The Tern came down from the gate to Lorn’s Reach in the afternoon of the day after the dawn, and docked at the lower ring of the east dome, and the children were waiting.
Mara saw them through the port before the hatch opened. Twenty of them, standing in a line along the dock’s rail in their coats and scarves, holding bags, holding each other’s hands. Nemi stood at the head of the line with her list board on her arm. Behind them, under the dome’s glass, the light was different from when the Tern had first landed: a clear pale gold now, the light of a lamp that was working. The sheeting across the sealed streets glowed with it. On the terraces, people moved about in the open, not hurrying.
The children were not going because the cold was killing them now. They were going because Nemi had decided, and the council had agreed, that the children with no guardian on the Reach should not be on the Reach if the heart failed, or the reservoir did whatever it was doing, or the Compact came back. A neighboring world, a day’s flight down the Lorn-to-Cinder run, had a community council that had promised shelter in writing: beds, food, a school building, until Lorn’s shortages were met. The Tern would set them down there on its way home.
