The Indulgence of Negu Mah

Set on Callisto, the tale follows Negu Mah, a prosperous uranium merchant, his beautiful but bitter wife Nanlo, and Sliss, a visiting Venusian. Nanlo, alienated by a financially driven marriage meant to rescue her family, plots to elope with an engineer named Hugh Neils and to steal Negu Mah’s prized freighter, the Vulcan, as retribution. Negu Mah, troubled by his wife’s unhappiness, confides in Sliss and prepares to mete out what he terms justice. The story sketches tensions of wealth, pride, and control, exploring how social advantage and personal resentment collide within a colonial, spacefaring domestic life.