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In the darkening sky, Venus burned

In the twelve years she had been at this desk, in this rooed The alliance between Earth and its upstart brother had been an eternal, unshakable thing once The Belt had been an annoyance and a haven for tiny cells of renegades and troublemakers as likely to die of a ship malfunction as to be called to justice Humanity had been alone in the universe

And then the secret discovery that Phoebe, idiosyncratic moon of Saturn, had been an alien weapon, launched at earth when life here was hardlyidea wrapped in a lipid bilayer How could anything be the same after that?

And yet it was Yes, Earth and Mars were still unsure whether they were permanent allies or deadly enemies Yes, the OPA, Hezbollah of the vacuu a real political force in the outer planets Yes, the thing that had been meant to reshape the priue asteroid down into the clouds of Venus and started doing no one knehat

But the spring still ca star still lit the indigo heavens, outshining even the greatest cities of Earth

Other days, she found that reassuring

“Mr Errinwright,” Soren said

Avasarala turned to the dead screen on her wall as it caht was darker skinned than she was, his face round and soft It would have been in place anywhere in the Punjab, but his voice affected the cool, analytic amusement of Britain He wore a dark suit and a sht behind hiht with the dark, leaving hiht

“Yourell, I hope?”

“It was fine,” she said “We’reout the security arrangements now”

“That was the consensus?”

“Once I told the their topwith officials of the United Nations to personally deliver their apology and discuss how to normalize relations and return Ganyht scratched his chin

“I’m not sure that’s how our opposites on Mars see it,” he said

“Then they can protest We’ll send out dueling press releases and threaten to cancel the h dra Just don’t let the bobble-head talk about Venus or Eros”

His flinch was almost sublieneral as ‘the bobble-head’?”

“Why not? He knows I do I say it to his face, and he doesn’t ”