“I think . . . I think we just ran out of time,” the bounty hunter said. “They’re here.”

She was right. His mother. About Earth. The Aykari. The Coalition. All of it. What it was worth and what it wasn’t. She was right.

Calvin Fender only ever admitted it once—and even then he wasn’t sure, but Leo remembered.

He remembered the nightmare that had woken him up, a variation on a common theme. He’d been swimming in the ocean and had gone out too far, the rip current catching him, pulling him farther and farther from shore. He screamed and screamed, legs furiously churning, arms flailing, the water beneath him getting deeper and colder, the edge of the world ebbing away. He’d woken at the very moment his legs gave out, surfacing from the dream just as he went under, gasping, his shirt soaked in sweat. He fumbled for his inhaler and sucked down the medicine, feeling everything lighten, though he still shivered.

He called out for his dad. He got no answer. He shook some more.

Leo pulled himself out of bed and crept softly down the hallway toward his parents’ room.

No. His parent’s room.

His father wasn’t in his bed.

It’s okay. Don’t bother him. It was just a dream, he told himself. Just go back to sleep.

That’s when he noticed the music. Classical. Strings and horns. Coming from downstairs.

He found his father on the couch, head back, eyes closed, listening. “What are you doing awake?” his dad asked.

“Bad dreams,” Leo answered.

“Me too.”

Dr. Fender patted the space beside him, and Leo crawled up onto the couch, snatching one of the throw pillows to hold against his chest. He always felt better when he had something to hold on to. The room was dark, lit only by the moon coming through the sliding glass door.

“What are you listening to?” Leo asked.

“Holst. The Planets. This one is called ‘Jupiter.’”

Leo sat and listened. Even at such a low volume it still sounded bright and bombastic with lots of brass and thudding timpani. But then after a minute it shifted, becoming soft and melodic. Leo didn’t really care for classical music. He preferred songs that you could sing along to, but his father often made him listen to it anyway.

“This was one of your mother’s favorites. She always joked that if Holst were still alive, he’d have a lot more work to do. How many planets do we know about now? Thousands? Of course he had no idea. When he was alive we only knew about eight. As it was he only made music for seven.”

Leo tried to imagine writing a song for every planet in the galaxy. Most of the planets didn’t even have names, just numbers. Numbers and coordinates. Dots on an unfathomably large map. “What does Earth sound like?” he asked.

“That’s actually the one he left out,” his father said.

“Why?”

“He didn’t think it was worth it, I guess. It didn’t interest him.”