“How are we going to get up there?”

I stood on the tips of my toes and tried to see what was inside, but saw only further shadow.

“You’ll have to throw me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I interlaced my fingers and mimed pushing upwards. “You need to give me a boost.”

Adam frowned and, just for a second, I pitied him. For all his attempts at poetic sophistication, he’d grown up in a maze of corridors and greenhouses. He’d never run wild beneath an open sky, never had to boost a friend over a wall or pull them out of a muddy stream bed. Where I felt suffocated by the claustrophobic bleakness of the canyons, he probably found comfort. Buddha only knew how he’d react if he ever found his way onto the naked surface of a normal planet.

“Put your hands like this,” I said, fingers still interlaced. “Cup my boot and push me up.”

He looked up at the lip of the opening. “Okay, but how will I get up there?”

“I’ll reach back down and pull you up.”

“Really?” He looked me up and down, and raised an eyebrow in a way that made me want to punch it from his face. I spoke through my irritation.

“I’m stronger than I look.”

He thought about that. Eventually, he clasped his hands and braced his legs. I put my hand on his shoulder and stepped up.

For a skinny poet, he was surprisingly strong. But then, I already knew that. I just hadn’t expected to be propelled upward with such force. As soon as my trailing foot left the canyon’s floor, Adam heaved with all his might and I found myself slithering up the marble-smooth wall, my outstretched fingers straining for the lower edge of the hole. In the small planet’s weaker gravity, his scrawny muscles combined with my own upward leap to hurl me higher than I could have reasonably expected. I bruised my knees against the wall, but managed to hook my forearms and elbows over the edge of the hole. He gave the soles of my suit a final push, and I swung a foot over the edge.

One last pull, and I rolled into shadow.

For a few seconds, I lay looking up at a dark ceiling, panting from the exertion. And I smiled. For the first time since the crash, I had a roof over my head. For the first time, I was hidden from the prying eyes of orbital ships.

Adam called up. “What can you see?”

I turned my head away from the entrance. “Nothing.”

“There’s a flashlight built into the wrist of your suit.”

“I know.”

Silently cursing my forgetfulness, I gripped my left sleeve and the light came on—a white torch beam in an echoing cathedral.

“Holy fuck.”

“What is it?”

“I…”