" While Azelio and Tarquinia debated the merits of different landing sites, Ramiro clung to a rope beside the window and gazed down at the starlit world below. How could he understand Esilio? Of all the sciences he’d studied as a child, geology had been the least developed – and at the time, he’d imagined, the least likely ever to be of use to him. Of the little that he remembered, he remained unsure what he should trust. The ancestors had had no idea what a rock was actually made of, while their successors, with all their superior knowledge, had never set eyes on a planet. "

― Greg Egan