Behind the temporary prefab, their true house was still growing. In keeping with Randtown’s green ethos, they’d both decided it was going to be drycoral—which was strangely rare for an eco-obsessed district. Normally the plant was grown over an existing structure, but Liz had tracked down a company on Halifax that offered a much cheaper method. She’d started with what was essentially a cluster of hemispherical balloons, a simple made-to-order any-size-you-want membrane that she spread out over the ground and inflated. Then she just planted the kernels all around the outside, and waited for them to grow. As the strands slithered their way upward, she twined them together and pruned judiciously, ensuring the walls were smooth and water-tight. Because of Ulon Valley’s harsh winters, she selected a drycoral variety thicker than most, to provide a decent insulation. When they were done, a simple domestic solar-pumped heatstore cube would keep them warm and snug all winter. But it was that necessary additional thickness that made them realize why few Randtown district homes were made from drycoral: it took a long time to grow upward. Every day when he got out of the pickup truck Mark would take another look at the tops of the pearl and cornflower-blue strands to see how far they’d gotten. On four or five of the smaller outlying dome rooms they were already up to the crest, where Liz was knotting them together in a minaret finishing twist; but on the three largest domes they still had a couple of meters to go. “They’ll be ready by midsummer,” Liz kept saying. Mark prayed she was right.

Barry burst out of the house and ran over to Mark, flinging his arms around his father. It used to be his father’s legs, now they were above his hips.

“What did you do today?” They both said it together as ritual demanded, and smiled at each other.

“You first,” Mark said as they walked back to the temporary house.

“I was reading, and spelling this morning, then we had Mr. Carroll for math and programming. I did general history with Ms. Mavers, and Jodie took us for practical mechanics to finish off with. I liked that. It was the only thing that made sense.”

“Really, why’s that?”

They walked into the kitchen, where Liz was sitting at the big cluttered table, trying to coax Sandy into having some soup. Mark’s daughter looked the picture of misery with her cheeks and nose all red, eyes damp, and wrapped in a big warm blanket. It was a flu variant that had been going the rounds of all the local kids. Barry had managed to avoid it so far.

“Daddy,” Sandy said weakly, and held her arms out.

Mark knelt down and gave her a big cuddle. “So how are you feeling today, my angel, any better?”

She nodded miserably. “Little bit.”

“Oh, that’s good. Well done, darling.” He sat in the chair next to her, and got a very fast and perfunctory kiss from Liz. “How about eating some of this soup then?” he asked his daughter. “We’ll eat it together.”

What might have been a smile passed across Sandy’s lips. “Yes,” she said bravely.

Liz rolled her eyes for Mark and got up. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. Come on, Barry, what do you want for tea?”

“Pizza?” he said immediately, followed by a hopeful, “and chips.”

“It’s not going to be pizza,” Liz told him sternly. “You know you’ve cleared all of them out of the freezer. It’s going to have to be fish.”

“Oww, Mum!”

“We can probably find some chips to go with them,” Liz said, knowing it was the only way to get him to eat the fish.

“All right,” the boy said glumly. “Well, is it fried fish, then?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Barry sat in his chair at the table, a picture of tragedy. Liz told the maidbot to fetch some fish from the freezer, adding an order silently through her e-butler to make it a grill-only packet.

“So why didn’t anything make sense?” Mark asked again.

“Well, it did sort of,” Barry said. “It’s just that I don’t see the point.”

“Of what?”

“School.”

“Ah, why not?”

“I don’t need it,” the boy said sincerely. He gestured to the broad kitchen window with its view back down the Ulon Valley. “I’m going to be a jetboat captain, and do the river.”

“Oh, right.” Last week it had been a gyroball instructor. Kids in the Randtown district tended to be influenced by the more sporting and physical aspects of life. They were all going to be raft masters, or jetboat captains, or ski instructors, or pro fliers, or gill divers. “Well, you still need a basic education, I’m afraid, even to qualify for that. So you’ll have to keep going, at least for a few years more.”

“Okay,” Barry said mournfully. “I might be a starship pilot, as well. I was watching that on the cybersphere today. The whole school was there when the Second Chance docked with its platform. That was so cool.”

Mark kept looking at Sandy as he was spooning her the soup. “Yeah, it was.”

“You saw it, too?”

“Certainly did.”

The maidbot arrived back with a packet of fish. Liz grabbed it from the little machine. “Come on, help me cook this.”

“Where are the chips?” Barry asked plaintively.

“There are some potatoes in the basket. We’ll cut them up. It won’t take long.”

“No no, Mum, real chips. From the freezer!”

Mark took Sandy through into the living room while Barry and Liz prepared the fish. He cleared some of the toys off the sofa and sat down. Sandy curled up in his lap, sniffling as she clung to her friend-doll, a pro-response polar bear that was sensing her illness, and held on to her arm affectionately.

He flicked through a few cybersphere reports on the big portal before reluctantly settling on Alessandra Baron, who had secured an exclusive with Nigel Sheldon himself. He was sitting behind some big desk in his corporate office, talking clearly and confidently, as if the whole starship return drama had been just a scheduled stop for one of his trains. “While I deeply regret that Captain Kime had to leave Emmanuelle and Dudley behind, I don’t believe he had any choice in the matter. I was not there, nor were any of the somewhat distasteful armchair critics I’ve heard today. As such we are completely unable to offer anything approaching a valid opinion concerning what was done, and what other courses of action were supposedly available. Only a fool would try to second-guess an event like that. I appointed Wilson as captain because I believed he was the right man for the job. His exemplary actions throughout the mission have completely vindicated that appointment.

“Of course, CSI has already authorized re-life procedures for both of our lost crew. Thanks to the safety procedures which we take so seriously, their onboard secure memory stores were updated just before they went over to the Watchtower.”

“But what about the information the Second Chance brought back?” Alessandra asked. “Surely you have to concede it’s disappointing?”

Nigel Sheldon smiled as if he pitied her. “We have more data than the entire Commonwealth physics community can absorb. I’d hardly call that a dearth.”

“I was referring to the lack of knowledge about the Dyson aliens. After so much money was spent, so much time devoted, and with the added cost of human life, don’t you think we should know more? We don’t even know what they look like.”

“We know that they shoot at us on sight. The one thing I am in agreement with my good friend Senator Burnelli over is that there must be a return mission. This is the nature of exploration, Alessandra, I’m sorry it’s not fast enough for your personal timetable. But sensible, rational humans venture somewhere new and see what the conditions are like so that we can prepare ourselves to go farther next time. The Second Chance did this, it brought back a wealth of details on Dyson Alpha and what kind of ship we need to go back there with.”

“So you’re in favor of going back, then?”