Bad weather always reminds me of the Belaqua. Dropping down through the cloud cover over New London and seeing the city spread out below us, I was disappointed. I’d hoped to arrive at night and see the city twinkling and shimmering like a dream of old Paris. Our actual landing time was late afternoon and so I’d hoped to race through docking procedure and get out on the town: Beautiful New London beckoned and I longed for her. I should have known better, though – it had been a long-haul jaunt, we were importing mineral samples, and we’d arrived home with more crew than we’d set out with. Not a recipe for speeding through customs.

By the time the pinch-faced auditors had left (their satchels heavy with discreetly gifted liquor) it was dawn and I was exhausted. And smelly.

Most of us bunked aboard the ship that night – easier to kip until 10 or so, then pack, hit the dock and call a cab. Get home – wherever that may be – to suspicious wives, forgiving parents or generous friends. The wives had nothing to worry about: the castaways were all passably male and they’d been inocculated, educated and i-den-tificated. Best documents money could forge. The captain had terrible handwriting, so getting the whole issue of five extra crew members ironed out was surprisingly easy; It wasn’t the auditors’ fault. By the time we’d landed, our strays’ muscle wastage had been physiotherapied out of ’em, and they were broad-shouldered, ill-mannered space monkeys, just like the rest of us.

The Judiciary have asked me to state within this testimony where I feel we went wrong. Truth be told, there were a few turning points where we should have been better engineers and worse people and just done the damn job. But we’re human, so we screwed it up.

What we should have done was turned tail and run. But that’s hindsight for you.

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Anthony committed suicide a little over a month after we returned home. Was Anthony really his name? I don’t know. We called him Anthony because we couldn’t read their system of writing, and by the time we’d figured it out, we in no way felt he should be referred to as property. He’d become Anthony because the idea of ownership of a human being was distasteful to us. Anthony he was and Anthony he would remain until his death. Was it suicide? I don’t know. Maybe things worked differently where they were from. Alls I know is that on this planet, you can’t jump off a bridge and expect anything good to come of it. Goodbye Anthony.

Mario was hit by a car two weeks later. So sad.

So it’s down to three castaways: Daniel, Aaron and Jack-the-Lad. Jack assimilated perfectly to life with us. His language skills were astonishing and socially, he had this… radar. He knew almost instinctively how to behave within the ship’s social structure, which is ridiculous, when you think about it. I loved Jack a little, just like the rest of us.

Sweet, serious Aaron with his gentle eyes and almost determined sensitivity to teasing. Always the brunt of Jack’s attempts to impress us and was always first to forgive. He practically devoured the library. He went home with Si, our chief engineer, to get his feet under him when we got back, and has never left. I envy Mrs. Chief Engineer.

Daniel never seemed present, never With Us, always Somewhere Else. Head in the clouds. Not stupid, hell no, just… absent. Astonishingly, he managed to talk his way onto the bridge somehow. Cappy helped him get enrolled in a decent astronautics institute, showed him how to apply for student loans. He’s in Boston these days, and writes Cap monthly, like clockwork. In fact, a whole lot about him was like clockwork.

Cap tells me Daniel enclosed two pictures with his last letter: A shot of his latest tattoo (an astrolabe), and a picture of him in his cap and gown. Cappy and Melinda had no kids (except Joe, but they disowned him so he’s good as dead), so the snap of Daniel-never-Danny in his polyester graduation robe stands on their mantlepiece presiding over the living room with his strange eyes.

I mean, their eyes were all the same – quite literally exactly the same, obviously – but Daniel’s were stone weird.

Seems to me they all got tattoos, too.

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Oh, but our intentions were good.

When we found the ship – her lights extinguished, beacons dark, hull unbreached – we thought salvage. Hell, we’re just a boat full of miners. Anything we can lay our hands on to make the job easier is a damn good deal. She looked like could have been a mining vessel: she was a Minerva class cruiser, small, squat and ugly; looked like an iron toad and built to last.

We debated for a while, but time was growing short and we were curious and impatient and maybe a bit greedy. We picked volunteers who suited up, booted up and sallied forth. I wasn’t on the away team, but what I heard over the radio was that the ship had been purposefully abandoned. Mike said it was like someone had put up the cottage for the winter: Everything was put away, turned off, closed. This was not a ship abandoned in haste; it was purposefully shuttered.

I remember Si’s voice, though, when they found the suspension beds. Jesus, I’d never heard him so surprised. They – the beds, I mean – were powered up and I could hear the respirators sighing over Si’s radio. The beds had been left on minimal power: No lights and no readouts, just respiration, sedation and temperature regulation. Who the hell leaves five crew floating in space unless it’s their absolute last choice? It was damned dangerous for the survivors. And what if they were never found? It was a fucking crapshoot.

Well, we couldn’t just leave them. All humanoids together, eh? And they were sick. God, Anthony puked for days. They had these thick chests and these spindly little limbs. We had to get a gurney from sick bay to transport them over, one by one – they’d been spark out for so long that they weren’t going to regain conciousness any time soon, and even if they did, their legs were a complete waste. Stephens was happy: finally some real doctoring to do and no more of this pansying around with grazes and lost fingers.

They were a total wreck. Anthony barfed, Aaron was blind and Daniel had the DTs and sweated and shivered his way through the better part of a week. They were all surprisingly shy for such strapping men. They flinched at raised voices. Cappy raised his hand to high-five Mario one day and the poor kid started bawling. What the hell had been done to them?

They barely spoke, even among themselves, but they were a fast study and picked English up quickly – I taught them well. Their accents were an international mess, thanks to the crew. Reading was a bit of a stunner. Aaron confessed later that most of their class were denied anything beyond the most basic education; literacy was the greatest freedom.