New Zion is an alien, strange world to the colonists, with its red-orange sun and bleak landscape. The settlers are able to digest the native proteins only with the help of metabolizing pills, and even so many of the children - the "sicklies" - never seem to thrive. Then one day a painting of New Zion causes a stir and forces some people to reconsider their assumptions about how to survive on this world.

First published in The Altered I. Reprinted in The Compass Rose.