It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in January/February 1978, and subsequently reprinted as the title story of Varley's 1980 collection of the same name, which was later reissued as Picnic on Nearside.

[citation needed] Lt. Anna-Louise Bach and her partner Jorge Weil are police officers in New Dresden, a domed city on the Moon.

They are assigned what initially seems an open-and-shut case of murder, but are dismayed to realize that the crime took place in an area of the city inhabited by a cult called the Barbies.

They have had their genitals removed and have abandoned names and individual identities, save for tattooed ID numbers forced on them by law.

Bach is left with a recently murdered body that she passes off as the real culprit, intending to return to the colony surreptitiously to mete out justice herself.