Cactus in a pot with banner on wood slice

Mags ran the hydroponic deck on Ardent Reach, a ring of steel forty days out from the nearest sun that anyone could bother to name. Every crew member kept a plant on their bench, because the air up there tasted of solder and nobody could stand it without green. Mags had a cactus. It had been her gran's, carried off a dying farm ship in a sealed crate, and its three pads bristled like a row of tiny sewing needles. Anyone who came near it got stabbed. The engineers learned to reach round the back. The cook gave up trying to take cuttings for soup.

Then the Reach's new purser, a soft-spoken man called Tobin Vail, arrived with a clipboard and a plan to clear the bench space for mould trays. He stood over the blue pot and said, very politely, that the thing was a menace and a waste of good light. Mags said nothing. She simply took his hand and pressed it against the tallest pad until he yelped. Then she handed him a plaster, a cup of water and his clipboard back. Tobin never asked for the bench again.

And that, children, is why the old cactus still flowers purple and red at the tips of its pads, where the spines are thinnest. The crew painted its words on a ribbon across the hull door, and they argued about the spelling for a year before agreeing it was the only honest advice aboard. Now go to bed before the lights dim.