Those Of My Blood Part 41

t.i.tus weighed Inea's expression. The idea of staying on the moon, or returning often, didn't seem to upset her. He took his courage in his hands. "Inea, shall we ask her to marry us? Now?"

Her eyes widened in astonishment. She darted a glance at Colby, then said in apology. "He wouldn't let me move in with him."

The corners of Colby's mouth turned up and her eyes twinkled. "Well, if that's the way it is-when would you like to do it? In a week or two, we could manage some decorations and a dress. There hasn't been a wedding on the station yet, and everyone would-"

"No!" said t.i.tus. "Now." They were both wearing disposable suits with Project Hail logos, and he had no ring except his cla.s.s ring, part of the Shiddehara persona. He pulled it off. "Call your secretary in for a witness. We're ready." He caught Inea's eye. "We've put this off too long. I'm not going to let another accident get in the way. That is, if you're still willing, all things considered."

"All things considered, there's nothing under this sun or any other that I'd be more willing to do."

About the author.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg was born in 1942, three months after Pearl Harbor. With a degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, she worked abroad, then married and raised two children, Gail and Debbie.

In the seventies, she won early acclaim for her "Star Trek" fan fiction, the Kraith Series, which gained her a nomination for the Best Fan Writer Hugo, and twenty-two years after the first Kraith story was published, a feature article in The New York Times Book Review and the first Surak Memory Alpha Award for all-time achievement in "Star Trek" fandom. She is primary author of the Bantam paperback, Star Trek Lives! as well as founder of the Star Trek Welcommittee.

At the same time she was selling novels in a sf universe of her own, Sime/Gen? set on the Earth of the far future and involving a kind of vampiric interdependency. The second Sime/Gen novel to be published, Unto Zeor, Forever, won the 1978 Galaxy Award for spirituality in science fiction. In addition to the four fan-originated amateur magazines dedicated to Sime/Gen, newsletters and single edition fanzines, there are now eight novels in the universe, three co-auth.o.r.ed with Jean Lorrah, and one Jean Lorrah original.

Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends, written between Sime/Gen novels, tell the tale of two galactic civilizations and crucial family bonds between human and nonhuman.

The first book in her Dushau Trilogy, Dushau, a fast-paced adventure in a richly populated galaxy, won her the 1985 Romantic Times Award for Best Science Fiction Writer. After completing the trilogy with Farfetch and Outreach, she said, "I enjoy blending romance with a touch of the occult and a strong science motif to ask hard questions about life's most basic relationships."

She is past Chair of the Science Fiction Writers of America Speakers' Bureau, and in her spare time, she gives Tarot and writing workshops, attends "Star Trek," sf and esoteric conventions, reviews "Star Trek" fanzines for "Treklink," professional sf/f for Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum, and student ma.n.u.scripts for the SF&Fantasy Workshop publication Promises Pro-Mss, all while pursuing studies such as vampires, Arthurian legend, Astrology, Qabalah, "Star Trek," "Blake's Seven," and "Doctor Who." She serves on the Board of Directors of the North American Time Festivals, Inc., which organizes "Doctor Who" conventions.