Freya spent her days working to get the wheat harvest in, without eating much herself, except in sudden ravenous boltings at the end of some days, after Badim cooked something for her at their stove, his back to her. Badim was quiet. His withdrawal into himself obviously frightened Freya, perhaps as much as any other aspect of the situation. He too was changing, and this was something she had never seen.

And then there was Devi, back in her parents’ bedroom. Devi stayed mostly in bed now, and had intravenous drip bags hanging over her always, and was often asleep. When she went for a walk, bowlegged and stiff, the bags went with her on rolling poles. Badim and Freya pushed those along while Devi pushed a walker. With their help Devi walked the town at night, when most of their neighbors were asleep, and she liked to get to a spot where through the ceiling one could sometimes see Aurora, hanging there in the night sky.

After all their lives in interstellar space, with nothing but white geometrical points to look at, and diffuse nebula, and the Milky Way and various other dim clusters and star clouds, Aurora looked huge. Its disk was brilliantly bright on the sun-facing side, however full or crescented that lit portion appeared to them. If they were seeing less than the full lit hemisphere, then another segment of the remaining sphere (which segment ship learned was called a lune) would probably also be lit, but more dimly, being illuminated by light reflected from E. Dim as this lune was compared to the one in full sunlight, it was still bright compared to the part of the moon facing away from both sun and planet: that lune by contrast appeared a gleaming black, being ocean or ice lit only by starlight. It did not seem so dark when it was all they could see, but when there were either of the two lit lunes to compare it to, it was like pitch or jet, distinctly darker than the black of space.

Taken together, the three differently illuminated lunes gave Aurora a strongly spherical appearance. When it was visible along with E, which likewise appeared as a large clouded ball hanging among the night stars, the effect was stunning. It was like the photos they had seen of Earth and Luna, hanging together in space.

And Tau Ceti itself was a disk too, quite big in the sky, but burning so brightly they could not look at it directly, so could not be sure just how big it was. They said it looked enormous, and blazed painfully. In some moments they could see all three bodies, Tau Ceti, Planet E, Aurora: but in these moments the glare of Tau Ceti overwhelmed their ability to look at the planet and moon very well.

In any case, they were there. They had reached their destination.

For a long time one night, Devi stood there leaning on Badim, Freya on the other side of her, looking up at Aurora and Planet E. There was a little ice cap gleaming at the pole of Aurora visible to them, and cloud patterns swirled over a blue ocean. A black island chain curved across the darkened lune visible to them, and Badim was saying something about how it might indicate a tectonic past, or on the other hand be the unsubmerged part of a big impact crater’s rim. They would learn which when they landed and got settled. Geological investigations would make it obvious, Badim said, whether it had been formed one way or the other.

“Those islands look good,” Devi said. “And that big isolated one must be about the size of Greenland, right? Then the rest are like Japan or something. Lots of land. Lots of coastlines. That looks like a big bay, could be a harbor.”

“That’s right. They’ll be seafarers. Island people. Lots of biomes. That island chain crosses a lot of latitudes, see? Looks like it runs right up into the polar cap. And mountains too. Looks like snow on the big one, down the spine of it.”

“Yes. It looks good.”

Then Devi was tired, and they had to walk her back to their apartment. Slowly they walked the path through the meadow outside the town, three abreast, Devi between husband and child, her arms out a bit, hands forward, so they could lift her up a little by her elbows and forearms. She looked light between them, and stepped in a hesitant glide, as if barely touching down. They lifted as much as they could without lofting her into the air. None of them spoke. They looked small and slow. It was as if they were dolls.

Back in the apartment they got Devi into her bed, and Freya left the two of them alone in their darkened bedroom, lit by the light in the hall. She went to their kitchen and heated the water in the teapot, and brought her parents some tea. She drank some herself, holding the cup in her hands, then against her cheeks. It had been near zero outside the apartment. A winter night in Nova Scotia.

She headed back down the hall with a tray of cookies, but stopped when she heard Devi’s voice.

“I don’t care about me!”

Freya leaned against the wall outside the door. Badim said something quietly.

“I know, I know,” Devi said, her voice quieter too, but still with a penetrating edge. “But she never listens to me anyway. And she’s out in the kitchen. She won’t hear us in here. Anyway it’s just that I’m worried about her. Who knows how she’ll end up? Every year of her life she’s been different. They all have. You can’t get a fix on these kids.”

“Maybe kids are always like that. They grow up.”

“I hope so. But look at the data! These kids are biomes too, just like the ship. And just like the ship they’re getting sick.”

Badim said something low again.

“Why do you say that! Don’t try to tell me things I know aren’t true! You know I hate that!”

“Please, Devi, calm down.”

Badim’s low voice sounded a little strained. All her life Freya has heard these voices in exchanges like this one. It didn’t matter what they were talking about, this was the sound of her childhood, the voices from the next room. Her parents. Soon she would only have one parent, and this familiar sound, which, despite its grating rasping strained unhappy quality, had the sound of childhood in it, would be gone. She would never hear it again.

“Why should I be calm?” Devi said. Although now she sounded calmer. “What have I got to be calm about now? I’m not going to make it. It really is like trying to live past the end of Zeno’s paradox. Not going to happen. I’m not going to be walking around on that world.”

“You will.”

“Don’t tell me things I know aren’t true! I told you that.”

“You don’t always know what’s true. Come on, admit it. You’re an engineer, you know that. Things happen. You make things happen, sometimes.”

“Sometimes.” Now she really was calmer. “Okay, maybe I’ll see it. I hope I do. But either way there are going to be problems. We don’t know how our plants will do with that light regime. It’s weird. We’ll need to make soil fast. We still need everything to work, or else we’re done for.”

“It’s always been that way, right?”

“No. Not on Earth. We had room for error there. But ever since they put us in this can, it’s been a case of get everything right or else everyone is dead. They did that to us!”

“I know. It was a long time ago.”

“Yes, but so what? That just means generations of us have had to live with it. We’ve been rats in a cage, two thousand at a time for seven generations, and for what? For what?”

“For that world out there we just saw. For humanity. What’s it been, about fifteen thousand people, and a couple hundred years? In the big scheme of things it’s not that many. And then we have a new world to live on.”

“If it works.”

“Well, we got here. So it looks like it will work. Anyway, we did what we could. You did what you could. You made the best effort you could. It was a reason to live, you know? A project. You needed that. We all need that. It’s not so bad to be a prisoner, if you’re working on an escape. Then you have something to live for.”