Station Nine, 14° North of the Terminator
On Kemet-B, every object casts two shadows: one sharp and violet from the dwarf star सूरा, the other long and honey-gold from its elder companion. Idris measured his days by the angle between them.
For six orbital cycles he had calibrated the wind-harps alone, recording dust migrations across the silicate dunes and transmitting weather tables to the agricultural domes three hundred kilometres east.
At 04:19 station time, the copper dish on the roof pivoted north on its own. Through the static came a chorus of Yoruba and Hausa telemetry markers—an approach protocol last used by the Lagos-Dakar Ark Fleet ninety years ago.
Idris set down his compass, pulled his dust-cloak from the peg by the airlock, and keyed the beacon transmitter to manual. Nobody was supposed to be out there left to come home. Yet the sky above the amber meridian was burning with a re-entry trail.