Aboard an ex battle station, Space Station Quark, Johnny at 14, meets another boy at the swimming pool, a place he always goes to mix and find friends though mostly distinctly unsuccessful and for this reason easily falls for a boy of the same age named Robbie who confirms feelings Johnny never knew existed and they spend the night together. In the morning Robbie disappears and Johnny determined to find his first love, leaves SS Quark in the belief is no longer aboard and leaves with a wild mercenary privateer into a fleet of metal asteroids, pirate bases. But all is not lost, Johnny wakes up in bed with Robbie, though Johnny believes it was not a normal dream but some out of body experience that served as warning now he had found his true yearning, his life would no longer be sheltered.
