‘No, I don’t think so either. Not more than one two of us at most, anyway, and maybe not even that. The Earth people told me and Strongheart and Newjohn that one of the reasons Gela and Tommy stayed on Eden was that if all five had headed back to Earth together, there probably wouldn’t have been enough air and water in the starship to keep them going.’

‘So what’s going to happen now?’

‘I don’t know. None of us do, do we? Not even the Earth people.’

Starlight took a stone and chucked it out into the water. There are strange birds called ducks that live on the pools of Circle Valley. You never see them in Wide Forest. They sit on the water and coo, and make a strange rattling sound with their wings. They have a little green light on top of their heads that sometimes flashes, and their hands and feet have flat skin between their toes like some fishes do, so as to help them paddle through the water. The splash of Starlight’s stone set off a whole flock of them. Giving low sad cries, they flapped their wings and started to run across the surface with their hands and feet together until they were in the air, then glided off to far side of the pool. We watched the water near us as it became still again.

‘Earth didn’t come here for us,’ Starlight said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard something when we were going over for that meeting in Strongheart’s shelter. I was walking in front with Gaia, and the two of us were talking: you know, comparing how things were on Earth and Eden, stuff like that. Deep and Marius were walking a little way behind us, chatting between themselves. I asked Gaia a question and she answered it. But you know how it is with the Earth people: when they answer a question it just raises more questions. So I was thinking about what she’d said and what I wanted to ask her next, when I heard Marius speaking behind her. He wasn’t talking to me and he didn’t know I was listening, but I clearly heard him say, “It’s a shame there are people here.”’

‘What did he mean by that?’