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Once he started on the subject, it was hard for him to stop In many ways, Ganymede had been the center of civilization in the outer planets All the cutting-edge plant work had been there All the life sciences issues But it wasabout the prospect of rebuilding that was, in its fashion, eventhe first tiain was to take all the things they had learned, and refine, iiddy Bobbie listened with a melancholy smile on her face

And it wasn’t only Ganymede All of human civilization had been built out of the ruins of what had corand chean with the siain Catastrophe was just one part of what always happened It was a prelude to what came next

“You make it sound romantic,” Bobbie said, and the way she said it was alan, and soled its way into his ear He pulled back with a yelp, turning to face Mei’s bright eyes and brilliant ser dripped with saliva, and beyond her A at his belly and the other slapping the table hard enough to make the plates rattle

“What was that?”

“Hi, Daddy I love you”

“Here,” Alex said, passing Prax a clean napkin “You’re gonna want that”

The startling thing was the silence He didn’t kno long it had been going on, but the awareness of it washed over him like a wave The political half of the rooh the forest of their bodies, he saw Avasarala bending forward, her elbows on her knees, her hand terminal inches in front of her face When she stood up, they parted before her She was such a s out of it

“That’s not good,” Holden said, rising to his feet Without another word, Prax and Naomi, Amos and Alex and Bobbie all followed after her The politicians and the scientists ca at last

Theroom was across a wide hall and set up in the model of an ancient Greek amphitheater The podiuh-definition screen Avasaralafast and low into her hand terminal The others trailed in after her The sense of dread was physical The screen went black and sohts

In the darkness of the screen, Venus stood in near silhouette against the sun It was an ie Prax had seen hundreds of times before The feed could have co stations The ti back in time forty-seven minutes A ship name, the Celestine, floated beneath the numbers

Every time the protomolecule soldiers had been involved in violence, Venus had reacted The OPA had just destroyed a hundred of its half-huht between excitee scattered and re-for the sensors Avasarala said so sharp that could have been show e stopped and refrareen ship A heads-up display ain, and when it re-formed, the Mer end over end, tu, and the screen went back to its original ie Now that Prax knew to look, he could see the tiny dot of the Mer near the penumbra There were other tiny specks like it