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With the second skewer, he pointed up at the night sky peeping through froht? I mean, we can see her from here, can’t we?”

Naoalactic disk looked the same as it had in Sol system, but the constellations not quite like her own Parallax, she kneas how they’d started ates She’d seen a ates connected Thirteen hundred stars in a galaxy with three hundred billion of theate-network stars The two farthest systeht-years apart A little alaxy, and still unthinkably vast

“Look just above the ridge there,” she said, pointing “You see where the rock looks like a bent finger? The round knuckle?”

“Yeah, I see it”

“Track just up froht There are three stars almost in a row The middle one is Bobbie”

“H anyht she heard a few hummed notes under his breath It was ain “I wonder which one’s Mars”

“Sol system?” she said “I don’t know”

“I think about Kit,” Alex said and took another drink of his beer “And Giselle, I guess, buthis own life His adulthood I won’t be there for it I don’t even know that I’d be any use if I were Iinto the navy, and Earth and Mars were the biggest things in the universe Now … I don’t know Everything’s different He has to find his oay”

“That’s always how it is,” Naomi said

“I know Every kid has to find who they are without Mom and Dad, but—”

“History too Mars before Solomon Epstein Earth before the seas caured out how to grow our own food Everything’s always changed”

“But up to noasn’t my problem,” Alex said, with an affected disconsolate buzz in his voice They both laughed together A half dozen of the vine bladders lit up and faded She didn’t knohat made therowing in her belly The beer, probably Or the meat, since she’d eaten al in ht under stars in the middle of an ocean of air that wouldn’t run out or leak away It really was reassuring in a way that even the best station atmosphere could never quite equal

“I think about Ji his adulthood, but he alanted to takeon a planet was like Now I’ out, and he’s not”

“He’ll be all right,” Alex said “He always is”

“I know,” she said aloud, but they both knew she meant Maybe