“Strange that the Great Red Spot is gone,” Zo remarked as they crossed a bridge over a white-bottomed canal. “Like some kind of sign. I keep expecting it to come around into view.”

The air was chill and damp. The people they passed were mostly of Terran origin, part of the diaspora. Some fliers cut lazy spirals up near the tent frame. Zo watched them cross the face of the great planet. Ann stopped frequently to inspect cut surfaces of rock, ignoring the town on ice and its crowds, with their tiptoe grace and their rainbow clothing, a gang of young natives greyhounding past—”You really are more interested in rocks than people,” Zo said, half-admiring, half-irritated.

Ann looked at her; such a basilisk glare! But Zo shrugged and took her by the arm, pulled her along. “The young natives out here are less than fifteen m-years old, they’ve lived in point-one g all their lives, they don’t care about Earth or Mars. They believe in the Jovian moons, in water, in swimming and flying. Most of them have altered their eyes for the low light. Some of them are growing gills. They have a plan to terraform these moons that will take them five thousand years. They’re the next step in evolution, for ka’s sake, and here you are staring at rocks that are just the same as rocks everywhere else in this galaxy. You’re just as crazy as they said.”

This bounced off Ann like a thrown pebble. She said, “You sound like me, when I tried to get Nadia away from Underhill.”

Zo shrugged. “Come on,” she said, “I have another meeting.”

“Mafia work never stops, does it.” But she followed, peering around like a wizened court jester, dwarfish and oddly dressed in her old-fashioned jumper.