Yellow erosion gullies that the bio-Engineered grass still hadn’t colonised. Stunted scarecrows in the distance that only grew tree-like when the floater drew close. And then we saw it: dark smudges against the tan and yellow that slowly grew into the refrigeration plant and tents — not bubble tents, but solid, massive ones — and, to one side, the wide transport floaters that moved them all from site to site. It looked a good place to camp. There was a river, thin pools and a wide film of water between broad gravelly banks, as though the river was too tired to move faster to dig itself a proper place to flow. But trees grew on either side of the gravel — proper trees, with solid white trunks faintly patched with green and ochre and grey streaks of peeling bark and high leafy branches whose shadows dappled the grass. ‘Not a good sign,’ said Neil. ‘What is?’ ‘No-one’s coming out to meet us. You would have thought someone would have seen the floater land.’ ‘Maybe they’re all sick.’ Or dead, I thought.
