He stood for a long time at the bottom of the ramp as he took the world in. Nobody teased him, as they had when I stepped onto Aecor. We did not rush him. We would rush nothing here.

I nearly collapsed at feeling dirt beneath my feet once more. I wanted to roll in it, burrow in it, rub it onto my cheeks. There was nothing but dirt before us – a bouldered plain, devoid of any sign of life. Mountains marked the horizon, ambling up toward the orange sky. Zhenyi hung large but dim as ever, and the thin atmosphere allowed a modest flocking of the brightest stars through, despite the unending day.

Jack sat down and dragged his fingers through the dirt. He picked some up and examined it in his palm, brushing the grains this way and that. I don’t know what he was doing, or looking for. I think he was just a man playing with dirt. I had no interest in interrupting that.

Some may have looked at Votum and seen a wasteland. This was the polar opposite of Mirabilis, the empty balance to its bounty. Aecor had been a quiet world, too, but even before we’d seen the shimmering swimmers, the waters beneath the ice held promise, and the cyclical respiration of the geysers told us the planet had a pulse. But Votum . . . nothing moved on Votum, nothing but pebbles small enough to be caught by wind.

I knew OCA had debated sending us here, but there is much to be learned from a habitable-zone planet that has either died out or on which life never got started. Knowledge from the former can be used as a cautionary tale; knowledge from the latter gets us closer to understanding why life begins in the first place. Either way, we get a few more clues toward the biggest Why of all.

I didn’t care about any of the whys or hows, in that moment. I didn’t see a waste, either. When I looked out at Votum, at that vast, echoing flatland, I saw exactly what my soul had longed for. A quiet place. A blank slate. A reality in which everything held still for however long I needed it to. If things moved, it would be because I moved, because I chose to move. It was not exciting, but neither was it frightening. It was not compelling, but neither was it overwhelming. It was, pure and simple. Neutrality incarnate.

I lay down. I pressed my palms against the ground. I affixed myself to Votum’s outer curve, traversing the galaxy along with it. I had my back in the dirt, but I felt as though I were floating in saltwater. The sky saturated my eyes. Time dissolved. I continued to breathe deep. In and out. In and out. Votum did not need me, but I needed it. I had needed it desperately.

‘Should we make camp?’ Chikondi asked at last.

It was the obvious thing to do, the next step in protocol. Elena looked out at the horizon with a dogged gaze. ‘Later,’ she said. She took a step forward, testing the light gravity. She took another step, then another, and another. I propped myself up just in time to see her break into a run. Her body wasn’t accustomed to Votum’s pull yet, but you could see a well-honed stride beneath her stumbling, the legs that remembered how to run marathons and dance all night. Jack watched her for a moment, then took off after. The strength in each step was visible, palpable. It was like watching someone release a coiled spring.

Chikondi reached out to me. ‘Come on,’ he said.

I let him pull me up, and we took off together, barrelling after the other two. Elena knew where she was headed. I did not, but I trusted her. Jack had full confidence in his ability to keep up. I did not, but if he could, I could. And Chikondi – Chikondi wasn’t much of an athlete, but I could see him savour the way he hung in the air for a fraction of a second after every wobbly step. He didn’t care where the destination was or whether he looked good getting there. If he found joy in awkwardness, then I would, too.

We ran to the top of a small hill, panting hard as we reached the crest. The desert stretched out below us – angular, crumbling, warm red, like the place that exists below a campfire.

Elena surveyed. She put her hand on Jack’s shoulder congenially; he put his hand over hers. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

Chikondi and I walked panting up beside them. I leaned my helmet against his arm. He offered his hand to Elena. She took it gladly. We became a molecule, distinct components attached by natural bonds.

‘It is beautiful,’ I replied, looking out at the nothing. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

The airlock hissed open and we poured ourselves inside, humming with chatter as we disrobed.

‘The canyons we saw from orbit mean water,’ Jack said. ‘There was water here, at some point.’

‘I’m not disagreeing with the geology,’ Elena said, ‘and the tidal lock is consistent with the absence of said water now.’ The temperature, she meant; any liquid water in Votum’s unfailing daylight would’ve been all too happy to evaporate. ‘What I’m wondering is how that much water lasted long enough on the surface to create canyons at all.’

Jack hrm’d as he hung his helmet. ‘Well, what if Votum didn’t start out here? What if it orbited further out, had an atmosphere, had a spin, all that good stuff, and something whacked it to where it is now?’

Elena pulled off her socks and nodded. ‘A comet, you mean.’

‘Sure, or a planet that destroyed itself in the process.’

‘That could work.’

Chikondi chimed in. ‘But is there any water left?’ he asked. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

Elena looked sceptical. ‘Not at the surface. It’s too hot. And we didn’t see any ice caps on the far side.’

Jack scratched his stubble. ‘The canyons, though,’ he mused. ‘They’re awfully deep. Could be shady enough for some little puddle to stick around. Or caves, there could be caves. I’m going to put money on caves.’

‘You don’t have any money,’ Elena said.

‘Well, if I did, I would. Calling it now: caves.’

Suits vacated, we headed for the ladder. ‘If there are caves, I’m not going into one with Ariadne again,’ Chikondi said as we climbed.

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t you remember? On Mirabilis?’

I racked my brain, and laughed all the harder at the connection made. There’d been a side pocket in an old lava tube we’d explored that was just about my size, and thus, an impossible-to-resist opportunity to tuck myself inside and wait for Chikondi to walk past. ‘Oh, it was funny,’ I said. ‘You thought it was funny.’

He gave me a facetiously scolding look as we stepped off in the control room. ‘It was definitely, definitely not—’

Something in Elena’s body language made us shut right up. I followed her gaze to the comms monitor.

The download folder had a number hanging over it.

1, it read.

We circled around.

She pressed play.

The message was not from Earth itself, but the atmospheric border above. I could see my home planet beckoning in the window behind the man on camera, who floated in a room just like the one I stood in. I hadn’t realised how deeply I missed the colour green.

‘Hey, Lawki 6,’ the astronaut said. ‘This is Lawki 5.’

‘Holy shit, it’s Lei,’ Jack said. Lei Jian, he meant, one of our colleagues. We knew him – we’d studied together, been to launch parties together. He’d travelled in torpor just as we had, and like us, the years had left their mark on him. I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling shock at a face older than I remembered it.