“What the hell is this stuff, anyway?”
“Looks similar to starworts from Earth.”
“I know it’s a plant, and I know people call it a starwort. I mean what is it, really? Why is it on Europa? And why is it always so carefully contained, despite those containers being carelessly strewn all over the moon?”
“Oh. Well, couldn’t say. You try a chemical analysis?”
“What for?”
“Maybe they smoked it.”
“Who? And what do you mean ‘smoked’ it?”
“The Eventide colonists. Maybe they cultivated it as a recreational drug. That could explain its containment and ubiquity.”
“You’re saying you think this plant, which is so miraculously hardy that it’s survived in sealed sample containers for centuries, was some kind of psychoactive diversion for colonists who had all the wonders of Golden Age technology at their fingertips to entertain themselves?”
“I dunno, but if I’d gotten myself stuck out here in the Europan cold, working for Clovis Bray, I know I’d wanna get high.”
(Glacial Starwort)
