Then, Mayne cut in as well. “We have searched and tried our ways, now let us turn again to the Lord.”

Home. His mind wandered back to the poem, and his hands were steady as he pulled it up on the screen of his sleeve. His breathing matched its meter as he recited it to himself. He felt calm, then, like he didn't exist—like his soul had expanded to fill the vacuum around him and his body had compressed into dust. He was floating in the ocean; he just didn't know which way was up.

The stars glowed like the burning cherries of cigarettes in the dark, or like the lights of a city through the snow laden branches of a forest. The dim luminescence of the poem on his sleeve was the only light Lester had, and he knew finally that Mayne was wrong—there was no thrush here. There was no thrush back on Earth, either.

Lester held on to his safety cable and watched the falling stars as he drifted in the station's wake.

They glowed like seven billion nuclear bombs.