Gardens Of The Sun, Part Two, Chapter One

Uranus's axis of rotation is tipped at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic: while the other planets in the Solar System spin around the sun like tops, Uranus rolls around it like a ball. When the refugees from the Quiet War arrived, Uranus's south pole was aimed at the sun, and the retinue of moons rotating about its equator inscribed paths like the circles of an archery target, with the blue-green ice giant and its slender graphite rings at the bull's-eye. One by one, a ragtag procession of ships dropped around it and swung out around one or another of the five largest moons in spiralling periapsis raise manoeuvres to achieve a common equatorial orbit. An erratic and shell-shocked flock of the dispossessed cleaving close in the lonely dark, chattering each to each, trying to decide what to do next, where they should make their home, how long they should stay.

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