Justine’s first impression of the escape shuttle was one of slight disappointment. After all, Earth’s normal examples of science fiction technology often found themselves falling into two types of different categories. They were either sterile, streamlined and beyond user friendly or utilitarian, rusted out and highly mechanical.

  Or as a geek might say, it’s Star Trek holographic view screens vs Alien tube TVs.

  But whatever the aesthetic, most well-known spaceships had all sorts of spaces for their crew members to occupy. So, imagine her surprise when she stepped on this highly disappointing bucket of bolts to find very little room to roam. In fact, on the good ship escape, there was only one section of the thing that anyone could stretch their legs: The Bridge.

  And after three weeks of standing on that bridge looking at four very limited control monitors, Justine had made the fateful decision to finally venture forth into the bowels of this ship and explore the only other room available for them to visit: The Engine Room.

  “Tell me again why you call this the engine room?” Justine asked an extremely happy-looking Joseph as he sat on a raised stool next to a battered work bench. In his hands rested a small metal box with a few loose wires shooting out at odd angles.

  “Because that’s what it is.” Joseph didn’t elaborate further. He just reached out to small part bin affixed to one of the bulkhead walls. One part bin of hundreds which surround them like a handyman’s beehive have of spare parts. Truthfully, the whole place kind of reminded her of a shrunken version of the lab back at Bleaker Street.

  “This place just looks like a larger version of the bridge’s storeroom.”

  “No,” Joseph’s smile seemed to grow larger as he responded to her rather glum question. “It’s exactly like that.”

  Suddenly, the alien’s facial expression changed to resemble someone who looked like they were standing over top of a newborn baby. His eyes, once focused on whatever task he was working on, were now sparkling more than she had ever seen anyone sparkle before.

  “It’s almost like I’m back home on the Forge.” He said reverently.

  “I guess I’ll have to take you word for that.” Justine said as she piddled around the much larger yet somehow more cramped space. Faced with too many mundane things to look at, she turned to the deputy and asked. “Wait a minute? Where’s Foster?”

  “Foster?” Joseph’s eyes refocused on her and he said simply. “In the walls.”

  “In the walls,” the FBI agent’s hackles began to rise as years of training and late-night murder mystery shows conjured up images of unsolved homicide cases. “What do you mean he’s in the walls?”

  Joseph, unaware of Justine’s furtive and macabre imagination, simply pointed to a small ladder welded to the side of furthest bulkhead. It went up about 10 feet where the sturdy looking device stopped just under a square opening. Completely shrouded in darkness, the hole had just enough headroom for your average toddler to stand up.

  Shivering slightly, the very idea of more tight spaces made her skin crawl.

  “You mean he went in there?” Justine stood up on her tip toes for a better look into the opening but made no move toward getting closer to the ladder. “Why?

  “Why not? Joseph shifted the box in his hands and continued to happily tinker with its insides.

  “Why not?” Justine’s nose physically turned up in disgust. “Because it looks creepy as hell.”

  “Creepy?” the alien laughed out loud. “Agent Rushing, this place isn’t haunted. So why describe it that way? Besides, most of the universe doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Most of the universe?” Justine found herself only slightly taken aback by the casualness of his response. But the beginning word of his statement made her more than a little uneasy. “What do you mean most?”

  “He means,” For the first time since she arrived, Hoover decided to join the conversation. “That like on Earth, there’s a small portion of the universe that’s obviously crazy.”

  “No,” Joseph seemed to find the AI’s interpretation of his words amusing. “What I mean is that this ship isn’t haunted. Of course, I’m assuming this ship was built on Solon. And under that assumption, I’m confident in saying that there are no ghosts on this ship.”

  “What do you mean by ‘under that assumption’?” Hoover asked. “And why would being built on Solon matter?”

  “Because...” Joseph said simply. “There are no ghosts on Solon.”

  “What?” Justine’s brain started to stall. “So, ghosts are real?”

  “He’s lying.” Hoover barked out before the deputy could respond. “There’s no such things as ghosts.”

  “I’m not lying.” Seeing the look on Justine’s face made him smile even more. “Ghosts do exist in the universe, Agent Rushing. Only they're not the kind of ghosts your thinking about.”

  “What kind of ghosts am I thinking about?” She asked with a slight bit of apprehension.

  “Old house, white apparitions, maybe some clanking chains.”

  “No,” Justine relaxed for a second when hearing his description of a ghost. “That sounds more like what you find in an episode of Scooby Doo.”

  “My apologies,” Joseph quipped. “Then exactly what kind of ghosts were you thinking of?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes darted up and to the right like she was trying to remember where she left her car keys. “Not make-believe ones. Something more scientific, like Ghost Hunters or Paranormal Investigators.”

  “That’s rich.” Hoover said with a laugh. “Besides, there’s nothing scientific about those shows. Just a bunch of useless detecting equipment that makes a bunch of noise. Although, Scooby Doo probably found more ghosts than those idiots ever did.”

  “Hey,” Justine said reflexively. “I like those shows.”

  “I wouldn’t tell Foster that.”

  Before she could follow up on that cryptic warning, Joseph decided he’d had enough of this conversation. “None of that matters anyway because there no ghosts on Earth.”

  “How do you know that?” Hoover asked.

  “Because it takes a very special set of circumstances, technology and biology to create a real ghost. And unlike how you humans can often romanticize what a ghost is, the actual thing is much scarier.”

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  “Scarier?” Justine chimed in as every horror film she’d ever watched started playing inside her mind’s eyes.

  “Yes,” Joseph said with a malevolent grin. “And way more deadly.”

  “How are they more deadly?”

  “Don’t know.” Joseph playfully stuck out his tongue then turned his attention back toward the device he’d been laboring on for the last two days. “I’m only repeating what I’ve heard from outer rim species who’d visit the Forge for refits. But from what they told me. Real ghosts aren’t something you should mess around with.”

  “Well, that’s completely non-specific and horrifying.” Justine looked back up to the opening where Foster’s supposedly disappeared into. And all this talk about ghosts made the darkness inside all that more foreboding.

  “How come you not following him?” Hoover shifted gears quickly to another thing he found quite funny these days. “Aren’t dimly lit and small, tight places romantic?”

  “There’s nothing romantic about a narrow, pitch-black tunnel in the middle of an ancient spaceship.”

  “At least it’s private.”

  “Shut up, Hoover.” She was only slightly blushing at the thought of being alone in tight quarters with a man she found very intriguing. “Besides, I’m not good with places I can’t stand up in.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed you would have claustrophobia.” Out of nowhere, Foster’s voice escaped the open tunnel before his head did. After a second, his smiling, frustrating face popped into sight. Instantly, she wanted to punch him in his stupid head.

  “I’m not claustrophobic.” She said to the scientist as he loomed large over her position. “I just don’t want to crawl around in a Jeffries tube all day long.”

  “What’s a Jeffries tube?” Foster said with an honest, curious look on his face.

  Justine’s fists begin to curl up in righteous indignation at the appalling lack of knowledge before her when Joseph decided to pipe in and save the idiot from his own stupidity. “It’s a Star Trek thing, Foster. You know. The little corridors that run throughout the ship.”

  “I thought those were just smaller hallways?”

  “No,” Justine’s face was visibly beginning to shake with anger at his apparent lack of knowledge when it came to starship design. How in the world could such a genius not know what a Jeffries tube was? “There not smaller hallways. They’re internal maintenance access tunnels.”

  “Oh,” Foster smiled that stupid grin again as he waived for her to join him. “That make’s a lot more sense.”

  Staring up at the scientist, Justine seriously thought about going back to her room, getting her Slinger and seeing just how far space madness might take her. But after a second of breathing slowly, she reached up and grabbed hold of a ladder rung. “What the hell are you doing in there anyway?”

  “Space spelunking.” He responded while pointing back down the darkened crawlspace. “You know. Going where no man has gone before.”

  “You’re an idiot, Foster.” Her words were sharp, but she couldn’t help but smile at his small attempt to placate her inner nerd. “But why crawl around in the bowels of this ancient rust bucket? I mean. Aren’t there some kind of ship plans around here somewhere.”

  “Just some rudimentary stuff on the main bridge,” Joseph interjected. “But to be honest, if I didn’t recognize the design. I might not even know which species this ship belongs to.”

  “What?” Justine found the idea of different alien species have different design preferences extremely interesting. “Spaceships don’t have registration stickers.”

  “No, they absolutely do.” Joseph looked up in time to see Foster backing into the poor man’s Jeffries tube to make way for her to join him. “After all, the arbiters like to keep a very tight leash on who has access to space faring vessels.”

  “Really,” Justine stopped just inside the opening and made sure to look Joseph straight in the eyes when she asked her next ominous question. “Is there anything in the universe they don’t try and control?”

  “No.”

  Justine had no response to that simple, yet meaningful one-word answer. So instead trying, she nodded her head in understanding before joining Foster for a quick round of space spelunking.

  An hour later, Foster came to a halt at a tiny junction where five tunnels came together. Looking back, he waited patiently as Justine shimmied the last few feet to his current position. He couldn’t help but giggle at her surprising lack of mobility.

  “You know,” he said in a smart-ass tone of voice. “With the augmentation I did and your natural athletic ability, I would have assumed you’d be much quicker in here.”

  “First of all,” she plopped into a cross-legged sitting position with a heavy sigh. “It’s because of my athletic ability that nothing really changed for me after your little unauthorized human medical trial. And secondly---”

  Attempting to stretch out the last hour of crawling around on her hands and knees, she tried to raise her head a little too high. Instantly, the already annoyed FBI agent was rewarded with a loud thwack on her noggin. In response, she made a noise close to a muffled scream mixed with a high-pitched moan.

  “Secondly?” Foster asked as he paid little attention to her injury.

  “Secondly?” She started to rub her head reflexively from the sharp pain coming from the top of her head. “Do you even care that I just knocked myself silly?”

  “Three weeks ago, I would have cared very much.” His grin turned into a look of genuine concern. “But now. Now I’m guessing that the pain is almost gone and you're still rubbing your head out of some desperate attempt to make me feel guilty.”

  For almost a minute, Justine stared into Foster’s knowing eyes with a look that practically screamed, “How dare you, sir!” But even she couldn’t keep up the ruse of still acting like the injury to her head still hurt.

  “Fine,” she slowly lowered her hand back down to her knee. “You’re right. It doesn’t hurt anymore. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel sorry for me.”

  “I will. If that’s what you want. But everything I’ve learned about you since that first night at Wilson tells me that I shouldn’t do that.” He smiled again, only this time the expression was softer, more romantic. “Besides, concern would be a more accurate description of how I feel when you’re hurt.”

  “Foster,” she felt that same embarrassing sense of heat spill across her cheeks. The thought of blushing sent a reflexive spasm shooting through her stomach. “Is there a reason you can’t be this nice all the time?”

  “I am this nice all the time.”

  “No,” She looked down three of the four hallways with a skeptical eye. “Most of the time you act like a schoolboy who can’t stop pulling my hair.”

  “Would it help if I said that I’m extremely emotionally stunted?”

  “Tell her something she doesn’t already know.” Hoover, who had been deathly silent for most of their trek, now thought this was the best time to crack a joke.

  Without verbally responding to the barb. Foster plucked the ever-present earbud from its resting place and shoved it firmly into the front pocket of his much too dirty jeans. “Talk to you later, little buddy.”

  Instantly, the speaker in Justine’s earpiece started crackling to life. But before any words could pour forth from Hoover's tiny little megaphone, she also removed the earpiece and placed it unceremoniously in her pants’ pocket.

  “Foster,” Justine had been playing this exact conversation repeatedly in her mind for the last couple of days. And now, in the very dark and creepy bowels of the escape craft, it seemed like a good time as ever to act like a middle schooler. “Do you like me?”

  “Uh,” the scientist was only slightly taken aback by the forwardness of her question. After all, he’d been also practicing a similar conversation in his own head for about the same amount of time. “Was that not already clear?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean... no?”

  “I mean,” Justine mumbled, unsure of how to respond to such a stupid question. “You’ve never even tried to kiss me again since that day on the space station. You haven’t even tried to have a conversation other than look at this cool thing on the escape shuttle or do you want to play another round of electric tag?”

  “I...,” Foster stopped talking and really thought about her words. “I’m sorry, Justine. Like I said, I’m kind of emotionally stunted when it comes to relationships. It’s not like I even had a girlfriend before.”

  “Girlfriend?” Something juvenile escaped her subconscious and the normally composed agent burst out into a fit of girlish laughter. “How old are you, Foster? Fourteen?”

  “No, I’m not fourteen.” Foster’s facial expression instantly made her regret how she responded to his honest answer. “I’ve just never had someone I liked and respected that much before.”

  “Foster,” she said with a breathless tone to her voice. “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I know how hard it is to be honest with your feelings.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He seemed to effortlessly shrug off the awkward mood this very personal conversation had brought on. Looking down at the right-hand tunnel, he turned back to Justine’s blushing face and smiled. “Besides, were almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “The place I planned to kiss you while not in the middle of a life and death situation.”

  “What?” Suddenly, the concern she felt about how her actions might have hurt him disappeared in a wave of excitement and dread. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about making out, Agent Rushing?” Foster's smile turned effortlessly into that stupid grin. “Why do you think I’ve been crawling around these tunnels for the past few days? I’ve been trying to find the most romantic spot on this slightly underwhelming ship.”

  With that, he began moving forward once again into the darkness. Stunned, all she could do was quietly follow the scientist deeper into the bowels of the escape ship.