After the session, Josh lived in his room alone: ​​his neighbor was still expelled for academic failure (and Josh, by the way, warned him that if he did not take up his studies, he would be expelled ...). On the one hand, the guy felt free - the whole room belonged to him! - on the other hand, he completely stopped cleaning the room and started it to such an extent that the commandant of the hostel already required him to clean up at last. Previously, Josh and his former neighbor made a cleaning schedule, but the neighbor was frankly lazy to do the cleaning at “his” time, and Josh had to clean up for two, and when his neighbor was dismissed, he himself forgot about all sorts of schedules. But now new students should have entered MarPalOun, and it was possible that some of their first-year students should be assigned to Josh, so a couple of days ago the guy got ready and did a general cleaning in his room.

Josh studied at MarPolun, the University of Marsopolis, the largest in the Solar System, leaving even the famous earthly universities of Oxford and Sorbonne far behind. Students from all the planets of the Solar System and sometimes even from neighboring stars studied here - Josh himself was from Ganymede, the satellite of Jupiter. Mars as a whole was more like its native Ganymede: Earth is not full of life, not Venus with its floating cities floating in the upper layers of the dense atmosphere, not Mercury with its scorching sun and deadly radiation, Europe with a deadly level radiation on an icy surface and a continuous ocean under a multi-kilometer layer of ice. Of course, the sun shone brighter here, the temperature outside was higher (although it was not felt at all under the dome - the colonies were heated by electric heating on Ganymede and Mars), and the rusty-red stony plains outside the windows did not look like the icy wastelands of Ganymede.

But the former neighbor of Josh, who was from Earth, completely familiar to any descendant of extraterrestrial colonists was a bastard. For example, that the fee for utilities (paid, of course, by the state: could it not throw out defaulters from the dome city?) Includes a fee for using the ventilation system, and the "air charge" is not a joke (Josh, however there was a certain intellectual effort to understand that earthlings find the funny in the phrase “payment for air”). And in general, that one has to live in an airtight dome-city, that decompression overalls are casual clothes according to safety measures, even if everyone knows that the possibility of depressurization of the space colony compartment is negligible. The food, which the colonists ate, was also unaccustomed to him: on Earth, the diet was much richer than anything ... well, Josh concluded that these earthlings are not completely adapted to life in extraterrestrial colonies. (Although the guy was expelled, of course, not at all because of this ...) Josh wondered: what will be his new neighbor, will there be any problems with him, and will he be able to make friends with him?

The guy, as usual, was sitting in front of a computer terminal built into the table, immersed in a computer game, when he heard the sound of an electronic lock through the headphones. Quickly putting the game on pause and turning around (“And what if this is again the commandant?”), Josh saw the door of his room open - behind it stood a short and thin young guy with light curls, contrasted with the dark tan of his skin. Venusians often had this skin color - mulattoes, of course, he also met, but the characteristic features of the face with thick lips (more precisely, in the case of this guy, their absence) were difficult to confuse with something.The boy froze on the threshold, looking at the owner of the room with a startled look - so Josh even looked around just in case: was there something wrong with his room or with him that he was looking like that?

- Hello! - Josh smiled entering. - I'm Josh. Will you live here now?

- Uh ... - stretched out an unfamiliar guy. - This is a double room, right? - He asked at random.

“Well ... yes,” Josh replied, surprised that his new neighbor was asking about such obvious things. - Why?

“Damn ...” the guy answered with annoyance. - I needed a room for one person! What did they even think there ?!

“Well, mate,” Josh laughed merrily. - There are not so many single rooms, first of all they are issued to alien students ...

- So I am an alien student! - the guy answered, and only here it came to Josh that his pronunciation is not at all like Venusian. - BUT! - here the stranger slapped his forehead. - I seem to understand! I have in the column "race" in the documents written "mixed", probably, this is the whole point!

- Mixed? - Josh asked in surprise.

- Well yes. My mother is a dugout, and paon, that is, the father, that is, the second parent is an Alchibian. They recently moved with me to Centaurus, they themselves are working on Venus, and here I entered the University of Marsopolis, it seems that the need to tell all this made the young half-breed calm down a bit.

“So you're from Centauri?” - Josh smiled at his new friend. - What is your name?

- Dominic. Can Nick, - finally a Centauri man introduced himself and for the first time in the whole conversation he smiled a little. “We have no such rooms at Centaurus, at least for Alchibians ... We have this: each person has his own room.”

Josh stared at the boy for a moment for a moment: he thought that after his earthly neighbor he was no surprise, but it turns out that colonists from other stars have their quirks ... But still the boy smiled and replied:

- Well, I do not know how you are there, but here everything is different. Get used to it if you want to live and study here.

“Yes, but ...” Nick hesitated. - You see, I was probably mistaken for a guy in the management of hostels, but in fact I am an Alchibian, that is, I change my gender. What will you do if I live with you and suddenly turn into a girl?

Nick looked at Josh, waiting for his answer, but he almost immediately answered the first thing that came to his mind (and obviously not at all what Nick expected):

- What will I do? I'm happy! - and he laughed, but immediately stopped himself: after all, Nick was clearly not at all laughing. - Okay, okay, I understand you. Let's go to this office right now and try to beat a single room out of them? If you want, I can go with you, help where necessary.

- Behold ... seriously? - Nick was surprised at first, and then answered enthusiastically: - Of course, let's go now!

In the management of the hostels for the young men, however, they answered that, unfortunately, all the single rooms were already occupied. Some of them were inhabited by earth students, who, unlike aliens, separate rooms were not necessary, but it took time to find someone who was ready to vacate his room. In the end, Nick was told that they would try to solve his question within a month, and the Alchibian withered, but Josh tried to cheer him up:

- Ok, do not worry. We will survive with you somehow this month. Or are you afraid that I will use the position in a cunning way and try to rape you? - he laughed, but when he saw how Nick's cheeks flared, he stopped short: from Nick's point of view, this should have been completely ridiculous. “Okay, okay,” Josh tried to make amends. “I promise you ... you can be sure that I will not harass you.” Do you believe me? - the guy looked at the Alchibian, and he nodded back, smiling a little. - Then let's go, let's help you unpack your belongings.

- Thank! - Nick smiled warmly, thanks to whether for help, or for the promise not to bother him, or for both.

On the way back to the hostel, Josh and Nick got to talking.Josh said that he was studying at the Physics Department, and Nick - that he entered the Department of Xenoarcheology, which caused admiring "Wow, you!" Marsopolis xenoarheology ...