“Oh, man,” Stone said in disgust. He handed her a plastic bag, and York fumbled it open, and pushed her face into it.

As she heaved, a greenish sphere, about the size of a tennis ball, came floating up out of the bag. It was shimmering, and complex pulsations crossed its surface.

York watched in awe. Maybe I ought to film this. It was a demonstration of fluid mechanics, in the absence of gravity; she wondered if the wave patterns, dominated by surface tension, could be predicted by computer.

The glob of vomit split in two. One half headed toward the wall, and the other made straight for Gershon.

“Ah, shit,” Gershon said, and he tried to squirm out of the way.

The glob hit him in the chest, with a soft impact; it immediately collapsed and spread out over his suit, as flat as a fried egg. Surface tension again, York thought absently.

“Oh, Jesus,” Gershon said. “Oh, shit.”

Stone reached for wet wipes, and passed some to Gershon. “Come on, man. It might have been any of us. We’ve got to get this place cleaned up.”

So they began chasing around the cabin, hunting down bits of vomit with paper towels and plastic bags.

Once her stomach awareness had receded a little, York found, oddly, that it wasn’t actually so unpleasant. It was a little like chasing butterflies.

“NC One phasing burn,” Stone said. He held down the thrust control, watching his instruments.

The burn felt tight and rattly to York. She was shoved into her couch again; the acceleration was low, but crisp.

Through her window she could see vapor venting from attitude control thruster nozzles; the vents looked like fountains of ice crystals, the particles receding from the walls of the craft in precise straight lines.

The burn was taking place over the nightside of Earth. The planet pulled away; it was as if she were rising above a floor of dark, frosted glass. The continents were outlined by chains of brilliant dots, like streetlights seen from the air. But those dots weren’t streetlights; they were towns.

She twisted in her seat and looked ahead, toward the limb of the planet.

She could see the airglow layer, the bright layer of ionized oxygen at the top of the atmosphere, a fine line that was like a false sunrise. And then, as she watched, a sliver of sky turned blue and spread along the horizon. More colors came up, coalescing around a bright patch that was the rising sun, a spectrum that washed around the curve of Earth. The light of the dawn reached her through the layer of atmosphere; for a brief moment she saw the shadows of the clouds streaming across the orange surface of the sea.

Then the sun rose high enough to illuminate the tops of the clouds. The sea turned to crimson, and a wash of pale blue and white spread from the horizon toward her.