Sample:

It was a small, sparse room, the stark white expanse of plasform floors and walls broken only by dead vidscreens and the outline of fold-out compartments: closets, the toilet, the broken sink that could no longer fully close so that the drawer stuck out from the wall a few inches. The bed was nothing more than a narrow platform that flowed seamlessly out of the floor, with blanket and clothing strewn messily across it. On top of the mess a tan plastic carrying case sat open, old and battered. A red-lettered manufacturer's logo had been scraped to illegibility. It carried a few changes of clothes neatly folded, smaller cloth bags carrying toiletries or other personal items, a handful of pre-paid credcards, and a jet injector gun pre-loaded with an ampoule of clear liquid.

A thin figure paced the room with arms crossed in front of her chest. It was a bad room for pacing. She had to turn around after only five small steps. She glanced continually at the injector, the tip of which was just peeking out from beneath a folded shirt. Her watch chirped and she stopped dead, standing in the center of the room until the chirping stopped. She was statue-still except for a convulsive twitch in her fingers and tail.

The last time you'll see any of this, she told herself. What is there to miss? This reek of vomit? The constant fear that someday the inertial dampener is going to fail and turn you to paste on the wall? Something inside her face burned. Tear ducts? She whirled and punched a button on the wall. A panel slid away from the full-body mirror. She looked at herself through flecks of grime.

She was a Vrinjamo, the felinoid people of planet Vrinja, although Lahri herself came from the terraformed moon Wahna and had never walked the soil of her mother world. She was 5'6 and light-boned. Petite. Lithe. Gaunt, actually, she told herself, slitted eyes tracing cheekbones that protruded too far over the hollows.

Her fur was the color of desert dunes and sun-baked canyons, clay-red agouti that darkened to seal brown on her backside and lightened to dun on her belly. A black stripe ran down her spine. Her eyes were lined above and below in cream. Her muzzle tapered into a tiny, delicate mouth kissed with that same soft color. She had tall, pointed ears, thin enough to see the red veins inside if she stood with the light at her back.

She peered hard at herself with golden eyes gone dull. It was harder to see sickness on the face of a Vrinjamo because of the fur, but to her it was obvious. Her fur was no longer sleek, her whiskers drooped (and some had fallen out) and then there was the shameful jut of her collarbone. She grabbed a beige shawl from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. Beneath that she wore a desaturated teal blouse with a ruffled bottom hem that hid the sonic knife strapped to the small of her back. Her bootpants were high-waisted, cream colored pleather that hugged her legs and hips. The fabric molded neatly around her toes and the heel of her digitigrade foot and had a hard rubber sole.

Her bottom was the only part of her that didn't seem wasted, Lahri thought. She was mandolin-shaped; tiny in the shoulders with flaring, rounded hips. Maybe this pilot would pay more attention to her beauty than her twitches.

She smoothed down her clothing with a quick gesture, then raked her fingers through her “hair.” It wasn't human-like hair, but the fur on the back of her skull and neck was longer than the rest of it. Several braids had been made of the right side while the hair on the left hung loose. None of the braids reached lower than her shoulder blade. Content that she wasn't going to become any prettier or healthier by staring in the mirror, Lahri whirled to the bed and snapped shut the carrying case, taking it up by the handle. She palmed the door control and it slid aside with a hiss.