Priam, Ithaca’s single moon, was hanging low on the horizon as Serenity came in to land, casting a pinkish hue over the landscape. The sun itself had already set, leaving an odd twilight.

“What’s this place like?” Hank asked as he settled the Firefly into her berth with barely a bump. “Never been here before, myself.”

Mal, standing behind him, his arms crossed, shook his head. “Me neither,” he said. “Never had the need. It looks pretty much like anywhere else.”

From the advantage of height, they could see across the town spread out in front of them. It was built around two major roads in a T-shape, the horizontal abutting the port, while the vertical led away, the buildings getting progressively more fancy and therefore more expensive as distance wore on. The furthest appeared to be mansions, separated by landscaped gardens and ringing Cason’s Point in a huge semi-circle.

Further back, on the central of the hills surrounding the town, was something more akin to an old-fashioned Earth-that-was chateau, gazing down on everyone they considered below them. Even from this distance it appeared to be made from stone, probably imported at enormous cost on private haulage vessels, and the moonlight glittered from its many windows.

Close to, though, the predominant building material seemed to be sheet metal topped with solar converters for cheap power, with haphazard shanties at either end of the main road.

“Odd they’ve got somewhere like this,” the pilot commented, powering down.

“Huh?”

“A dock like this.”

They’d seen it as they came down, directed by Port Control to land on a clearly delineated rectangle of heat compacted earth to the left of the tower (although a building that had only two stories probably didn’t warrant such a grand name). Most places this far out from the Core had at the most a desultorily-run Customs shed, landing field and small control building, often only manned during daylight hours, while here there were large warehouses in addition to the tower, razor-wire