Record of a Spaceborn Few

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For Anne, who showed me I could.

With the exception of the prologue, the timeline in this book begins during the final events of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

‘Mom, can I go see the stars?’

Tessa looked up from her small workbench and down to her even smaller daughter. ‘I can’t take you now, baby,’ she said. She nodded toward the cleanerbot she was trying to coax back to life. ‘I want to finish this before your Uncle Ashby calls.’

Aya stood in place and bounced on her heels. She’d never in her life been still, not while sleeping, not while sick, not while she’d grown in Tessa’s belly. ‘I don’t need you to go,’ Aya said. ‘I can go myself.’

The declaration was made boldly, laden with enough self-assurance that Tessa set down her screwdriver. The words I don’t need you made a part of her shrivel in on itself, but then, wasn’t that the point of being a parent? To help them need you less and less? She turned to Aya, and considered. She thought of how deep the elevator shaft to the family cupola was, how easy it would be for a bouncing almost-five-year-old to slip off the bench and fall a full deck down. She tried to remember how old she herself had been the first time she’d gone down alone, but found she couldn’t. Aya was clumsy, as all people learning their bodies were, but she was careful, too, when she put her mind to it. She knew to buckle her safety harness on the ferry, to find an adult if she heard air hissing or metal groaning, to check for a green pressure light on any door before opening it. Aya was a kid, but a spacer kid, and spacer kids had to learn to trust themselves, and trust their ships.

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