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doesn't!” Then Spirit caught herself. “I've been messing everything up with my big mouth. Maybe it's time I stifled it.”
    “Your mouth has been speaking truth.”
    “Truth that shouldn't be spoken! Damn it, Helse, if I could take it all back--”
    “No, maybe it is better to be open. What is your point about me?”
    “It's about Hope, really. He's not like other boys. Men. Whatever. He truly cares. He doesn't change. He loves you, and it doesn't matter what you do or say, or how you feel, he'll always love you. All this business with other men--it just doesn't matter. He won't change.”
    “But he accepts me as I am. As I said I am. Without love. He understands.”
    “He thinks he understands. But sometimes his own emotion gets in the way of his talent. You can fool him if you want to, because he really can't read you. And you can love him if you want to, and you might as well, because--” She choked off.
    “My love does not conflict with yours, Spirit. I'm not family.”
    “Yes, damn it.”
    Helse paused, gazing at her. “I haven't known my siblings since I was six years old. There must be something I don't understand.”
    “Oh, hell, I'm just a kid. What do I know?”
    “You're a woman, Spirit. I think that's the problem.”
    “I've got a year to go.”
    “Spirit, I know something about young feeling. It is possible to be a woman long before you stop being a child. You're a woman.”
    “No, I've never done the woman thing.”
    "Sex? It's not defined by that either. I had more than enough sex as a child. You have the woman instinct.
    But what's it like to be a sibling?"
    “I wish I could change places with you!”
    Helse paused again, piecing it together. “You would prefer to be a girlfriend rather than a sister?”
    “No, of course not.” She had to deny it, but there was a disconcerting element of truth in it.
    Helse nodded. “I think I should go back to Hope. But any time you wish to be with him, just do it, and I will go elsewhere. I never meant to interfere with your relationship.”
    “You aren't interfering. I am his sister.”
    “But I don't have to take all of his time.”
    Spirit didn't answer. Helse climbed out of the chamber, and Spirit remained alone. She knew she had said too much, yet again, but she couldn't unsay it. Did Helse really believe that it was just Hope's time she wanted? But it was certainly all she could have.

Bio of a Space Tyrant 6 - The Iron Maiden
    CHAPTER 4
    Children
    They came close enough to Jupiter, and were intercepted by the Jupiter Patrol--the real one, this time.
    Salvation was at hand.
    And Jupiter rejected them. The Jupiter crew refused to believe their story, and instead gave them supplies enough to go elsewhere, and towed them back out beyond the orbit of Amalthea, to the outer ring, and let them go with a warning not to return.
    “And we thought we had known rape,” Spirit's mother said. Hope and Helse just stared out of the port at the receding planet, tears streaming down their faces. Spirit joined them, much the same.
    Where could they go? They could not return to Callisto, and Ganymede and Europa were little better.
    No major moon would accept these wretched refugees.
    “Hidalgo!” Spirit exclaimed.
    They considered it. Hidalgo was a planetoid no bigger than the moon Amalthea, in a stretched-out orbit between Mars and Saturn. It had been settled by folk from Hawaii back on Earth, and was a major tourist region. Its population was mixed, so the refugees should fit in. But Hidalgo was far distant, and the bubble's gravity shields would take years to get it there, and its little drive jet was insufficient. The food was not enough, either. They would also need an ephemeris, a detailed listing of the locations of bodies in space and time, because otherwise they would never be able to find Hidalgo, let alone rendezvous with it.
    So they decided to make a raid on an outpost on Io. Io was a hell moon, the most violently volcanic body in the system.