Chapter Five: The Temperature of the Beak Needle

He saw Su's breath as warm feathers, thirteen points of constant cold inside Chen, and the city shedding disorder along gold lines into an invisible scale. Every warmth had a destination. Every freezing had to pay in heat. Lin moved the heat from a boiling droplet into an ice bead. One stilled; the other melted. "Reproducible," Su said, unable to hide her wonder. An alarm sang through the wing. Faceless figures woke inside the transparent buildings. Modern identification badges were embedded in their chests: Chilean miners, a Norwegian pilot, a Chinese surveyor. The Returners had turned generations of discoverers into components of the Gate. Chen opened his feathered arm across the passage. "Take the needle and go!"