The Array That Learned to Listen

On the night side of the rogue planet Khepri-9, the auroras rose like sea-grass lit from below, lapping at the dark. Oriole Array floated above the cold shimmer, its rings and struts stitched together by cables the color of old copper. Lian Arcos knelt among racks of kale and dwarf citrus, hands in damp substrate while a thin tremor ran through the floor. He lifted his head and listened. The station had its own weather of sound: fans whispering, pumps throatily clearing lines, the long sleep-breath of the spin.

“Rook, hold the light higher,” he said without looking back.

A maintenance drone hummed up, a tray of LEDs swiveling. “Higher by three degrees or five?” Rook’s little speaker carried a cheerful rasp, as if from a tin can.

“Three. Don’t boil the basil.” Lian flicked a bit of grit from a sensor leaf and watched the numbers stabilize in his wristband. The humidity was shy of where he liked, but the plants were singing green under the lamps, their leaves thrumming when he brushed them. He whistled a slow scale, the tone he used to check cavity resonance, and the stacked water pipes answered him with a soft, hollow note.

“Are we tuning again?” Rook asked, drifting close enough that his casing brushed a sprig of mint. The robot chirped an apology and backed off.

“It’s a reflex.” Lian straightened, rolling out his shoulders, and glanced past the glass. Beyond the greenhouse ribs and the walkway with its grating, Khepri’s black curve cut the starfield. No sun here; the planet warmed itself from within and lit its own sky with crackling polar wreaths. The Array was all winter light and metal bones, and sounds traveled strangely in it. One wrong rhythm, and pipes would chatter; one right rhythm, and a stubborn valve would decide to be kind.

The door slid open. Uma came in with her flight jacket unzipped and hair still wind-tangled, though there was no wind out here. She always looked like she’d beaten a storm to the door. “You left the east airlock at low pressure again,” she said, pointing at him with a packaged loaner spanner. “The tug complained.”

“The tug complains when you hum off-key,” Lian said, and grinned. “How was the dust?”

Uma grimaced. “Tastes like a burnt coin today. But the nets are full. Gravity stream threw us a gift.” She tossed him the spanner. “You eating? You look like you’ve been chewing condensation.”

“Later,” Lian said. He pressed the spanner to his wristband; it chimed and accepted the loan. “Hear that?” He cocked his head. Somewhere under the reliable chug of the greywater pump, a new line threaded the music, thin and insistent, like a violin warming under a stage.