I’m not sure, but it’s too late to turn back now. I gently pull Shey into the cockpit and shut the door behind us, closing us off alone with the wheel and the screens and the view of brilliant blue Nibiru out the front panel.

“Okay,” I say softly, letting go of her hands. “Take a look.”

Shey opens her eyes and looks around. She must be used to luxury far greater than this, and I expect her to scrutinize the cockpit with a wrinkled nose and puckered lips. Instead, her eyes are as full of wonder as they always were when I brought her off-world goods. She runs a delicate finger up the back of my chair, and then across the control panel, her gaze traveling across the blinking screens and colorful buttons and levers. Finally, she’s drawn to the panel, and the sight of blue Nibiru through it, and brings a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. I grin, leaning against the back of my chair.

“It’s sure something, huh?” I ask, though I’m staring at her instead.

“It’s beautiful,” Shey says, lowering her hand from her lips. Her eyes shine in the light. “If the people of Gaia could only know… if my mother could see it for herself…” She lapses into silence, leaving the thought half-finished. But I know exactly what she means. Though Gaia is particularly bad, I’ve seen it everywhere in the system: Nobody thinks of the other planets as real, of the people on them as really human. They don’t understand that no matter how different they look on the surface, it’s all the same shit beneath. Would Leonis be willing to wipe this planet out if she had ever been here? If she had come face-to-face with crowds of people who looked and acted much the same as her?

I don’t know. Maybe she would. I was just about willing to do it myself, even after seeing everything the system has to offer. The thought makes a lump of guilt rise in my throat.

“And you haven’t even been on the surface yet,” I say, trying to steer the conversation back in a lighthearted direction. “It’s completely different from your home.” I grin at the thought of her stepping off the ramp and onto one of the islands, staring around with the same unabashed awe she gives everything new. But when she glances at me now, there’s a hint of nervousness I’ve never seen in her before. I lift my eyebrows. “Oh,” I say. “Are you afraid, Shey Leonis? Never thought I’d see the day.”