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Then the man raised his head and inspected Functionary in person. Functionary hoped that, in person, he gave a better impression than he did through his record. Somehow, he doubted this was the case and rapidly concluded that he came ready labelled by the contents of his file. He sensed he had a hard task ahead of him, proving his worth. For an awkward moment the man did not speak but continued to stare at Functionary full in the face. Functionary panicked that he was meant to start the conversation but decided that the Administrator was merely examining him. Functionary held his peace and, at the danger of appearing impudent, stared back the Administrator. The Administrator appeared to be what he almost certainly was. Despite his diminutive stature, the Administrator gave of an impression of power and rank. No doubt, this perception was partly feed by what Functionary had already gleaned of this particular man and his position on the Station, and what he knew more generally of men with the rank the Administrator had attained within the Service. Then again, there was the room, the large impressive desk at which the Administrator sat, and the bank of screens behind him. There was the lush carpet and what appeared to be furniture made from real wood. But, above all, Functionary felt that by just looking into this man's face you could get a measure of his nature. He examined the man's slightly tired and significantly care-worn face. This, reckoned Functionary, was a man who had worked very hard to obtain his position and who continued to spend almost all his time working or worrying about work. Success and rank had almost certainly brought him a wife and children, but for these he probably had little time. It was even possible that they had not come with him to this space station. Functionary feared that this was a man, who, through years of unflinching work for the Service, was stripped bare of any other qualities than those required to function and succeed as a senior officer in the Service. He would be a competent communicator not lacking in intelligence, a limited form of imaginative ability and an apparent humour, yet he would unthinkingly and ruthlessly implement the interests of the Service with an unreflecting single-minded determination and untroubled mind. There would be no empathy or sympathy for those possessing a worldview or mind, which had not been formed by and which did not represent the Service and he would only understand such persons in so far as a limited quality of understanding was required to control them or defeat them. This was a man who would lie and dissemble in the interests of the Service and his own interest within it, without being conscious of the failings in his own moral conduct. Momentarily, Functionary had reflected upon the conscience of this Administrator, but rapidly he decided that any conscience possessed by this man would largely be delimited by the interests and wishes of the Service. In so far as this man had a conscience that could be seen as; however slightly, separated from the concerns of the Service, it would be shaped by his interests to be well regarded within the Service and advance within its hierarchy. Hence, Functionary concluded that to think in terms of this man having a conscience, or an associated morality, was largely pointless and unrealistic. The Administrator’s actions, and the motivational reasons for them, could adequately be explained by the concerns and interests of the Service. One need think no further that of how the context of the Service structured this man’s every waking hour; all else would be distraction to this man. Ultimately, this was a man with little subtlety and few strata to his character. There would be no real surprises from this man and he would be what he seemed. Yet, in an ironic sense, this was a man whose career and experience paralleled those of Functionary. Functionary perceived that, at an admittedly more senior level, this was an officer who had found his career side-lined in a dim and distant space station a long way from the centre of things, both spatially and in terms of the networks of influence which bound together the Service and its individual members.

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Clearing the security checks and shown to his quarters, Functionary had little time to shower and change into his smartest official garb before he had to present himself to the Administrator-in-Chief of the space station. It had been emphasised to him by the person checking his security that the Station Administrator expected appointments to be kept punctually and did not tolerate being kept waiting. Having presented himself to Secretary of the Administrator-in-Chief, he quickly found himself standing in front of a diminutive man seated behind a large desk. The man was reading something displayed upon the surface of his massive desk and did not look up. He made no gesture of welcome or sound of acknowledgement. He made no indication that Functionary could sit or otherwise make himself at ease. The Administrator continued to peruse the file displayed before him, periodically making flicking gestures to move back and forth between the electronic pages. Evidently, whatever was recorded there was not entirely to his liking as he could be heard to occasionally tut and breathe hard. Functionary stood marooned, looking down at the bald, greasy top of this man's head, feeling singularly conscious of himself and his diminished stature in life. Functionary felt an increasing uneasy uncertainty as to whether the man was aware of his presence. But then, suddenly, it crossed his mind what the man was reviewing and causing him so much displeasure: the man was scrutinising Functionary's personnel file. This undermined what little self-assurance Functionary had remaining at that moment.

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The long, tedious wait for his turn at one of the counters gave Functionary an opportunity to acquaint himself visually with his new planetary home from the ground level. He stared out of the transparent shell of the dome at the planet, its surface and its dark sky. The planet's jagged, rocky crust shone bright white, stark against the blackness of the infinite and starry space above. The light was, at that particular moment, coming at an acute angle, directly and primarily, from the star around which the planet revolved and also, more feebly, from the reflective surface of a distant moon whose large off-white sphere visually rested upon the distant surface of the planet, off to the right as Functionary looked out at the scene. This meant an image in sharp contrast, where some surfaces were so saturated in light that their detail was almost bleached into a universal whiteness, while many areas in shadow were completely black. The weak secondary light reflected by the moon meant that a limited number of surfaces turned towards the lunar presence showed a sharply etched detail of rock formation filled with a limited grey tonality. Here, was a picture of antiseptic beauty, of sharp crystalline rocks brilliantly glinting in the light. Outside the transparent balloon of the space station, nothing moved and there was no sight of any vegetation. It was an image of utter stillness and absence of life. The few plants in line of sight were within the safe harbour of the climate-controlled environment of the station. All visible life forms existed within this thin bubble which enabled the apparently precarious existence of the artificial environment of the space station. By the grace of its thin and seemingly brittle transparent wall, the station provided a comfortable and supportive atmosphere that protected life from what was usually the harsh chill of the planet’s surface. Then, as the planet slowly rotated so that part of the planet upon which the station seemed to feebly perch, faced directly at the Planet’s star, these same walls and the station’s powerful climatic machinery would be all that prevented its contents from being cremated. Functionary, knew that in practice the outer walls separating the life inside from the hostile environment of the planet and its solar system outside, would be strong, many layered and capable of withstanding much in terms of storm, wind, dust, debris or meteor strike; nevertheless, the largely transparent oval shaped blob in which he sat, together with the many other attached sectors which comprised the space station, gave the impression of having an a insecure and weak grip upon the surface of this unforgiving planet, ready to be instantly removed by some random meteoric prick or puff of solar wind.

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Disembarking, Functionary walked from the shuttle through the temporary tunnel which had extended from the station to provide safe and convenient passage from the vessel. Functionary entered a cavernous waiting area and immediately became aware that he and the rest his fellow travellers were to be subject to lengthy security checks. He bought a drink and took a seat. Casting his gaze around the large transparent structure he saw that, at one end of the room, people were slowly being called to several counters to have their documents examined and their luggage searched. Clearly, security was seen as paramount importance here. He became increasingly aware of the number of security personnel present and also of the extent to which some of them were armed. Some of them carried not only the usual side arms carried by security personnel throughout the System but also a variety of much larger arms as well. Similarly, people appeared deeply ill-at-ease and displayed a considerable suspicion of the newcomers. Of course, Functionary had witnessed high levels of security activity before, but there was an intense feeling of insecurity here, which he had not experienced before.

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Life clung precariously to this distant planet because the bright white sparkling rock was an ore rich in a mineral so valuable that it was economically and strategically worthwhile for the Service to maintain a station on its hostile, bare surface. Similarly, the miners and their families who constituted most of the population of Pristine were well rewarded for their relatively monotonous and potentially dangerous lifestyle. Again, for them, a spell in this rock could be justified as individually economically viable and as financing henceforth a new life which would otherwise be inconceivable without this initial sacrifice. Functionary reflected ruefully that he was on the standard Service pay scale for his rank. There was no hope of an afterlife rewarding sacrifice upon this planet.

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The nature of Pristine was not a surprise to Functionary. He had read his briefs and the additional information he had been able to download into his personal book from the public and Service data sources. Clicking through this officially sanctioned information during his long voyage, had told Functionary that Pristine was a barren planet with no recorded indigenous life of any sort, animal or vegetable. It was a dead planet and had always been so. It was a barren planet which was usually bitterly cold save when its flat, elliptic orbit brought it relatively close to its star, in which instance the side exposed to the star's radiation could slowly build-up profoundly dangerous levels of heat and radioactivity. This heating and cooling process was probably primarily responsible for the lack of life forms of the planet. It was also the sole process by which, through the stresses of rapid heating and cooling and the drastic contrasts in temperature experienced across the planets core, that a slow change in the stony landscape and internal geology was driven. In summary: there was virtually no atmosphere, no air and little by way of shelter, no natural sources of food and water and periods of extreme temperatures. The only way to survive on this forsaken planet for more than a few hours in a space suit or planetary vehicle was by existing within hermetically sealed space domes, with supplies shipped in from Service supply stations located in distant solar systems.

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Chapter 2 – Arrival

The thrusters on the shuttle worked at full power, giving out a deafening roar as they sought to cushion the craft's final decent onto the landing platform. Functionary had finally arrived at his destination. Miles above the planet, the passengers had transferred from the space ship which had been their home for nearly half-a-year, into the small silver shuttle capable of withstanding the forces of planetary gravity and the frictions of atmosphere.

While waiting to disembark, Functionary had been able to scrutinise the planet that was to be his new home for many years. From miles up, Pristine shone brightly, brilliantly reflecting the light from the star around which it orbited. Pristine was a picture in white and clearly delineated shades of light grey. It was beautiful to behold and suggested pristine qualities which reflected its name: clean, unsullied, new. But in its shades of grey, Functionary fretted that this was a planet devoid of vegetation, animal life and even any significant flow of liquids or gases and that, as such, its beauty came only from craters and rock formations and, the changing illumination from its distant sun. It would be a simple, static landscape changing little with place and the effects of nature or with time and the impact of season or climatic conditions. Functionary doubted that the beauty of Pristine would be long interesting on the eye. This was a place to come to, to visit and to view: but it was not a place to tarry.