Radiance

My waiter has taken pity upon me and brought me a plate of walnuts and cheese and thus won my heart entire. Yes, my lad, I shall marry you. I shall.

Very well, Mary, very well! Get to it!

As of today, the Twentieth of August in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eight, I believe the following to be Immutable Lunar Laws:

1. A woman has but eight roles open to her: ingénue, mother, witch, detective, nun, whore, queen, and corpse.

2. Sooner or later, someone’s gonna own you, kid. Call yourself Queen of the May if you get a say in whom.

3. You have no pride. If you have it, misplace it. Under your mattress, in someone else’s cupboard. It’ll do you no favours.

4. That person you are when the camera’s having its way? That’s not you. That’s a Looking Glass Girl. She lives on the other side of the lens. She’s better than you are—prettier, more graceful, walks more properly, sparkles when she ought to, blushes when she ought to, fades to black before anyone gets bored. And better things happen to her than the sad little teas and flophouse fleas that happen to you. Love that Looking Glass Girl. Love her hard and love her true. Make obeisance; say your Aves. She is your personal god, and you’ll chase her for the rest of your life.

Ship’s Manifest,

Small Commercial Craft Clamshell

Owner-of-Record: Oxblood Films/ Franklin R. Edison

Port-of-Call: Tithonus, Luna, United Kingdom

Built: 1940, Copernicus Ironworks

Manufacturer: Wernyhora Motors, Inc. (Subsidiary: J.P. Morgan & Company)

Model: Cerigo VI (Inner System Restricted Permit #NK55781432F00QWP)

Occupancy: 35

Tonnage: 5,771

Length: 425 ft.

Beam: 56 ft.

Propulsion: Ourania Class Cannon, Ford Quad-Firing Orbital Slugs, Carnegie Diesel-Balloon Braking, Foldback Magnetrisse Sails

Carriage Decks: Bridge, Crew Berths, Cantina, Observation, Passenger Berths, Radio Room, Darkroom, Cargo Bay, Engine Hold, Fire Room, Ballast

Preflight Condition: No Malfunctions. Kitchen Equipment, Data Transmission, and Interior Communication System Scheduled for Maintenance Upon Return to Dry Dock

Examined by: Piotr Krupin, Arkady Lagounov, Ekaterina Bogomolova, Depot Noviy Kitezh, Moscow, 11.6.44

Great Railway Merger Expected 2100 12.6.44, Anadyomene Junction, Switch 9.6.4.2

Film Crew:

Severin Unck: Director

Cristabel Ossina: 1st Assistant Director

Erasmo St. John: Director of Photography

Horace St. John: Cameraman

Maximo Varela: Lighting Master

Mariana Alfric: Sound Engineer

Santiago Zhang: Best Boy

Konrad and Franco Sallandar: Craft Services

Support:

Anastaas Dajo: Pilot (Inner System Transit Authority Certified 1919, Hesperides Medal 1924)

Griet Van Rooyen: Navigator (Junior Cartographer, British Railways, Corps of Engineers Special Commendation 1942 for Work on the Venus-Mercury Toll Artery)

Isaac Deerfoot: Conductor (M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1938, Junior Conductor, Mohawk and Hudson Railway, Mars-Asteroid Corridor 1939–1942)

Ghanim Boulos: Signalman

Balazs Almassy: Security

Dr Margareta Nantakarn: Surgeon (Edinburgh School of Medicine, 1922, Specialization in Epidemiology. Offworld Residency: Mercury, Trismegistus, St. Talaria’s Children’s Hospital, 1925)

Aylin Novalis: Venus Liaison (White Peony Station)

Henry Lamb, Simon Poole, Jaromil Kysely: Stewards (Contracted from Tithonus Savoy, Term of Contract 29.5.44-8.8.46)

William Kaur: Sanitation Engineer

Carolyne Derrick: Wire Walker

Arlo Covington, C.P.A.: Oxblood Oversight

Mr Tobias: Ship’s Cat (Abyssinian, six years old, missing left ear)

Materiel:

1200 pounds beef

700 pounds mutton

775 pounds tinned beef

600 pounds veal, pork, sausage (beef-fennel, hot lamb-za’atar, chicken-tarragon)

1500 pounds chicken

250 tins preserved fruit

250 tins Dundee marmalade (orange, lemon, blood orange, muskbulb), Crosse & Blackwell jam (strawberry-peppercorn, gooseberry-port, cloudberry-champagne, Martian goji-serrano) and chutney (mango, cranberry, lunar coconut, Triton mint-miseryrose)

250 bottles pickles and sauces: Branston, Serapis Peppers, Nergal Morels, C&B Walnuts, HP Sauce, Hermeneus Fancy Catsup, Caloris Basin Hot Mustard, Worcestershire, Mount Penglai Soy Sauce, Tethys’ Tail Fish Sauce, Io’s Best Sweet Chili Sauce, McCollick’s Bird Pepper Sauce, Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Chinkiang Black Vinegar, Tethys’ Tail Shrimp Paste, Celestial Moose Maple Syrup (grade B), Rose’s Lime Juice. 65 bottles reserved for onsite sale/barter.

370 pounds Nereid roe (Interplanetary Quarantine cleared 2.5.44, Exotic Foodstuff Record #777121Ne, see attached form. Reserved for sale/barter in tot.)

250 pounds coffee

200 pounds tea

100 pounds potted fish (anchovy, salmon, herring, monkminnow)

900 pounds moist sugar (350 pounds reserved for sale/barter)

300 pounds lump sugar (100 pounds reserved for sale/barter)

660 pounds salt (200 pounds reserved for sale/barter)