“Flower lifted a brow, dubious. 'You have to pay for a place to be dead in?' Moon shrugged. 'Sometimes, in cities. It’s a groundling thing.”

“It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price all good places have to pay.”

“My bottom belly was gone! I'd contemplated having that thing sucked out many times, but if you've ever had a face-lift and a brow lift and felt the pain of that, it makes you pause before doing anything else too invasive.”

“Nobody talked much as the expedition crossed the moon. There was nothing appropriate to say. One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design. There were to be no moon men at all.”

“Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.”

“Moon couldn’t think of anything reassuring to say. They were trapped inside a leviathan, standing in a tunnel gnawed out by giant parasites. Going blank with terror was a perfectly rational way to react, especially for a groundling.”