The planet called Home was colonized several generations earlier, and there are two distinct populations, those who live outside the domes in villages dotted along the riverbanks, and those who remain huddled in the original settlement. The dome dwellers have been raised to regard themselves as the truly human descendants of Earth and the out-dwellers as people who forsook their heritage and alienated themselves. And indeed, radiation and other factors have caused genetic drift, as the outside populations have adapted to their un-Earthly environment. The villagers are the descendants of the first colonists who wanted to be self-reliant and interact directly with their new home world. These differences, ideological, social, economic, and genetic, are the basis of conflicts that have triggered violence in the past, and may do so again.

Periodically, villagers trek to the dome to trade produce for maintenance technology: recharges for their lightsticks, batteries, metals. These traders know that the dome dwellers look down on them, and some of them wonder why their counterparts trade with them at all; the original settlement has all the benefits of advanced technology, after all.

Bian is a shy and quiet girl, not adventuresome like her great-grandmother, Nuy, the oldest of all the villagers, the one who remembers a war she will not talk about, but who tells all the village children how their ancestors came to Home, brought by Ship, the intelligent starship sent from Earth to seed other planets with humanity. What Nuy hadn’t told them was that Ship had promised to return one day to see how Earth’s seed had flourished on this new world. Why stir hopes that may only be disappointed? Why foster dependency on an entity that may never materialize?

But then, a new light appears in the night sky….

Nuy warns her community that if this light is Ship, it will be able to communicate with the colonists via the original equipment, but that equipment is in the original settlement. All information about the colonists will be filtered through the perceptions and prejudices of the dome-dwellers. What if they tell Ship that the riverside dwellers aren’t really human? And what if Ship is programmed to purge Home of deviant stock? On the other hand, what if Ship has come to help, as it promised, and what if it sees their efforts at living on Home as the true fulfillment of their mission?

Bian volunteers to make the journey to find out if the light is indeed caused by the return of Ship, and what messages are being conveyed. Accompanying her goes Arnagh, only a few years older, but an experienced trader. Along the way, Bian and Arnagh are joined by other young adventurers, each in search of answers, or of opportunities. One of these is Enli, a musician born, whose parents think he is wasting his time making melodies instead of farming and starting a family with a nice local girl. Lusa, the girl Enli is refusing to marry, follows him; her pain and jealousy drive her to become an inadvertent member of the group.

The real surprises are taking place under the shelter of the dome.

For starters, the radio isn’t working very well. Any messages Ship may be sending aren’t coming through after the initial contact. Other things are going wrong too, but it would be telling too much to divulge details. Safrah, Awan, Jina, and Mikhail are the counterparts to the four travelers en route; all eight contend with fears and hopes and dangers triggered by Ship’s appearance. These characters struggle to reach a place where communication is possible and redemption may be an option.

In the very last few pages, Ship, the entity which triggered all these confrontations, begins to emerge as a character in and of itself. An AI that has learned to evaluate its original program and expanded beyond it, Ship also has the silicon equivalent of a limbic system, evincing feelings, longings of its own. Sargent seems serious about taking this series further, and I predict that Ship will be promoted from deus ex machina to major character in the next installment.

Sargent has been compared to Heinlein on a number of occasions for the quality of her young adult fiction. I venture to say that in several ways she is a better writer, for Heinlein loved to dazzle readers with how clever and provocative he was, while Sargent seems to invite readers to self-discovery. I love being dazzled, but sometimes it is pleasant to be honored. ~~ Chris Paige