1981, anthologized in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, Arkham House, 1990, pages 225-283

Cold Pig is the cruel nickname given to female astronaut Carol Page, who wanted all her life to fly to the stars. The men call her CP for short. She is built well enough to be used for sex but has an unattractively upturned fleshy nose that has caused her supreme alienation among humans. Through diligence and perseverance and grit she finally gets assigned to a ship headed to the outer solar system. Her plan, all along, is to make it to the stars; to kill her male crewmates, hijack the craft and fly into infinity. She just knows something is waiting out there for her.

CP survives a brutal rape by her captain, does away with he and his crew, and takes mankind’s maiden flight into the unknown. Sheldon’s plot is murky and the narrative is clunky for a novella. It is structured as short story and awkwardly weighted. CP compels the reader on, as if her ugly plight is mirrored in the reader’s less than aesthetic experience. The tenacious hope of CP keeps the story alive in the reader’s mind. Eventually she makes contact with an ETI. I can’t give that away.

There is something about the later works of Sheldon that is brutally graceless and disturbing—I like it. If you are into reading about alienation or feminism With Delicate Mad Hands will strike a chord in your soul, hopefully a chord you like having struck.