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breather with some astonishment. “Outside?” His voice broke, as it always did at the worst moments.
    “Nothing to it,” Stepan said. “Just breathe slowly a few times and don’t fight it.”
    He was talking about the breather. Mitya followed his uncle in the direction of the air lock, his spirits lifting. The dry gel breather had already collapsed intoa tangle in his hand, but he shook it out and considered how to put it on.
    Turning, Stepan considered his dilemma with amusement. “When in doubt, try the instructions.”
    “Call for instructions,” Mitya said.
    The mask responded: “Pull the throat tube forward from the back side and, pressing the liner over nose, mouth, and chin, swallow the tube.” Mitya had seen crew apply the masks. He quickly pulled the tube forward, pushing it onto his tongue, and attempted to swallow. He choked instead.
    Stepan laughed. “Just relax.”
    In another moment the gel had spread across his mouth and throat lining, setting up its chemical filters, ten microns thick.
    His uncle tossed him a jacket and nodded at the small case on the floor by their feet. It wasn’t much for him to carry. Oran was just now plowing through the lock, toting an enormous coil of condensed resin piping. He smirked at Mitya but, glancing at Mitya’s officer-uncle, held his tongue.
    The compartment wasn’t a true air lock. It was fitted with air pumps and vacuums to vent the worst of the dust and undesirable gases carried in by the crew, but it served more as a mudroom and perfunctory cleaning station.
    Passing through the outer door, they stood for a moment enveloped in a fog which glowed dully in the midday sun. Visibility was zero to ten feet as the clouds drifted in greater and lesser galleons, trailing remnants of sulfur and gases too exotic to name by smell alone. Mitya’s eyes teared up, further blurring his vision. Stepan was gesturing him around the perimeter of the dome, and Mitya followed, the contents of the box clunking in his arms.
    The deep mantle plume was nearby, he knew. Here on a jutting finger of high cliff, Captain Bonhert had ordered the dome constructed so as to be flanked ontwo approaches by the 1,200-foot canyon wall and protected on the rest of the perimeter with a security wire and patrols. Within this safety zone were parked the two shuttles that had carried all their equipment and the forty-five survivors. Attacks from enclavers were always a possibility, but the real enemy was the orthong. Crew said it was an orthong attack that had destroyed Station, orthong who knew that their terraform project was almost ready to go and who would stop them at any cost. The threat of orthong attack had kept the crew on thirteen-hour shifts, around the clock, racing to complete their mission.
    Mitya searched the terrain and its clumping mists for any sign of the pale orthong, camouflaged in their natural white hide. Now
there
was alien life Mitya would have liked to see. Twice alien—alien to humans and alien to Lithia. Where had the orthong come from, and what might
that
world be like? Mitya was hungry to know about these beings who, though his enemy, were the only other advanced beings humans had encountered—at least so far as Lithian colonists had ever heard. His uncle had no interest in the orthong except to kill one if he saw it, and the range gun on his webbed belt looked like it could do the job.
    They approached the shuttle—a squat, blackened transport perched on landing struts. One side bore a mangled edge where the Station breakup had thrown something hard enough to dent its hull composites. Once in the equipment bay, Stepan explained that they were going to retrieve the main onboard quantum processors to check for damage. Mitya knew the drill: Check equipment, run diagnostics, and then a month later do it again. Station life was about maintenance, though Mitya always dreamed of doing real science instead. Once they got terraforming restarted, that would be his life’s