezebel's has sharp costume nights. They give away prizes and stuff. VIP passes, even. You can't buy those, they're the real thing."

Maria smoothed down her pleated skirt. "We're not in costume either."

"Oh, who gives a fuck, we're here." Molly laughed, having dared swear. The bartender brought three square glasses of misty pink cocktails and an incense tray curling up exotically spiced smoke. She wickedly continued, picking up her drink. "Now I just want a cute chuck who can dance and has a private t-car, clear?"

Jen laughed, eyes glittering. Maria joined in halfheartedly and sipped her drink. It was fruity and sweet, with only a tinge of alcohol. Ma and Pa let her drink stronger-but still watered-house wine with dinner. They'd said she should give boys a chance, too, not to rush into anything but at least dip a toe in the water. Meet'n'greets might make for a short list of options, but they knew all the rock-grubber families that came to them and none of them would do her harm. Maria suspected it could be true, too, but now she was here, perched on a stool, nerves thrumming under her skin, far more alive than she'd ever felt at any plain meet'n'greet.

The music wrapped up with a howl and the crowd wailed back as it ground to a halt. "Oh, shut up you halfwit meatbags!" boomed from the speakers overhead. "You think that was good? You think you're fucking sweating now?" A blast of genuine mist poured down onto the dancers as they cheered back. The cloudbank rolled out past the floor, cooling the air as it went. Maria inhaled, feeling the incense and smoke clear for a moment. "I want all the dough-assed monkeys off the floor now! I'm putting on Forksplitters next, and I don't want your epileptic corpses cluttering up my fucking dance floor! I said get the hell off! Yes, you, go!"

A few of the dancers headed for the bar, smoothing back their bleached-bone hair that had come free of ribbons and combs. "That deejay's a real bastard." Maria frowned. The swear wanted to taste good, but it wasn't much compared to Molly's "fuck."

"That's Kev," Molly said. "It's his thing, he hates people. It's a laugh, isn't it?"

"That one?" Jen pointed toward a tall chuck adjusting his black-brocaded crimson jacket as he came off the floor. His knee breeches matched, and his shirt was nothing but lacy ruffles. "He was moving his ass, look at him. He's sharp."

"Aw, fuck." Molly spotted him just as he was joined by a chickie in a matching suit. "Bet they're a set. Yeah, kiss him why don't you, bitch? How about that one?"

Maria scanned across the crowd as the music screamed up again and lightning bolts ripped across the dance floor at the same vicious pace. Most of them were chucks-college guys-and their chickies. There wasn't much to tell them apart. In turning, her gaze collided with the lone man's, though, and stuck. He took a fresh cigarette from his breast pocket without breaking the line between them and flicked a classic steel lighter open. The burst of orange caught on the ring through one eyebrow, accenting the sense of clever intensity fixing Maria on her barstool. Lighting the dark cigarette, the stranger took a draw and finally looked away, toward his glass on the bar. She wondered how it all looked to him without the ether piped into his head by a jack. Like Pa said, they were dancing in an empty box pretending to have fun.

"Not that one. His neck's wider than his head. Maria! You're not even looking, chickie." Jen turned her cousin bodily on the barstool to face the dance floor.

"There's three over there, unless they don't care for kitties." Molly jerked her chin at a knot of chucks by a table. They weren't in costume either, but wore their long hair tied back.

"Well..." Maria said, watching them laugh and gesture. "They look like planetsiders..." The chucks were tall enough, but thick-built by a lifetime in gravity.

Jen rolled her eyes. "You're not getting married, Maria, it's just to dance and play around a bit, clear?" Maria's gaze crept back to the lone man at the bar. That one had long, lean bones. Maybe... "Oh, him, is it? You want to ask him to dance?"

Molly chuckled. "Bet he comes here from jockeying data all day to drool over the chickies before he goes home to his steel bitch. Thinks of them while he's jacking off in the bathroom."

"Never!" Maria shot back, spine straightening. "He is not! He's... he's..." and her voice fell off suddenly as she looked past her cousins at the stranger. Stared. "He's a cop!"

A lean, grizzled, and unshaven man in a plain black jacket leaned against the bar next to the candy-haired stranger, speaking intently and taking the cigarette that was offered. Black Jacket glanced up at the three of them and glared, craggy enough that they all looked away quickly.

"Do you think he could be?" Jen leaned close, eyes widening.

"Wouldn't it be sharp if he's setting up a trap or something?" Molly grinned, joining the impromptu huddle.

"And you said he was old," Maria accused.

"He is," Molly said. "Cops aren't chucks, they have to graduate."

Jenny frowned, and peeked. "Never saw a cop with hair like that."

"He's undercover, meatbag."

"Maria should go ask," Jen said.

Maria's mouth fell open. "Do it!" Molly eagerly agreed. "Go ask him, Maria!"

"But what if..." she started.

"If he's undercover as a chuck, ask him to dance." Jen snickered. "He'll have to say yes."

"But..."

Down the bar, the two strangers had their p-dacs out and were comparing the screens. The small handheld units didn't look any different from the one Maria carried, her link to the dac on the home ship, but her jack connected her to it and she never used the screen. "They're planning something," Molly said. "Go over there, and when they're done, ask him to dance."

"What if I interrupt?"

"Don't interrupt, just hold 'til they're done."

Maria set her teeth on her lower lip and watched the two men talk. The one in the jacket nodded and walked away, tucking his handheld into an inside pocket. The suspected cop finished his cigarette in a long, slow drag, holding his breath several skittering beats of the music before blowing out a thick cloud. Maria exhaled with him, and stood up. Nobody here knew her, so who'd look twice if she walked up and asked a stranger to dance? Or even kissed him, right there in front of everyone? That thought stuck and became more and more tempting as she started winding through the crowd.

Halfway there, she saw him finish his drink. Then he was getting up from that barstool with a visible creak of black leather pants, shouldering a bag that she hadn't noticed had been waiting by his feet, and not even looking in her direction. For a minute, she was sure the entire universe was conspiring to keep her from meeting any chucks who weren't drunk and grabby. Maria darted around milling knots of chucks and chickies who threw themselves in her way, craning her neck to keep track of him. The music was finishing again and the deejay shouted over the last chords, "Why do I fucking waste fine shit like this on meatbags?!"

The stranger headed deeper into the Ballroom, past a glowing sign pointing toward the restrooms. Maria dodged and wove, not caring who she bumped, and saw a doorway open. Sprinting, she hooked a finger under the sill just before it swung shut. Pulling it open, she dreaded for a moment she'd be staring into the men's room. That would be less than exciting... or would it?

Dimly lit by a small fluorescent panel, she saw a few maintenance bots in various stages of disrepair and shelves of cleaning fluid bottles. Opposite them, a small computer screen hung on the wall, its screen saver idling. Crates were stacked on either side, too, full of alcohol and juice concentrates. At the far end of the narrow room, another door clicked shut. Maria stepped in and the screen saver vanished. She hesitated, glancing up. A camera could be anywhere, and the club was sure to have a powerful dac with an uptight security system. It might be too busy to notice her. It might be set to only watch. She sidled past it.

Type appeared on the screen. "I'm watching you."

Maria didn't touch the boxes. She walked straight down the aisle toward the door, her nerves crawling under the electronic eyes. She shouldn't have followed the stranger this far. Her heart raced, dangerously close to exhilaration as she put a hand on the second door's latch. There was a silly smile pinned on her face as a side effect. Jen and Molly wouldn't have come this far, she knew. For all their pretending to be bold, they would've stopped at the sentinel screen and looked for easier prey. Maria would be the one who followed a mysterious stranger through Jezebel's just to...

She stepped through the door and hesitated, startled by the sudden broad view of the entire cylinder of the habitat tube. She'd never been in a docking gap before. Her skin tingled under so much open space as she looked up at the transport line that ran along the cylinder's center axis, then around at the freight cars parked at various docks overhead and the far ceiling of the habitat tube where someone might very well be standing and looking "up" back at her.

Then something hissed sharply and the plascrete wall beside her head sneezed out a burst of fragments. Another hiss and a sharp ping rang on the door. Maria froze in her tracks. Someone was shooting at her. She'd watched enough cop dramas to know the hiss of bolt fire. Terrified blood crackled through her veins. Shooting? At her? The door brushed past her as it started to shut and with a hiss and ping, a dent appeared. Heart leaping up her throat, Maria tried to think, think to shut her mouth, think look for something, somewhere...

A heavy impact knocked the breath out of her and she landed hard, pinned for a moment by something heavy and dark that twisted half up. A staccato of spitting snaps and he got off her entirely, crouched at her feet and put his back against the plastic crate he'd thrown her down behind. Maria stared at the bolt pistol in his hand, the red stripe that twisted a lazy spiral down the barrel. Feet scrambled nearby and the man in the black jacket lunged up to grab the door and vanish back into Jezebel's. The bag over his shoulder-the one the candy-haired cop had been carrying-nearly caught in the closing door.

"What?" She tried to sit up. "Who?"

"Keep your head down," the stranger said, shifting to check the charge reading on the pistol's butt. With a longer glance, twitching back candy-red hair, he added, "You were one of the girls at the bar." When Maria only stared at him, tucking her legs closer and wincing at a pain in her knee, the stranger asked, "Why'd you follow me?" Taking the p-dac from his belt, he touched a button and the screen turned reflective. With it, he scanned the docks over his shoulder.

Maria found a little blood on one knee. The heels of her hands burned, scuffed raw. "I just... wanted to say hello," she murmured, transfixed by her injuries. "I didn't expect..."

He chuckled, and she dared think the grin looked good on him. Stuffing away the handheld, he said "Hello" with feigned cheer, then turned and sighted upward. Two bursts spat off and he ducked down again. Hisses and pings answered.

"What're they shooting for?" She winced when it came out as a whine. Cops didn't lose their heads in shootouts, they didn't freeze like idiots and have to be grabbed down. Some adventurer she was.