"Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" is an old Terran idiom that has long outlived even a cursory relevance. Both come from Mars these days, while Venus remains an uninhabitable furnace centuries after even Pluto received manned outposts. Nudging it to the side is a new saying: "Martian Mothers." The urban myth is that just as the planet's lower surface gravity fosters taller-than-average height compared to an Earthling, it encourages women to grow out as much as up as the spine can support a larger base mass. While the (not-so) Red Planet has become a popular retreat for buxom physiotherapy, no correlative evidence has emerged to suggest the locals are specially blessed.

Not that facts ever got in the way of a good stereotype: regardless what the form says, the desk clerk has already decided the woman in front of him grew up a Martian. She is tall, taller than him, travel jumpsuit showing off abundant curves that in his current zone of bureaucratic drudgery he wouldn't mind using as literal pillows. She looks to be in her mid- to late thirties, yet her face has a buoyancy of someone half her years: high cheeks, gently-sloped nose, dainty lips curled as if permanently primed for a kiss. Large, emerald eyes shine bright and intense from behind a honey-blonde waterfall she keeps idly drawing behind an ear.

"So then, Mrs. Re—"

"Miss."

"Pardon?"

"I'm not married."

"Uh—right, Ms. Reene—"

"It's Yixavi—"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a Yixavi name, you roll the 'R'. R-R-Ré-ïn. Though if you want the precise phonetics you add a little squeak at the end..."

The clerk licks his lips. "Alright, Ms. Rghaine, what's your—"

"Oh no, I'm not Rein, I'm Krawitz."

He squeezes his eyes with an exasperated sigh. She isn't trying to be difficult, he's fairly sure; if anything, her chipper voice reminds him somewhat uncannily of a couple classmates from back in the day, the sort that drew jocks like ants to a soda spill. "OK," he says slowly and deliberately, "So who is Rein?"

As if on cue, a second figure arrives at the desk. It's a fair bit shorter than the woman, head barely levelling with her chest. Its visage immediately calls to mind that of a Terran fox, give or take a few proportional differences. Most of its fur is black, rusty copper around its ears and the sides of its head with narrow runners wrapping across its cheeks and along the top of its muzzle. It wears an identically-patterned jumpsuit that unlike the woman's doesn't look like vacuum wrapping—by the lean, unpronounced torso he assumes it's male, though from the little he knows about "space foxes" the females don't usually show outside the nursing period—a handy cheat to tell a splicer from a genuine xeno.

"Rafann Rein, I presume?" the clerk grins tiredly with what little mirth the last of his patience can spare.

The figure interprets his sardonic tone as something else, because its ears and whiskers twitch in opposite directions. "Is there a problem?" it asks in a surprisingly punctual tone for a lilting high tenor.

He takes a breath, eyeing the woman sidelong. "No," he decides, "Just clarifying specifics on the visa IDs."

"Oh, yes, the TC-5," the fox sighs, ears pivoting back to neutral, "We're here for a conference but it's been postponed two days and we only found out after we'd entered transit. The consulate's confirmed the reschedule but formal authentication might be waylaid by another day or two. We were told we could verify ad-hoc with the reference code EC-296—"

"Actually," the clerk cuts in sheepishly, "I'm still on the TAPs."

The fox blinks, bewildered. "I know I was gone for a while," it eyes the woman sidelong, "Is there a network problem? They don't normally have to review TAPs manually..."

"Oh, if you needed help you should've said so!" The woman leans over the counter, apparently oblivious to the way her chest proclaims its natural pedigree. "I mean biochem doesn't have a lot of crossover with public administration but I've picked up a few things over the years..."

"Thank you, that's fine," he tries not to grind his teeth as he leans in over his computer screen, scrambling to make up for lost time. "Checked baggage has already been cleared... anything to declare?"

"Just this." The fox hoists a hard-shell suitcase onto the counter. Insulated in padded foam is an egg-shaped stone the height of a small table lamp.

"A rock?"

"No-one's quite sure what it is, exactly. Several analyses suggest it's a fossilized egg of some sort, but scanning equipment has only penetrated as far as the inner membrane, and if, by some miracle, the embryo is still viable—"

"—Like how K'paxite roe hibernate to survive in deep space," interjects the woman.

"—Then more invasive studies risk damaging, if not killing—"

"It's a rock," deadpans the clerk.

The fox hesitates, then shrugs. "It's a rock."

"Well, unless those scans registered something that classifies as EHM-9 or higher, it shouldn't be an issue with Environmental Protection."

The woman's face scrunches up almost comically as she eyes some spot on the ceiling. "Hey, Raffi," she ducks down to her companion, "Don't we qualify as EHM-4?"

"Not by default," it replies entirely matter-of-factly, "Only after applying aggregate sociological dynamics."

The clerk eyes the pair with a mix of confusion and suspicion. "It's a pet name," she explains, entirely missing the source of his concern, "I mean, he's not literally a pet, obviously—you know some places actually just assume he is? I guess I can't blame them thinking that in Urodia, but then anyone's a pet there—you ever been to..? You HAVE!" she cries, waving her finger excitedly; "People who've been make either that face or... oh you had a great name for it, what was it?"

"The face of someone trying to induce coital plateau through thought alone," mutters the fox.

"—That's the one! Now, what was I talking about? Oh right!" The clerk sighs, his split-second window slamming shut. "I call him Raffi because when I was little we had these old disks of a singer from the turn of the millennium—actual CDs!—and he sounds a lot like him, though I haven't convinced my Raffi to sing yet." She toussles the fox's head, whose eyeroll suggests this story is on its umpteenth replay. "Ohh, those records were amazing... Lots of songs about extinct animals... I think he became a professor."

"I don't think 'Beluga Grads' referred to an actual course," says the fox.

"I suppose that's why I never saw him cited in zoology," she muses.

"Fascinating story," squeaks the clerk, practically shoving the set of ID cards back across the counter. "Anyway, you're all clear; enjoy Kumir Station, I'm sure you've pressing appointments."

"Well since—" she starts, but cuts off as her companion taps her elbow.

"Thank you," nods the fox, scooping up the cards and shepherding his companion off to the observation deck. After a few seconds' nervous pause, the clerk fishes out his 'booth closed' card and heads off to press-gang a colleague to finish his shift.

Rafann's facial muscles run a gauntlet as he reads and re-reads the cards. "Moon and Stars, Vee, what did you do to him?!"

"How d'you mean?" she pivots, falling in side-by-side as they march down the hall.

"Two thirds of these he signed off without question, despite protocol... he tagged the egg 'geologic' instead of 'bio-inert'..."

"Is that bad?"

"Not for us, but if anyone was looking into it he'd be disciplined something vicious." Cocking the vulpine equivalent of an eyebrow, he repeats: "What would hang up a practiced clerk on a TAP?"

She shrugs innocently. "You know customs, gotta dot the i's and cross the t's, double-check your shoe size, get a signed affidavit for the mole on your neck..."

His eyes narrow, a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Asked you your size, did he?"

"I figured I'd be proactive," she twirls a honeyed lock, "A gram of prevention stays a kilo of cure, after all."

"Sometimes I honestly cannot tell whether you're playing the part."

She flashes him the briefest smirk. "I must be honing my craft, then."

Rafann can honestly say Elvira Krawitz is the smartest person with whom he has any direct personal rapport. He'd seen her name in a swath of co-authorships and had corresponded on several projects long-distance, and even without a background in biochemistry he was astounded that someone of her calibre remained professionally obscure, young as she was. When they finally met in person at the 133rd E. H. Umero Medical Conference, the picture came into focus: top-tier genius typically divided between high-functioning sociopaths and idiots savant, and while Elvira was no idiot, she seemed to go out of her way to masquerade as one. The giddy enthusiasm exuded in even the most clinical memos manifested in person as a childlike excitability that stood out all the more sharply against the academic pomp, and more than one professor openly mused that she wasn't a formal invitee, but a tag-along for "post-reception entertainment"—remarks, to Rafann's astonishment, she seemed to take either in stride or oblivion.

Shortly afterward, they ended up liaising in a multi-team research project and he came to know her better. Her bubbly personality was her default state—a perpetual inquisitiveness and brain-to-mouth stream of consciousness that many of her colleagues wrote off as immaturity even as her doctorate shone through her actual work. While most of her peers treated her as an annoyance, Rafann was one of a handful that admired her for more than her looks: she had a certain charm in her peculiarity, and if one could roll with her eccentricities she was incredibly easy to like. She was also nowhere near as clueless to the innuendo as the more salacious harassers assumed, managing to string along the worst offenders to the point of self-incrimination and dishonourable dismissal, all the while keeping her own integrity intact.

Why she put up with it at all he finally understood in a conversation after they'd partnered in their own project. "Mom said: 'Vee, you could be the smartest person in the galaxy and there'll be people who'll still rank your brain lower than an Egyptian embalmer. But that's OK: if they're not looking at your face, they don't know when you're lying.'" Indeed, the longer they worked together, the more he noticed how effortlessly she could contort a chad while deluding him that he was in full control. It could honestly be scary to watch.

That they've spent the last three Earth-years essentially as live-in co-workers is, to many, ironic. Personality-wise, Rafann is Elvira's antipode: surgically precise and straightforward to the point of oft-mistaken abrasiveness, he does not suffer fools gladly—those that know him but not her are amazed they can even work in the same room. While not a social recluse, his sphere of friends is much, much smaller, although that is largely due to working as a xeno in mostly-human research teams: eight decades after the Centauri Accords, racism still lurks even in the most theoretically cosmopolitan practices, and he could readily empathize with how Elvira's career had been hobbled by factors entirely beyond her control.

Thus it's strangely fitting that these two professional misfits became an odd couple, complementing each other in a way that would easily translate into a comedy act. Indeed, when he isn't taken for her pet he's sometimes taken for her partner, so tight is their friendship, and that's not entirely wrong: Vee's become more of a confidant than members of Rafann's own family, and aside from a few calls out for their respective expertise, they're essentially a permanent travelling pair. And while their relationship remains firmly platonic, he realized just how much she trusts him when she literally dragged him into a common shower—as medical professionals whose work often intersected with xenobiology, it was logical they should know each other's physiology in case of emergency... but he could tell he'd earned a very exclusive privilege.

The observation deck faces out across the planet Xardes IV, most of it shrouded in its night cycle. "It's so dark!" Elvira breathes, wandering straight up to the window.

"It's a sanctuary world," he explains, "Only twenty percent of the landmass is zoned for urban settlement. Anything within the preserve is subject to strict industrial regulation."

"So no lights?"

"At least not high-density." She joins him on one of the benches. "I'd probably retire to a place like this," he muses; "Preserve systems don't usually bill themselves for mass tourism, and even then the commercial hub is typically the orbiting station. Life on the surface, off the curated paths, is quiet, relaxed, scenic, everything the vacationer wants, but without all the other vacationers. Provided one can make do without certain conveniences."

"You can't be retiring now! You're in the prime of your life!"

"Not quite," he flashes his colleague a wan grin, "But don't worry, I'm not quitting any time soon." His body trembles from head to foot in a unique pseudo-stretch. "I've thought about anchoring, though."

"Anchoring? You mean give up our epic space adventures?"

"I don't recall ever being attacked by pirates," he chuffs, "Not that I mind. We've been lucky, Vee: we're paid to traipse around the galaxy. Still," he sighs, "It's hard enough finding love willing to dash between hotels; it's even harder if it means booking a family for the flight."

Elvira leans back in her seat, arms crossed as her tongue draws circles across the front of her teeth. After a few moments' silence, she announces: "We could make a hybrid."

Rafann pivots to face her. "What?"

"We're always together, we're always on the move, if you want a kid and you're not fussy about the parentage..." she shrugs, utterly nonchalant. "Heck, we're practically both halves of the science, we could do all the work ourselves!"

He stares at his colleague, mouth agape, trying to figure out if this is one of her spontaneous spitballs or a serious proposition. She pushes out her lips, blinking rhythmically in a silly face she makes whenever she's trying to defuse his tension. "Elvira," he replies at last, "You are far too generous for your own good."

"What do you think, Rocky?" she hoists the suitcased egg into her lap, "Uncle Raffi doesn't think we could raise a kid on the move!"

"Rocky?"

"Everyone calls him one, so he'd have a fun little story for his friends!"

"What if it's female?"

She leans back, frowning at the ceiling. "Rochelle," she determines, "Rocky as a nickname."

"There you go, we have our firstborn." He hoists himself to his feet, taking the case as Elvira rises in turn. "We might as well check in... Two days 'til the conference, I don't know how we'll pass the time."

"If it's a sanctuary world, it probably has research stations, right? They might be able to use people with our skills."

"...Maybe," he concedes, looking out the observation window. "I'm not sure what they'd have for in-and-out work."

"Aah, we can stay a few days, not like we're on a rigid timetable."

"I suppose not. Plus it would be nice to do some sightseeing with actual nature."

"There we go! Adventure awaits!"

"Don't get your hopes up," he grins, hurrying after as she strides down the hall, "I doubt it'll be that exciting..."