The commands of the Gern guards snapped like whips around them as she and the other Rejects crowded and stumbled down the boarding ramp and out onto the rocky ground. There was the pull of a terrible gravity such as she had never experienced and they were in a bleak, barren valley, a cold wind moaning down it and whipping the alkali dust in bitter clouds. Around the valley stood ragged hills, their white tops laying out streamers of wind-driven snow, and the sky was dark with sunset.

“ Out from the ship⁠—faster⁠— ”

It was hard to walk fast in the high gravity, carrying the bag in one hand and holding up all of Billy’s weight she could with the other.

“They lied to us!” a man beside her said to someone. “Let’s turn and fight. Let’s take⁠—”