By the next morning, half of her water was gone and so was a quarter of her food. Without the exhaustion of the previous night to drag her under, every single scratch and snuffle in the night had woken her. There were animals out there—a lot of them. And if Romy wasn’t mistaken, some of them were large.

Today she was able to touch her foot to the ground for short periods. It was a good sign. She wanted to throw her crutches in the fiery abysses of hell. How humans used to do this for the months it took to heal a bone was beyond her. She loved her nanotech.

The sun was still low in the sky when a new sound interrupted the silence of the bush.

Romy crouched beside a tree, trying to dissect the low-pitched rushing noise. She edged closer, pausing behind trees as she drew close. What was it? It sounded like. . . .

Romy dragged her hands over her weary face when she realised. Streaming water. It was the sound of the taps in Knot 27’s quarters, multiplied by two or three thousand.

Five minutes later she was standing on the bank of her first river. The pool in front of her was calm, though rapids ran into it from above. It stretched several metres across, and disappeared farther down around a bend.

Romy had a problem.

Her water would only last another two days.

You can breathe the air . . . maybe you can drink the water, too.

Romy exhaled slowly, pushing her smoky, unwashed hair behind her ears. Sweat trickled down her spine, and she looked at the cool surface of the river in yearning. She wanted to dub the water “River Glory.” But she decided to wait and see if the water would kill her. No one liked a misleading name.

She crouched by the water’s edge.

Acid water. Normal water had a pH of 7—neutral. The water on board Orbito One was between 8 and 9—slightly alkaline to help reduce the effect of stomach acid. The last recorded pH of fresh water gave a reading of 6.05—acidic. Not healthy. Its effects on the human body: vomiting, diarrhoea, eye and skin reactions, and seizures.

Romy picked her way over to the nearby plant life. The long leaves drooped over into the river. There was no colour bleaching, but the leaves were already a sickly yellow so that didn’t mean much.

There was only one way to find out.

She dipped one finger in the water and when it didn’t instantly burn her, she counted for three minutes. Romy pulled her finger out and waited a further five minutes. No discomfort. The water wasn’t acidic enough to cause pain—a good sign.

But did it make the water safe? Romy tapped a finger against the side of her knee.