2·01A Date on a WallChapter I · The HoursEstablish how ordinary it had become. Nineteen people had spent five years becoming a crew and knew each other's habits without affection in most cases and with total accuracy in all of them.
IA Season Out and BackChapter II · The ReserveKyra comes up on the coach and says it before she has her coat off. Val has already sent her answer that morning, in one line.Untitled2·02Two of the Names Were Next to Each OtherChapter II · The ReserveThe most dangerous thing on that ship is the stairs. He does it properly, which she expected, and quickly, which she did not.
1·01Four Seconds PairedChapter III · KitEstablish the ordinariness before the book destroys it. A cabin goes quiet, the light changes color, and then it is ordinary again, and nobody feels anything.2·03Two KilogramsChapter III · KitAn object image and a whole life in it.2·04Nine BaysChapter III · KitHe looks around the bay the way a man looks around a room he has built. The coffee is the first warning she has about the next season.
IIThe TableChapter IV · The TableKal begins a sentence and Kyra talks straight over it, about a cupboard. The sentence is never finished and never recovered.Untitled2·05It Would Be There When She Got BackChapter IV · The TableThe object the last chapter is built on, established as a joke about a coat.2·06Youd Take a Good Coat to it with a Pair of ScissorsChapter IV · The TableShe cleared while she talked, because she had never once in her life sat through the end of a meal. And Kal, still at the table, said Mother— , and did not get to finish it.
IIINothingChapter V · NothingVal hugs her daughter first, which she has done perhaps four times in Genie's adult life, and says four words into her hair. Genie says what. Val says nothing.UntitledIIINothingChapter V · NothingVal hugs her daughter first, which she has done perhaps four times in Genie's adult life, and says four words into her hair. Genie says what. Val says nothing.Untitled · v2IIINothingChapter V · NothingVal hugs her daughter first, which she has done perhaps four times in Genie's adult life, and says four words into her hair. Genie says what. Val says nothing.Untitled2·07Ive Written Down the WateringChapter V · NothingA man who spent his working life on the transfer of water through tissue that had no business moving water, crossing a terrace on the last evening to say that her plants will be alive.2·08She Was Not TalkingChapter V · NothingAnd then there was nothing else, because there is never anything else.
1·02Four Feet AwayChapter VI · OutThe entire history of the deep-range program comes down to this: a great deal of work, followed by people sitting still.IVThe Instrument BayChapter VI · OutRask makes his coffee where you do not make coffee. Val objects. Kyra, from the far end of the bay without looking up, says she likes him better than she likes Val.Untitled2·09Well Shes Still Got Nine BaysChapter VI · OutNobody felt anything. Render nineteen people in straps in separate rooms doing nothing at all.2·10You Expected Me to Be TallerChapter VI · OutNineteen panels drawn and read and filed in eleven hours, by hand, by a woman who wrote the standard.
2·11Coffee and ArgumentChapter VII · WatchesThe warmest image in the book, and two of these people have five months to live.2·12Somebody Writes Down What is Actually TrueChapter VII · WatchesHe is right, and it is the reason the last six chapters exist.
2·13Eleven CountersChapter VIII · The TargetNine weeks of the best fieldwork of her professional life, and the image is a board game.2·14There it isChapter VIII · The TargetThree people enjoying themselves enormously.
1·03Hes Good Hes ThoroughChapter X · The SilenceNo contact. It cost her nothing to say nothing; that was the part she noticed. Fifty-nine years of practice, working as smoothly as it ever had.
1·04Its ClimbingChapter XI · ElevatedThe most important conversation in sixteen books and neither of them knows it. It is a nothing. It is four orders below the operational limit.VThe SheetsChapter XI · ElevatedThe drift term is up. Kyra has killed every other explanation. Val reads it standing up and says to put it in the return report.Untitled2·15Its Real and Its NothingChapter XI · ElevatedThree hours of trying to kill a thing that will not die. Two instruments calibrated differently do not agree about an artifact.
VIThe WatchChapter XII · The WatchHe brings the pre-fold log with him and works through it on the floor. Val lies above him and watches a man work, and understands none of what she is seeing, because there is nothing to understand.Untitled2·16Page Column Number Four Seconds SignChapter XII · The WatchAnd somewhere in the middle of the stack there was a page with a great deal on it — three or four sheets pinned together with a page of method in a hand Val had known for fifty-nine years. He read the top sheet. He went up to the corner. He compared. Within.
2·17Its the Only Bit of Us That Cant Be BrokenChapter XIII · FiledFour lines of standing instruction, and the only reason the last six chapters are possible.
1·05Everything on This Board is WorkingChapter XV · Nothing Is WrongNo contact. The most frightening image in the series and nothing is visibly wrong. The light has changed to the color the light changes to and has not changed back.1·06Nine PointsChapter XV · Nothing Is WrongTwenty-one years of a smudge, arriving at the worst possible moment, on a panel in front of the one person alive who knows its shape.VIINothing Is WrongChapter XV · Nothing Is WrongEvery instrument on the ship is working and every number is true. Kyra's realization is not that something failed. It is that nothing did.Untitled
1·07The Hatch Standing OpenChapter XVI · ElevenRefuse the rest. What Val has afterward is pieces in no order she trusts: the straps, the dark, a smell that is not smoke, and the bay hatch four feet away standing open onto nothing at all, which is not possible, and which she saw.VIIIElevenChapter XVI · ElevenTwo women strapped four feet apart in the dark with dead instruments. Val does not reach for her. She knows where she is, and that is the whole of it.Untitled
1·08Were Not at the ArrivalChapter XVII · What Came ThroughFour hours of making a hull safe and accounting for eight people before anybody says a word about where they are.1·09Four Inches of Poor GlassChapter XVII · What Came ThroughNo contact. A section turning slowly, and a world going past the glass that nobody has a name for.IXThe PortChapter XVII · What Came ThroughFour inches of poor glass, a blue world turning under an unknown star, and a woman who has never once failed to place a sky saying that she cannot place this one and is not going to be able to.Untitled2·19Nothing Answered from the ThirdChapter XVII · What Came ThroughThe dead are rendered as absence. Render the ship from outside: what is there, and the shape of what is not.2·20Pressure Then Power Then WaterChapter XVII · What Came ThroughThat is what people do. Nobody speaks about where they are for four hours.
2·21Fires in a LineChapter XVIII · One Habitable WorldThat's people, Commander. — I know what it is, said Tolven, and went on looking.2·22Then We Go Down Somewhere ElseChapter XVIII · One Habitable WorldSaid flatly, at a bad instrument, by a woman with five days of air and no procedure.
1·10The Thickest FloorChapter XIX · Coming DownVal was in the second with Kyra, strapped, on a floor that was the thickest one. She heard the sixth go. Render the inside, not the event.1·11Say Something ElseChapter XIX · Coming DownThe first moment of the next four hundred years. Dark, cold coming in, two voices.XCutting Her OutChapter XIX · Coming DownA hull on its side in the dark with cold coming into it, and one woman working a cable cutter over the other's leg with hands that are not working properly.Untitled2·23Because it Has the Thickest FloorChapter XIX · Coming DownShe has worked out the shedding order and put herself in the sixth for a reason she never says out loud.2·24Four or Five MilesChapter XIX · Coming DownFrom a long way off, and small. Six people are dying in this frame and none of them is visible.2·25The Only Thing on That Mountain Bigger Than a DoorChapter XIX · Coming DownRender the aftermath and the gouge, never the impact.
1·12She Set it on the First NightChapter XX · SpringBadly is the point. A run of hull plate, a strap, a cutter, and no light but a fire. It will be a limp for four hundred years.1·13The Pattern on the SlopeChapter XX · SpringNo contact — she is alone on a mountain. One figure on an enormous slope, and a locker door in a gully.1·14I Want Somebody to BuryChapter XX · SpringShe stands in the opening with the light behind her for a long moment.XII Want Somebody to BuryChapter XX · SpringFive days of searching a mountain in a widening pattern drawn on a panel. There is nothing to find, and both of them know it, and only one of them will say so.Untitled2·26Down from the SnowChapter XX · SpringThe only image of the dead in the file, and there is nothing in it.Untitled · v2 · Opposite Leg Cast2·26Down from the SnowChapter XX · SpringThe only image of the dead in the file, and there is nothing in it.Untitled2·26Four Hundred Yards Where the Snow Had Gone BlackChapter XX · SpringThe only image of the dead in the file, and there is nothing in it.
1·15She Did Not Say Im SorryChapter XXI · Nothing KeptVal talked first, which neither of them would have predicted. Four minutes, flat, in order, with a fire between them.1·16The Whole SeasonChapter XXI · Nothing KeptShe does not shout — that is the second time in nine books that this is the worst version. I'm angry at you in front of a fire because I can't be angry at him, and I would like it on the record that I know exactly what I'm doing and I am going to do it anyway.1·17Nothing KeptChapter XXI · Nothing KeptThe most important image in the Sethal books and the pact the next seven books are built on. Made out loud, at volume, with her voice gone to a rasp, beside a fire that is nearly out.1·18They Dont Know Where We AreChapter XXI · Nothing KeptShe had done the arithmetic on the third day in her head, twice, and again on the fourth on the inside of a plate with a grease pencil, and had rubbed it out with her sleeve.
XIVThe Lower East RangeChapter XXII · OverdueGenie says the true thing first. Kal stands with her hands at her sides and goes through it once, all the way to the end, and then sits down on the edge of a table, which she has never done.UntitledXIIITwo DaysChapter XXII · OverdueJalen Renn asks whether he may shut the door, and Genie's whole body understands before any part of her mind does.Untitled
2·27Nothing to Do with Her Had a FormChapter XXIII · LostAnd then he sat in his own kitchen for a while. He had been going to ask her a question he had been not asking for about two years.
XVEvery Resolved EndpointChapter XXIV · Every Resolved EndpointHer own sealed sets laid against her mother's appendix, and a thing she cannot prove and will not send.Untitled2·28Nine Weeks in a Cold RoomChapter XXIV · Every Resolved EndpointFour hundred and some resolved endpoints, and nothing at any of them.
XVIIWe're Each OtherChapter XXV · What Was SignedGenie stops mid-sentence and argues for holding it. Kal argues for telling. Twenty-one years after the hall at Corran Vayr, with the parts exchanged.UntitledXVIWhat Was SignedChapter XXV · What Was SignedEleven reviews laid out in order, and the twelfth with no queries in it at all, and four sheets pinned together in her mother's hand with one word against them.Untitled2·29Ninety One Entries No QueriesChapter XXV · What Was SignedHe did the part of his job that is on the form. And against four pinned sheets in her mother's hand, in a clean unhurried signature, one word.
1·19Coming DownChapter XXVI · Where Are TheyThe hinge of sixteen books. Nothing in this frame may look like an arrival or a triumph. Two people, a slope, and a treeline.1·20A Thread of SmokeChapter XXVI · Where Are TheyNo contact, and the last image of nine books. They do not know what it is. Nothing in the frame may tell the viewer either — no building, no roof, no figures, no shape. A thread of smoke and nothing else.XVIIIWhere Are TheyChapter XXVI · Where Are TheyIlen says they are not at any resolved endpoint. Kal asks where they are. For the first time in fifty years he has nothing at all.Untitled2·30Then Where Are TheyChapter XXVI · Where Are TheyNobody said the word. It was never said in that kitchen, not that night and not afterward. The coat is on the hook and neither of them has touched it and both of them have looked at it about a hundred times.
