“What is that?” Elvi asked, her voice instinctively low, as if she might startle it.
“One of the moons.”
She stepped forward, her neck back, scowling up at the night. “What’s it doing?”
“Melting.”
“Why?”
“Right?” Fayez said, standing up.
Sudyam, to their left, raised her voice. “Makes you wish we’d sent probes there, doesn’t it?”
“We’re one ship, and this is a whole damn planet,” Fayez said. “Plus which, we’ve been focusing a lot of effort on killing each other.”
“Point being?” Sudyam asked.
Fayez spread his hands wide. “We’ve been busy.”
The moon shifted colors for a moment, turning from dull red to a bright orange to yellow-white, and then back down the spectrum again, waning as suddenly as it had waxed.
“Is anyone recording this?” Elvi asked.
“Caskey and Farengier aborted the high-altitude refraction study and started sucking down data from it is as soon as they saw it was happening. Mostly, it’s visible light, heat, and about thirty percent more gamma particles than background. The sensor array on the Israel’s showing about the same thing.”
“Is it dangerous?” Elvi asked, knowing the answer even as she spoke the words. Maybe. Maybe it was dangerous, maybe it wasn’t. Until they knew what it was, all they could do was guess. In the starlight, Fayez’s expression was difficult to make out. The apprehension at the corners of his mouth and in the curve of his eyes might only have been her imagination. Another kind of dream. “Do the others know?”
“I guess so,” Fayez said. “Assuming they’re not too busy taking each other prisoner and setting people on fire.”
“You told Murtry?”
“I didn’t. Someone probably did.”
“And Holden? What about him? Does he know?”
“Even if he does, what’s he going to do about it? Speak to it reassuringly?”
Elvi turned toward First Landing. The few lit houses were like a handful of stars fallen to the ground. She took out her hand terminal, setting its screen to white and using it as a torch.
“Where are you going?” Fayez called from behind her.
“I’m going to talk to Captain Holden,” she said.
“Of course you are,” Fayez said with an impatient grunt. “Because what would be useful for him is a biologist’s perspective on it.”
The words stung a little, but Elvi didn’t let herself be drawn into the conversation. Fayez was a good scientist and a friend, but his habit of making fun of everything and derailing anything serious for the sake of humor also made him less useful than he should have been. One of the others should have made sure everyone knew that something was happening overhead. It shouldn’t have had to be her. And still, she quietly did hope that she would be the one to bring the news.
The dry air smelled like dust and the tiny, night-blooming flower analogs. Where there had been a few tough, ropy plants, months of foot traffic had made paths, and Elvi followed them as easily in the near-darkness as she would have in the day. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that the scattering of huts, the ruins, and even First Landing itself had become as familiar to her as anyplace else she’d lived. She knew the land, the feel of the breezes, the smells that rose and fell at different times of day. Over the past month, she had been the ears and eyes of the whole scientific community back in the solar system. Even when the terrorists had killed Reeve, and Murtry had come down, at least a part of her day had been running samples and transmitting data back home. She had spent more time not just in but with this environment than anyone else.
Above her, the tiny red moon reminded her that she still didn’t know much. Normally, that would have been a delight and a challenge. In the darkness of the New Terran night, it felt like a threat. Her steps took on a rhythm, her boots tapping against the wind-paved stones.
In the town, people were in the streets much like they had been out by the RCE huts. They stood in the streets and on their little cobbled-together porches, looking up at the glowing dot as it drifted toward the horizon. Elvi couldn’t say if they were curious or apprehensive or just wanting something to think about that wasn’t the conflict between RCE and the squatters. Between us and them.
Or maybe they were seeing it as an omen. The burning eye looking down on them all, judging them and preparing for war. She’d heard a folktale like that once, but she didn’t remember where.
Wei and one of the other RCE security men were walking down the main street, rifles at the ready. Elvi nodded to them, and they nodded back, but no one spoke. Probably someone had told Holden. But she’d come all this way. She should at least be sure.
In the street outside the commissary where Holden was living, Jacek Merton was pacing. The boy’s body leaned into the motion, his hands at his sides clenched in fists. His gaze was fixed about three feet in front of him like someone looking at a screen, and his shoulders were hunched in like he was protecting something. She was about to say hello, when a small warning bell chimed in her head.
Between one heartbeat and the next, she wasn’t Elvi Okoye going in the middle of the night to see Captain Holden on pretenses that even she could see were pretty damned flimsy. That wasn’t the son of Lucia and Basia Merton, brother of Felcia, in front of her. This wasn’t even a town. She was a biologist in the field seeing a primate. And in that frame of reference, some things were perfectly clear. The boy was working himself up to violence.
She hesitated and started to turn back. Wei was only a few dozen meters and a corner or two away. If Elvi shouted, the security people would probably come at a run. Her pulse was quick. She could feel it in her throat. The long hours after Reeve’s death came back to her like a recurring nightmare. She should scream. She should call for help.
Except the boy wasn’t just a primate. Wasn’t just an animal. He was Felcia’s brother. And if she called for help, they might kill him. She swallowed, caught between fear and courage. Uncertain. What would Fayez do? she wondered. Offer the kid a beer?
He stopped and looked up at her. His eyes were empty. He wore a light jacket that pulled down a little on one side, like he had something heavy in his pocket.
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
A moment later, Jacek said, “Hi.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” She pointed up at the red dot. It seemed more portentous than ever. Jacek glanced up at the sky, but didn’t seem to react to it.