On the Ice Islands

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None of them knew the color of the sky. The terrible dispossessed children, living in a universe of corridors and chambers, regarded the screens of wheeling stars with the uncomprehending indifference they might have accorded a history program from Earth; while their quarry, hunted through tangles of conduit and wallboarded spaces they could not clearly remember, dreamed of empyrean blue and open air that they would never see again. The youthful elect, escaped from the decaying carcass of the Centaur in their gleaming ceramic vessels, looked down upon Neptune’s turbid troposphere and imagined its methane clouds seen from beneath, an imagined zone where their floating habitats could bob free of the killer winds yet see them swirling above: the miracle of weather, illuminated by faint sunlight like the smoke-dimmed windows of cathedral stained glass.

Yarrow woke in a panic, thrashing in sweat-slicked sheets that twined about her. Her skins began to breathe more easily as soon as she kicked them free, but her heart continued to pound in the darkness, which she finally banished with a word. Sitting up in the reassuring half-light, Yarrow listened to the fading sounds of struggle, which seemed to recede beyond the new wallboard partitions. A sharp pain stabbed behind her left eye, unmistakable evidence that her vision was not simply a dream.

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