He’d been surprised when this bus full of children had showed up at the science center today; he had assumed that all the schools had canceled their classes, like the university had. Then he saw the look on the faces of the adults who had brought the children. They appeared grimly determined to give the kids as commonplace an experience as they could, for as long as they could.

Marce, who was in point of fact the only member of the non-janitorial staff to show up on this particular morning, and then only to collect some materials that were not already on the network, didn’t dare let them down. He brought them all down to the planetarium and dug into his brain to remember the standard presentation about the Interdependency that the tour docents usually gave.

“It’s all right,” he said, to the children. “Those aircraft were just passing by. We’re just on their flight path, that’s all. The university is safe.” This was also probably not true, since the University of Opole had more than its share of rebel sympathizers, ranging from stoned students looking for a movement to join, to reflexively contrarian professors who enjoyed sticking it to the duke while still retaining tenure. Most of them, students and faculty, were probably down in a cellar at the moment. Marce, who was personally resolutely apolitical, for all the good it did him, did not blame them at all.

Be that as it may, there was no point panicking eight-year-olds about the possibility of the university being occupied either by rebels or by the duke’s troops. Right now, Marce’s job was keeping them distracted. Today might be the last relatively normal day they’d have for a while. Might as well make the most of it.

Marce touched his tablet again, and a star field leapt out of the projector into the empty space above the well of the planetarium, accompanied by soothing, tinkling music. The eight-year-olds, apprehensive just five seconds earlier, oohed and aahed at the sight. So did the adults.

“What you’re seeing now are all the stars that exist in the area that holds the Interdependency,” Marce said. “From Hub to End, all of the stars we live around are here. Does anyone want to guess which one we are?”

The children shot out their fingers, all at entirely different points of light. From his tablet, Marce tapped on one of the stars. The projected image zoomed in toward a single star and when it stopped, showed a solar system of five planets; two terrestrial, three gas giants. “This is us,” he said. “The second planet out from our sun. This is End, called that because it’s located as far away from anything else in the Interdependency as you can go.”