With slow care, the woman climbed the couple of steps up to Faya’s row and sat down on the carved and insulated ice. ‘You’re Faya Parz, aren’t you? I’ve seen your Virtuals. You were one of the best Dancers of all.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You wish you were up there now.’

Faya was used to fans, but this woman was a little unsettling. ‘I’m past forty. In the Dance, when you’ve had your day, you must make way.’

‘But you are ageing well.’

It was an odd remark from a stranger. ‘My sister’s up there.’

‘Lieta, yes. Ten years younger. But you could still challenge her.’

Faya turned to study the woman. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but—’

‘But I seem to know a lot about you, don’t I? I don’t mean to put you at a disadvantage. My name is Luru Parz.’

Faya did a double-take. ‘I thought I knew all the Parz on Port Sol.’

‘We’re relatives even so. I’m - a great-aunt, dear. Think of me that way.’

‘Do you live here?’

‘No, no. Just a transient, as we all are. Everything passes, you know; everything changes.’ She waved her hand, indicating the amphitheatre. Her gestures were small, economical in their use of time and space. ‘Take this place. Do you know its history?’

Faya shrugged. ‘I never thought about it. Is it natural, a crater?’

Luru shook her head. ‘No. A starship was born here, right where we’re sitting, its fuel dug out of the ice. It was the greatest of them all, called Great Northern.’

‘You know a lot of history,’ said Faya, a little edgy. The Coalition, focusing on mankind’s future, frowned on any obsession with lost heroic days.

Luru would only shrug. ‘Some of us have long memories.’

A crackling, ripping sound washed down over the audience, and a pale blue mist erupted over the domed sky. And now the first haloes formed, glowing arcs and rings around the brighter stars and especially around the sun itself, light scattered by air full of tiny ice prisms. There were more gasps from the crowd.

‘What a beautiful effect,’ said Luru.

‘But it’s just water,’ Faya said.

So it was. The dome’s upper layers of air were allowed to become extremely cold, far below freezing. At such temperatures you could just throw water into the air and it would spontaneously freeze. A water droplet froze quickly from the outside in - but ice was less dense than water, and when the central region froze it would expand and shatter the outer shell. So the air was suddenly filled with tiny bombs.

On this ice moon, cold was art’s raw material.