Three teenaged boys, the Lee brothers and Ramón—only it’s a leaner, tidier version of Ramón—sprint and leap onto a ladder, and Mrs. Flowers calls, “Slowly, please,” and Konstance tries to remind herself that she is still inside Compartment 17, wearing her new worksuit and a hand-me-down Vizer, walking on a Perambulator wedged beside Father’s bunk and Mother’s sewing table—that Mrs. Flowers and the Lee brothers and Ramón are in their own family compartments, walking on their own Perambulators, wearing their own Vizers, that they are all packed inside a disk hurtling through interstellar space, that the Library is just a swarm of data inside the flickering chandelier that is Sybil.

“History’s on our right,” Mrs. Flowers is saying, “to the left is Modern Art, then Languages; those boys are headed to the Games Section, very popular, of course.” She stops at an unoccupied table with a chair on either side and gestures for Konstance to sit. Two little boxes rest on top: one of pencils, the other of rectangles of paper. Between them is a small brass slot and engraved onto its rim are the words Questions Answered Here.

“For a child’s Library Day,” says Mrs. Flowers, “when there is so much to absorb, I try to keep things simple. Four questions, a little scavenger hunt. Question number one. How far from Earth is our destination?”

Konstance blinks, unsure, and Mrs. Flowers’s expression softens. “You needn’t have it memorized, dear. That’s what the Library is for.” She points to the boxes.

Konstance picks up a pencil: it seems so real that she wants to sink her teeth into it. And the paper! It’s so clean, so crisp: outside the Library, there is not a piece of paper this clean on the entire Argos. She writes How far from Earth to Beta Oph2? and looks at Mrs. Flowers and Mrs. Flowers nods and Konstance drops the slip through the slot.

The paper vanishes. Mrs. Flowers clears her throat and points, and behind Konstance, high on the third tier, a thick brown book slips off a shelf. It soars across the atrium, dodges a few other airborne books, hovers, then floats down and opens.

Across a double-fold inside spreads a chart titled Confirmed List of Exoplanets in the Optimistic Habitable Zone, B-C. In the first column, little worlds of every color rotate: some rocky, some swirling with gases, some ringed, some dragging tails of ice behind their atmospheres. Konstance runs a fingertip down the rows until she finds Beta Oph2.

“4.2399 light-years.”

“Good. Question number two. How fast are we traveling?”

Konstance writes the question, drops it into the slot, and as the first volume rises away, a bundle of rolled charts arrives and unrolls across the tabletop. From its center a bright blue integer rises into the air.

“7,734,958 kilometers per hour.”