[snip}

But before the female doctor left she went up to Glen and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek ‘’Glen don’t loose faith in your ability as a Captain and, em, I hate to say this but you’ll find our new Cmdr an asset’’ and with those last words Cross left.

Glen remembered that of Cross. She always made a quick exit. It was like she was afraid that someone would get through all her barriers, and afraid of anyone inside them. or that if she hung around too long her defences would come tumbling down. However, Glen felt better for the conversation he had had, short though it was. It had cleared up a few questions that had been on his mind for some considerable time. He had also expressed his own feelings, much as he would have to a real counsellor, and he felt good about getting all that out in the open. He also knew better where Cross was emotionally, so that he didn’t need to pussy-foot around her any longer. Finally, he had a second take from Miriam on how he should approach the new XO and had almost decided on full disclosure, whatever that would mean. Miriam was a good judge of character, and she did seem to speak as if she had spent some time with Joe, while John had spoken only very briefly to him.

He finished his coffee off and asked for the bill. It was still very quiet on the promenade. The wood carver was now working alone and the giggling officers had left long ago. it was Joe, himself, who had told John to get himself away from the Merrimack for a while and it had turned out to be excellent advice. When the bill was presented he paid with credits and got change in pieces of Latinum strips. Very quaint, he thought.

Glen sat a while longer until eventually he thought that he had better leave himself. Miriam had mentioned the Sickbay, and the investigation of the silver spheres, and he was quite keen to get an update on the progress being made. He stood up, but before he left, he wrote some comments in the cafés book that they really should start serving Raktajino.

Glen left the Rue du Rivoli coffee shop and his next stop was the barbers. He hadn’t had a good professional haircut in several months. Not only did the Merrimack need a Counsellor but she could do with a hairdresser too. Glen knew that Faith, his niece and yeoman, spent hours every day to create her beehive.

He found the barbers after a short walk on the promenade, and he was quickly directed to sit in the empty chair. As he sat, he thought again about his conversation with Miriam and how it had cleared the air. However, he was sure that Miriam had been hiding something from him, and as he thought about it longer it was obvious. She did know Joe Milligan. She definitely knew Joe from some earlier assignment, and either her memory was mixed up from the mind-meld, or she was deliberately keeping that fact a secret. The reason she had suddenly disappeared was because she had remembered something about him and she now needed to find him and tell him? Warn him? Whatever it was, if it didn’t involve the ship then it was no business of Glen’s, but he couldn’t be sure that it did not.

“Just a short back and sides,” Glen told the barber. “No problem,” the Kreetassan barber replied before launching into a profusion of questions about his taste in sports, the space station commander, and the difficulties of having a cat as a pet on a space ship. The haircut seemed to take a lifetime, but was probably no more than fifteen minutes. A soon as he was finished, Glen paid the barber and left. He wanted to get back to the Merrimack as soon as possible. He needed an update on the spheres and the child in stasis, but now he also wanted to know why Miriam had told him that she only had some vague memory of Joe.

Glen made his was along the Promenade’s upper level, but this was a very quiet space station and he couldn’t see the passengers or crew disembarking at the airlocks below that you might expect in a space station closer to the centre of the UFP. Despite his desire to quickly return to the Merrimack he found a number of curious shop windows along the way, and he found that he stopped at Fischer’s Clockmakers to examine the ancient and new timepieces on display there.

He seriously considered buying a timepiece on display, but then he remembered again the child and it’s toys, that he needed to speak with Joe Milligan about the time travelling, and that he was sure Miriam had lied about knowing him. Glen could never leave work behind for very long. He was surprised that he hadn’t been paged yet. He had half expected that a briefing from some Admiral or Commodore would have been requested by now. So, he turned away from the shop window and walked off towards the docking rings, picking up his pace as he did. The station was beginning to get busier.

• Glen, CO