Ian and Caleb were in their default position, hands and faces pressed to the viewport. Emilia reminded herself for the hundredth time that she should be carrying damp wipes to remove prints.

The view turned slowly in the opposite direction to the station’s rotation, an image that had the boys giggling and making childish jokes. Adults stood behind the children, with a clear view over their heads. The planet Mercury seemed to be undergoing some sort of transformation. Structures could be seen, erupting from the surface at the poles, and different structures around the equator. And these were visible from space. The size required to make that possible simply defied the imagination.

The Navy, the ISI, and the mining company were all scrambling to accommodate the refugees and to make arrangements for their transport back to Earth. The space station’s resources would be strained, trying to provide for several hundred unexpected visitors. Emilia knew less than half of the population of Vulcan’s Forge had made it out.

And rumors were flying that Mercury wasn’t the only location of unexpected events. She’d heard whispers that strange things were happening on other planets. So far, though, the rumors had named all the planets, right out to Eris—a physical impossibility, since news from Eris couldn’t have arrived yet. Still, something was going on, and the consensus was that it had something to do with the alien disease and the ship the Navy had been required to nuke.

Had the disease spread? Or had the aliens arrived, and were they now terraforming planets to their liking?

Emilia took a deep breath, then turned to look at her husband, who was as enraptured by the view as the two boys. A mining engineer, he was probably now jobless. At another time, she would have been devastated by the thought. Jobs were scarce, and the outlook for the unemployed wasn’t good. But the specter of death—of immediate death—tended to place a different perspective on things.

Emilia squeezed his hand and went back to watching the planetary changes unfold.

75.Waiting for The End

75.Waiting for The End

Kemp and Narang walked slowly along the trail, pausing frequently to enjoy the sights and sounds. Narang took a deep lungful of air, redolent with the smell of cedar, damp leaves, moss, and a tinge of salt air coming up the canyon from Burrard Inlet. She smiled without reservation at the unaccustomed commune with nature.

“Capilano Park contains one of the few remaining stands of old-growth trees on the entire North Shore,” Kemp said. “I sometimes fantasize about going back in time to the 20th or even 19th century, when there were more trees than people. What must it have been like to look up from the inlet at mountains covered not with residential complexes, but with actual living, breathing forests?”

“I don’t get nearly enough of this,” Narang said. “This was a good idea.”