It wasn’t easy for them to push their way back out of the middle, but they managed – his dad leading the way, Kip following the grey-striped print of his father’s shirt. It was a nice shirt, the kind of shirt you wore to naming days or weddings, or if someone important came to the hex for dinner. Kip was wearing a nice shirt, too – yellow with white dots. He’d struggled with the buttons, and his mom had had to help him get it closed. He could feel the fabric tugging tight over his chest every time he took a breath, just like he could feel his toes pressing against the ends of his shoes. His mom had shaken her head, and said she’d go over and see if his cousin Wymer had any bigger hand-me-downs lying around. Kip wished he could get brand new clothes, like the ones the import merchants hung outside their stalls, all crisp and straight and without stitches where somebody else’s elbows had poked through. But he could see stitches on his dad’s shirt, too, and on most of the shirts they pushed past. They were still nice shirts, though, as nice as people could manage. Everybody wanted to look good for the Aeluons.

No matter whether the shirts were new or stitched, there was one thing everybody had on: a white band tied around their upper right arm. That was what people wore in the tendays after funerals, so other people knew to cut you some slack and give you some kindness. Everybody had them on now – everybody on the Asteria, everybody in the whole Fleet. Kip didn’t know anybody who’d died on the Oxomoco, but that wasn’t the point, Mom had said while tying cloth around his arm. We all lost family, she’d said, whether we knew them or not.

Kip looked back once they’d cleared the crowd. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked with a frown. He hadn’t been able to see anything where they were, but the empty dock was far away now, and the ship would be arriving any minute. They weren’t going to miss it, were they? They couldn’t.

‘Trust me,’ Dad said. He waved his son along, and Kip could see where they were headed: one of the cargo cranes perched nearby. Some other people had already got the same idea, and were sitting in the empty gaps of the crane’s metal neck. His dad put his hand on Kip’s shoulder. ‘Now, you should never, ever do what we’re about to do any other time. But this is a special occasion, yeah? Do you think you can climb up there with me?’

Kip nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his heart pounding. Dad didn’t break the rules often. Ever, really. No way would Mom have gone for this. Kip was secretly glad she hadn’t come.

They climbed up the crane’s service ladder, then clambered along the fat metal supports. The crane was way taller than it had looked from the floor, and Kip was a little scared – not like scared scared, he wasn’t a baby – but the climb wasn’t hard. It was kind of like the obstacle course at the playground, only way bigger. Besides, he was with his dad. If Dad said it was okay, it was okay.

The other people already on the crane smiled at them. ‘Pull up a seat,’ one lady shouted.

Dad laughed. ‘Don’t mind if we do.’ He swung himself into an empty spot. ‘Come on, Kip.’

Kip pulled himself alongside, letting his arms hang over one support beam and his feet swing free below another. The metal below his thighs was cold, and definitely not designed for sitting. He could already tell his butt was going to go numb.

But the view . . . the view was awesome. Being far away didn’t matter so much when you were up top. Everything looked small – the people in the crowd, the patrollers at the edges, the in-charge group waiting right at the dock. ‘Is that the Admiral?’ Kip said, pointing at a grey-haired woman in a distinctive green council uniform.

‘That’s her,’ Dad said.

‘Have you ever met her?’

‘No.’

‘I did, last standard,’ said the friendly, shouting lady. She sipped something hot from a canteen. ‘She was on my sanitation team.’

‘No kidding,’ Dad said. ‘What’d you think?’

The lady made a yeah, not bad kind of face. ‘I’d vote for her again.’

Kip felt a knot start to unravel itself, a mass that had been tangled in him ever since the crash. Here was his dad, climbing up a crane with him and chatting easily with strangers. There was the crowd, assembled in the smartest clothes they had, nobody crying or screaming anymore. There was the Admiral, looking cool and official and powerful. Soon, the Aeluons would be there, too, and they’d help. They’d make things right again.

The dock lights turned yellow, indicating an incoming vessel. Even up high, Kip could hear the crowd hush. All at once, there it was. It flew into the dock silently – a smooth, gleaming Aeluon skiff with rounded corners and pearly hull. It almost didn’t look like a ship. Ships were angular. Mechanical. Something you bolted and welded together, piece by piece, chunk by chunk. This ship, on the other hand, looked like it had been made from something melted, something poured into a mould and polished for days. The entire crowd held their breath together.

‘Stars, that’s something,’ Dad said quietly.

‘Get ’em all the time over at cargo,’ the lady said. ‘Never get tired of it.’

Kip didn’t say anything. He was too busy looking at the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He almost asked his dad what this kind of ship was called, but his dad obviously hadn’t seen one before, and Kip didn’t know the lady, so he didn’t want to ask her. He’d look up Aeluon ships on the Linkings when he got home. He knew all the types of Human ships, and he also liked to know stuff about alien bodies, but he hadn’t ever thought to learn about their ships. It was easy, in the Fleet, to think that Human ships were all there was.