Throughout this entire arc of 74 stories Resada Gestae is married. The wedding was done on impulse and had no clergy, witnesses, and was done at gunpoint – not valid for any and all of those reasons. When the law catches up with Lt Gestae and sends Mrs. Resada on a years-long mission of reconstructive justice, this marriage becomes a long separation.

That said, Resada regards the marriage as real, writes this husband frequently, and wonders what it will be like to spend decades with this someone at their assigned post: a vacant colony world. Rain, the husband, replies with letters about replacing tents with simple houses and sheds, growing crops, digging wells, and building a marriage bed, weaving the bedding, painting the walls, putting glass in the windows, sweeping the floor – and not able to ask a single question in real time about colors or layout or architecture. The marriage, the house this bedroom is in, and the whole world it sits on, are unknowns. They will all be Resada’s next assignment for decades on end.

Most narrators might panic and back out of such a marriage: Resada holds to the conviction that the initial impulse was right. (To see how it turned out read “Crush” in Tree and Stone: https://lisashapter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/b92e7-qafissue3.pdf.)

This story, “Planet 42 Beta” (https://4starstories.com/story_4.htm) is a rest from Lt Resada Gestae’s years of mandatory visits to widely separated worlds (none of which is ‘home’). Reunited with a police escort (which would have come in useful in “Planet 42 Alpha” (https://4starstories.com/4StarStories_Archive_Issue28/story_4.htm)), Resada is safe and rescued and protected by two hosts: Vester and Edward (last seen newly married and considering their own colony world posting in “Life on Earth” in Expanded Horizons (archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160405132428/http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/?page_id=3643). “Planet 42 Beta” is one of the few places in sequence of 74 visits to 74 worlds where everything stops and the visit is both peaceful and happy.

To get a glimpse of how these planetary stopovers usually go, read the rest of these travels in: 1) “No Woman, No Plaything” in Kaleidotrope (https://kaleidotrope.net/archives/autumn-2012/no-woman-no-plaything-by-lisa-shapter/), 2) “Planet 38” in 4 Star Stories (https://4starstories.com/4StarStories_Archive_Issue10/story_4.htm), 3) “Planet 42 Alpha” in 4 Star Stories (https://4starstories.com/4StarStories_Archive_Issue28/story_4.htm), and 4) “Planet 42 Beta” in 4 Star Stories ( https://4starstories.com/story_4.htm). The background of why Resada Gestae is under orders to visit 74 worlds appears in: “Searching” in Black Denim Lit #8 ( https://www.bdlit.com/searching.html).

If half of Lt Gestae’s police escort seems familiar, Ke narrated several related stories that take place before, during, and after Lt Resada Gestae’s 74 world mission: 1) This is Not a Love Story in Black Denim Lit ( https://www.bdlit.com/this-is-not-a-love-story.html) (the two police escorts meet), 2) “Inducement” in Black Denim Lit ( https://www.bdlit.com/inducement.html) (the two cops work on a crime), 3) “Searching” in Black Denim Lit #8 (https://www.bdlit.com/searching.html) (the two are assigned to find Resada Gestae), 4) “Planet 42 Beta” in 4 Star Stories ( https://4starstories.com/story_4.htm) (they catch up with Lt Gestae), 5) “Planet 50” in Black Denim Lit (https://www.bdlit.com/planet-50.html) (they guard Lt Gestae – on a ship between worlds in galactic space), and finally 6) “Crush” in Tree and Stone (https://lisashapter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/b92e7-qafissue3.pdf) (Ke’s married – to Resada Gestae), (and in 7) my play “The Other Two Men”) (A review: https://www.portsmouthnh.com/stirring-sci-fi-at-the-ring/) (Ke’s clone wrestles with the same troubles as “Crush” (https://lisashapter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/b92e7-qafissue3.pdf) – while aware of being an artificial twin living in a distant future).

If Resada’s absent husband rings a bell, he appears in: 1) “Grave’s First Day” in A Coup of Owls (https://acoupofowls.com/2021/08/01/issue1/) (parenthood – before marriage!), 2) “Searching” in Black Denim Lit #8 (https://www.bdlit.com/searching.html) (working as a cop), 3) “Planet 42 Beta” in 4 Star Stories ( https://4starstories.com/story_4.htm) (this story), then 4) “Crush” in Tree and Stone (https://lisashapter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/b92e7-qafissue3.pdf) (still married, after all).

To read the entire network of stories that take place over 1,000 years of galactic colonization (or, with the exception of the centuries jump forward “the Other Two Men”, a hundred-year slice), see “Read my Short Stories in Order” (https://lisashapter.com/2024/02/13/reading-my-stories-in-order-not-that-its-necessary/).

-Lisa Shapter