Felix had been to the Pod’s hydroponics several times, and to his complete mystification, it was just a line of tanks full of green and stinky water. Nothing horrible or scary about it at all. Not like the tanks aboard Ashanti that seemed to reek menace.

He was just leaving hydroponics, stepping out into the bright and big hallway that ran through level one. The lights here amazed him. As did being outside. Outside light—coming from the sun they called Capella—hurt his eyes. And he’d got something called a “sunburn” on his skin from the boat ride he’d taken with Mother.

In the hall, walking aimlessly, was Sheena. She was his best friend. Probably because she was seven, and every year for almost a month they were the same age before he got older. Sheena had red-gold hair that hung down her back. Her parents had let her grow it when most everyone on Ashanti had to either shave their heads or keep their hair short. And even though he was older, she was taller than he was by about five centimeters. He knew because he and Sheena had measured it on the living quarters bulkhead in Ashanti.

“What are you doing?” she called. “You can’t be in hydroponics. They might throw you in.”

He gave her a grin, thumped his chest. “Naw. I had to take a mug of tea in to give to Tobi Ruto. Bill Martin asked me to. Tobi can’t get away because of some stirring thing he has to do in the tanks. Something with algae. You do know what algae is.”

Sheena screwed up her nose, which she always did when Felix annoyed her. “I do so. Mom talks about it a lot.”

Sheena’s mom was Vik Lawrence. She did stuff with tiny living things that could only be seen under a microscope. Felix knew what a microscope was now. He’d seen the big white one in Vik’s lab. It made little things big enough to see.

“Algae only lives in hydroponics,” Sheena said with absolute assurance. “That’s why Mom was down in Ashanti’s hydroponics so much. She was always trying to keep it alive.”

“Yeah, well, it’s in the oceans here, too.”

“Is not.”

“Is. I’ve seen it.” He lifted his fingers. “I wasn’t s’pposed to, but I caught some out in the ocean. It was in the water. It makes your fingers tickle for a long time.”

Sheena’s blue eyes were giving him that suspicious look. She did that a lot given the tricks he played on her when he could. “No, it doesn’t.”

“If we could see the water, I could point it out.”

“Bet you can’t.”

“I could. If they didn’t have the hatch locked we could go out on the seatruck dock and see some. It’s probably just floating like it was out where we left the buoy.”