Eight stories of ingenuity at the edges of space. Where maintenance workers outsmart corporate stations. Where medical officers and botanists save colonies through partnership. Where a janitor's kindness opens doors decades of searching couldn't find. On platforms and stations designed to divide, these characters forge unexpected connections-across species, across class, across the void itself. For readers who want their science fiction served with solidarity, where the recycled air might be thin but the human connections run deep.

Nicky Penttila writes science fiction and fantasy about competent outsiders who find belonging in the most unlikely places-and change their worlds in the process.

Includes these stories:

Chrome Bloom

Floating the Law

Just Breathe - first published in The Expanding Universe, vol. 11

Round Sandy

Seek and Find

The Air Between Us

The Convict's Daughter

The Girl from Bennia Station