They had fuel — that was what Old Newfoundland Four was in the business of selling — six hundred megatons of refined methane ice bunkered in a tank farm streaming kilometers behind the axle of the big wheel. And they were close enough to one of the regular trade routes between Septagon system and the core worlds to pick up passing trade, close enough to act as an interchange for local traffic bound for Moscow. They were still profitable and self-sufficient, had been even since before the disaster. But they couldn’t stay there — not with the iron sunrise coming. The liner Sikorsky’s Dream nuzzled up to the hub, taking VIPs and the governor and his staff. Behind it hung two freighters from New Dresden, sent in yet another symbolic gesture of reconciliation. They looked like pregnant midwife toads, blistered with bulky refugee pods hanging from their cargo spines, steerage for tens of thousands of passengers on the three-week, forty-light year journey to Septagon for resettlement.

Even Septagon would be uncomfortably close to the shock front, but it was the best relocation center on offer. There was money enough to house and reskill everyone, and a governing polity that actively courted immigration. It would be a chance to draw a line under the incident, to look to the future, and to turn away from the dull despair and the cloud of mourning that had hovered over the station since news of the Zero Incident arrived three and a half years ago. There had been suicides then, and more than one near riot; the station was haunted by a thousand ghosts for every one alive. It was no fit place to raise a child.

Dad and Mum and Jeremy had moved aboard the Long March two days ago, dragging Wednesday along in their glassy-eyed optimistic undertow. There were holes in the facade, empty figures in the family photograph. Cousin Jane, Uncle Mark, Grandpa and Grandma weren’t coming. At least, not in the living flesh; they were dust now, burned by the godwind that would blow past the station in four days’ time.