A Niche

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This story won some dick-ass Canadian sf award that few if any of you have ever heard of; however, it has proven popular enough to warrant several reprintings, most recently in Hartwell and Cramer's massive The Hard SF Renaissance (Tor 2002). It also comprises the first chapter of my debut novel, Starfish (Tor 1999).

Sadly, even after I had immortalised her in prose, the woman I based this story on refused to get back together with me. Go figure.

When the lights go out in Beebe Station, you can hear the metal groan.

Lenie Clarke lies on her bunk, listening. Overhead, past pipes and wires and eggshell plating, three kilometers of black ocean try to crush her. She feels the Rift underneath, tearing open the seabed with strength enough to move a continent. She lies there in that fragile refuge and she hears Beebe's armor shifting by microns, hears its seams creak not quite below the threshold of human hearing. God is a sadist on the Juan de Fuca Rift, and His name is Physics.

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