“I wouldn’t call it that,” I say. “Look, it was just a handful of people causing trouble.”

A woman ducks her head down, listening to her wi-com. Their information is much more current than mine. They can com anyone in the City and get info, but I’ve only got Elder. My finger hovers over my wrist wi-com . . . but then I remember Bartie and Luthor riling up the crowd, bringing me in as evidence of Elder’s ineptitude. He’d be better off without me bugging him now, that’s for sure.

The others don’t look convinced at my dismissal of the City’s problems, but I pull my hood up anyway and go to the book rooms in the back of the Hall. It takes me a while to find what I’m looking for, but eventually I discover one oversized book with a map of the world on the cover. I realize, as I pull the book off the shelf, that there really would not be much need for an atlas of Earth here on this ship or when we land on the new planet. This is just for records, I suppose, nothing else.

There’s a whole section in the atlas on America. I flip first to Florida—that’s where I spent most of my childhood. I run my hands over the pages, but I can already tell there’s nothing unusual there, not a floppy, not a mem card, not a handwritten note. I flip next to Colorado. That was the last place I called home. Cold winters. Clear skies. Eternal starry nights.

But empty pages—there’s nothing here either.

I wonder if there’s anything else with echoes of Earth on this ship—a globe maybe—I remember seeing one on the Keeper Level. But this was a clue Orion left for me, and I don’t think he’d hide something on Elder’s level for me to find.

I wander back out of the book room. I don’t notice the silence until I reach the main entryway. The entire Recorder Hall is, weirdly, empty. The few people who were here earlier are gone, leaving the entrance hall to me. I slip out of my jacket, and the cool air makes my arms prickle. It feels almost dangerous to be here, alone, without even the jacket to protect me—but freeing, too.

I gaze at the wall floppies, wondering idly if I should bother trying to look at maps on them, and then my gaze drifts up. Hanging from the ceiling are two giant clay models of planets. A small model of the spaceship Godspeed flies between them on a wire.