A large, salt-smelling children's doctor on Ganymede who abducts his young patient Mei from school.
Doctor Strickland is a physician on Ganymede who treats Mei for a chronic immune condition, monitoring her with a familiar routine of questions about her throat, night sweats, and stool. Big, warm, and playful with children — he tickles Mei and calls her "my favorite girl" — he uses that trust to lure her out of her Montessori school, claiming her mother is waiting. In truth he leads her, with the woman Umea, through Ganymede's abandoned surface tubes into a concealed facility where numerous children are held.
He keys an unfamiliar program into an old-style airlock door, tells Umea things are "good to go" and to "release it," and leaves Mei alone before she is shown a monstrous creature in a glass tank. Whatever his purpose, it is neither medical nor benign.
A big man, noticeably taller and larger than Mei's father; smells of salt; carries a hand terminal in his pants pocket and moves easily while carrying a small child.
Mei's physician turned abductor; the human face of the covert operation kidnapping Ganymede's children.