The wind from the bay smelled of salt and something metallic, as if the air was rubbing against hidden gears. Lena Debska leapt over the netting with Nikolai and landed on the other side of the fence with an impact that reverberated through her knees. The planetarium on the cliff, closed for years, shone with a muffled, rainy sheen - like a shell that no one dared to pick up. - 'It's not a burglary,' Nikolai said, correcting his backpack rustling with tools. - It's an artistic and scientific intervention. - 'Sure,' she muttered. - And I'm the conservation commission. She didn't dare say out loud that they had come here for another reason too. In her blouse pocket she carried an envelope without a stamp. Someone had slipped it between the pages of a maths textbook in the school library that morning. Inside lay just a narrow strip of paper, crossed out with one sentence: "Projection at 22:17". No signature. No explanation. Without a shadow of proof that it wasn't a joke. The lobby of the planetarium was cold and full of whispers made by the wind sweeping through the cracked seals. To the right stood a board with yellowed placards: "Eclipses of the Twentieth Century", "The Milky Way: our place in the universe" and a smiling Saturn in a Santa hat from December 2004. Glass and leaves crunched underfoot and the luminous snakes of lanterns from the car park moved along the walls, caught through the tall windows like a cool aquarium filter. - 'My grandfather worked here,' Lena said, more to herself than to Nikolai. - A projection technician. 'I've never been inside. Only in pictures. - You talk like a guide, Debska - he laughed, but she silenced him with a nod. The words about her grandfather sounded different in her as she uttered them in this space, where metal railings and circular lamps blended together with the cool blackness of the dome. The stairs to the auditorium were steep. As they entered the main hall, Lena felt the skin on the back of her neck turn into goosebumps. The dome, as big as the sky in a nutshell, hung above rows of seats draped in dusty navy blue. In the centre was a projector - a bizarre spherical hedgehog with lenses, tubes and joints, a design from before the age of touch screens, as beautiful as a mechanical specimen from a natural history museum that had escaped from its display case. Attached to the control panel was a brass plaque: "Dr Eng Jerzy Dębski - technical supervision". Lena ran her finger over the engraving as if it were the birthmark of a long-lost relative. For a second she felt the metal was warmer than it should have been. - 'There's no electricity here,' Nikolai said, looking into the fuse box. - Everything's cut off. As we were, so we will leave. Empty. Lena took a strip of paper out of her pocket and checked the time on her phone. 22:15 The display cast a milky glow on her fingers. - Are we circling until nothing happens? - She asked cautiously. - Are you seriously taking this? - Nikolai raised an eyebrow. - 'Maybe someone knows you're coming here. And you know... playing theatre. - I can play too,' she replied, but she felt her stomach clench like a fist. She didn't tell anyone that she was going to go to the cliff in the evening. She didn't type anything in the media, she didn't leave cards. Who would know? Only the wind. They sat in the last row, like old latecomers at a screening. Nikolai took a torch and a bottle of water out of his backpack. Lena listened to the quiet murmur of the waves beyond the wall. Her fingers were cold, but not because of the night. Something about the silence of the place was like the pulled canvas over the stage before a performance - springy, catching her breath. 22:17. The lantern outside the window went out. For half a second all the shadows in the room disappeared, and then... the dome lit up. There was no click, no flicker of a transformer. Simply lights blossomed from within - sparse and then increasingly dense, as if someone was hatching stars. Cold spots, arranged in geometric arrays and diverging into the unknown. - 'Miko,' Lena whispered, although the whisper sounded like an alien animal here. - Can you see it? - 'If you don't, it means I'm crazy exactly like you,' he replied, already standing, already slipping between the rows, as if afraid that the light would escape if he approached too slowly. The projector stood still. No wheels were turning. Yet a firmament she did not recognise stretched across the vault. The constellations were shifted, rearranged with a strange audacity. Above the entrance row hung an arc of stars forming a letter-like shape - as if someone had connected the dots, guiding an invisible line. L. Then E. And then an N. A. A cold and warm feeling passed through Lena's heart at the same time. - It's... - Nikolai broke off, as if the word hung on his tongue. - Is it some kind of software? A hidden mode? There's no electricity. There isn't. I really... Lena walked up to the central platform. Each step seemed lighter than the last, as if the floor was made of sea foam. A faint glow shimmered on her grandfather's brass nameplate, as if stars were reflected in the metal. She reached out her hand. She touched the edge. At the same instant, just above their heads, a single, extremely bright star popped out of the darkness. It pulsed. - Can you feel it? - Nikolai asked. - The air. She felt. The air became heavier, thicker, richer in flavour. It smelled of wet bark and ozone, as if a storm had just turned inside the building and curled under the dome. She felt fine currents on her skin, chills that had nothing to do with the cold. Somewhere in the structure, far away, a rivet squeaked. A thin, darker line broke away from the seam running across the zenith of the dome, like a scratch on glass. - 'Don't touch any more,' Nikolai said, but he didn't sound convinced. - 'I'm not touching. She is touching me. The stars on the vault began to move - not like in a normal projection, where the movement is calculated and smooth. This one was organic, at times uncertain, as if the celestial bodies were learning their position anew. A streak, as thin as a fibre, emerged from the unknown constellations and descended, stopping a few centimetres from Lena's hand. She saw it. She saw something that was only light, yet it cast a shadow on her fingernails. - It's not possible,' Nikolai whispered. - It's not... - ...our programme - finished Lena, hearing her voice as if from very far away. Above their heads, the crack in the dome trembled and twitched, as if something was pushing from within, seeking a way in. The séance - if it was a séance at all - sped up. Stars clustered in swarms, twinkling and whispering in some language of their own. Lena wasn't sure if it was a whisper or just her blood, but she heard a sound that she associated with whale song, only played on metal strings. On the lectern, next to a brass plaque, was a flip-top like an old radio receiver. She had never seen it before, although she remembered this table from family photographs. Now the flap was open, and a button glowed greenishly inside, bearing the inscription carved in microscopic letters: "Mode: Second". - Can you see this? - She asked. - "Second." - I see it. Don't move. I beg. She did not move the button. But the light that touched her hand twitched, encircling her fingers like water at the shoreline, and in the same instant, something gave way in the seam of the dome - right above the central projector. The air swirled in a spiral, sending a chill into the room from so far away that the hair on their heads rose as if lifted by an invisible current. A single drop fell from the ceiling... except it didn't. It stopped midway, shuddering as if alive. - Leno - someone said. Not a fragment of air, not a memory, not an echo of her own thought. A voice, low and clear at the same time, that she knew and didn't know. It was unclear whether it was coming from a seam in the dome, from the walls, from the very metal heart of the projector, or from a place under the bridge where breath and fear reside. Nikolai grabbed her wrist. His fingers were hot. - 'Who's here? - he called out, and Lena felt his hand tremble. - 'Who? The star above them pulsed harder. The seam in the dome swung open a hand's width, then two. They did not see the sheet metal, they did not see the layers of material. Above them opened a darkness deeper than the sky - deeper by being close. It was not empty. Silvery points seemed to move there like skylights enclosed in a jar. He drew in his eyes and his thoughts. - Grandfather? - she snapped out before she could stop herself. Nicholas looked at her quickly, questioningly, but didn't manage to say anything. A shred of light, thicker than before, like a ribbon, drifted down from the gaping hole. It stopped in front of her and... bent. It formed itself into a shape that looked like a stepping stone. Everything went silent. Even the wind, which until then had been tapping on the windows, seemed to have sat down and listened along with them. Lena took a breath. She hesitated. Nowhere, in any textbook, was there a chapter that said what to do when the sky is making degrees for you. - If you put your foot down, will we go back? - asked Nikolai in a whisper in which sounded not so much fear as that strange stirring one feels when one is still standing on land and the waves are already pulling in one's ankles. The voice repeated her name, closer this time. And a little lower, as if he were standing on the other side of the first step. Lena lifted her leg. The light under her trembling foot dimmed a little, as if taking a breath. Just above their heads, the gap widened another centimetre, and a drop dangled endlessly from its edge. Nikolai pressed her fingers together, but did not speak. The planetarium room held its breath along with her. And then something - a quiet, barely audible click, as if someone on the other side had switched another mode - surged through the structure. The stars twinkled. The staircase glowed a tone brighter, waiting.