She had expected as much, and she was prepared for worse.

Instead, the hunger stopped.

It stopped and it didn’t return. Her body grew cold, and she felt hollowed out, as if her navel were wedded to her spine.

Thule, she thought, offering up one last prayer to the god of spacers.

And then she slept and woke no more, and she dreamed slow dreams of strange planets with strange skies and of spiral fractals that flowered in forgotten spaces.

And all was silent, and all was dark.

PART TWO

SUBLIMARE

I stood over her on the ladder, a faint snow touching my cheeks, and surveyed her universe.… a world where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun on to a star.… Here was something that ought to be passed on to those who will fight our final freezing battle with the void. I thought of setting it down carefully as a message to the future: In the days of the frost seek a minor sun.

—LOREN EISELEY

CHAPTER I

AWAKENING

1.

A muffled boom sounded, loud enough to penetrate even the deepest of sleep.

Then clanks and clatters, followed by a rush of cold and a flare of light, bright and searching. Voices echoed, distant and garbled but discernibly human.

Some small part of Kira’s mind noticed. A primal, instinctual part that drove her toward wakefulness, urging her to open her eyes—open her eyes!—before it was too late.

She struggled to move, but her body refused to respond. She floated inside herself, trapped by her flesh and unable to control it.

Then she felt herself inhale, and sensation flooded back to her. The sounds seemed to double in volume and clarity, as if she’d removed a set of earplugs. Her skin tingled as the suit’s mask crawled back from her face, and she gasped and opened her eyes.

A blinding light swung across her, and she winced.

“Holy shit! She’s alive!” A man’s voice. Young, overeager.

“Don’t touch her. Call the doctor.” A woman’s voice. Flat, calm.

No … not the doctor, Kira thought.

The light stayed focused on her. She tried to cover her eyes, but a foil blanket stopped her hand. It was wrapped tight across her chest and neck. When had she done that?

A woman’s face swam into view, huge and pale, like a cratered moon. “Can you hear me? Who are you? Are you hurt?”

“Wh—” Kira’s vocal cords refused to cooperate. All she could produce was an inarticulate rasp. She struggled to free herself from the foil blanket, but it refused to give. She slumped back, dizzy and exhausted. What … where…?

The silhouette of a man blocked the light for a moment, and she heard him say, with a distinct accent: “Here then, let me see.”

“Aish,” said the woman as she moved aside.

Then fingers, warm, thin fingers, were touching Kira on the arms and sides and around her jaw, and then she was being pulled out of the pilot’s seat.