Autumn smelled smoky and damp when Antek stopped by the planetarium fence in Sunnyside Park as he did every day. The gate had been closed for years, the chain had gone slick, and the slogans from the past century were still peeling on the posters. Only leaves rustled along the dilapidated alleyway, and a mist settled on the dome. - Have you got it? - Iga slid out from under the maple tree as if she had grown out of the shadows. Her hair smelled of cool air and her eyes shone in the twilight. She had a black, tattered casket in her hand. Antek nodded and swallowed his saliva. All he had been thinking about since the morning was this. They opened the box. On black felt lay a key in the shape of a comet: a copper teardrop with a thin tail, silver-plated striations like space dust and miniature teeth that looked like a swarm of meteors. On the side, in tiny letters, someone has engraved: ORION/3. - I can't believe you actually found it,' he whispered. - After all, it could only have been a joke. - A pawn shop by the station. Tucked away in the antiques between the porcelain cats - she smiled crookedly. - Well, what do you think? Shall we go in? The isthmus in the fence they had known for a long time. Squeezing through the cool lattice, they ran up the crumbling steps and stopped by the dark oak door. The tiles had faded, but the brass plaque reading "Dome Hall" still had a cut. The locks, once replaced with new ones, now looked like the armour of an old tortoise. - Do you remember that dream? - Iga showed him with her elbow the outline of the dome against the heavy sky. - The one where the stars descend to the floor like drops. Antek nodded his head. He had been dreaming the same way for years: that the bright dots were slipping away from the blackness and scattering across his fingers like salt. He always woke up just before he was about to touch the brightest one. The interior smelled of dust, old wood and citrusy floor polish, as if someone had long ago decided that the cosmos would smell of oranges. Showcases of meteorite fragments covered the felt. Maps of the constellations hung on the walls, folded at the edges like pages looked at too often. In the dome room stood it - a metal hedgehog of glass and steel, the Projector. Complex, beautiful, bizarre. With piped lenses and arms ending in discs that resembled moth eyes. The platform was surrounded by a handrail, and at the front, a desktop full of levers and dials. Some were described with worn-out labels: Local Time, Horizon, Ecliptic. Between them a thin gap, modelled exactly in the shape of a comet. - 'This must be here,' Iga mused at the edge of the slit, until shivers ran down their spines. Antek looked around nervously. He spotted a piece of paper nailed with a pin in the shape of a star: "Do not start - calibration interrupted". Underneath, someone had written in pencil: "And yet". - Don't do it yet," he said. - Listen first. They fell into silence. Pale light was oozing from the dome above them, though no one had switched on the lamps. Outside, something rustled in the wind, snagged on a gutter and fell silent. In the depths of the building, somewhere behind the door of the "Technical Service", an old installation buzzed, as if reacting to their breaths. - This building... - Iga leaned over the lectern. - He remembers. Or he's just acting like it. Either way, we have an hour until sunset. Do you remember the email? Antek felt a sting under his ribs at the mere mention. An unexpected message from a week ago, without a signature. One sentence: "When the shadow of the dome reaches the hands of the clock, use the key." In the footer - nothing. Just a pixelated comet icon. The analogue clock above the entrance stood stubborn and slightly crooked. The minute hand was approaching nineteen eleven, the same time they had seen in the dream. - 'If we have to pick a moment,' Iga grunted, 'it chose itself. Antek gently slid the key in. It fit so perfectly that it was unreal. Metal touched metal and for a split second he felt a cool leathery pulse. He turned it. There was no click. There was something quieter - like an intake of breath. The light went out. The dome blackened so completely that they lost sight of their own hands. Then, as if someone had poured sugar into the air, the dots began to light up. First a few, then a swarm. Constellations leapt out of the darkness: Orion, Cassiopeia, Swan, Scorpio. But they were arranged differently, as if someone had squatted and rotated them by millimetres that change the whole. The lines connecting the stars were no longer just lines - they pulsed, singing softly like a string muscled by a finger. - This is no ordinary projection,' Iga whispered. - Can you hear it? He could hear it. A delicate sound, too structured for coincidence and too soft for a machine signal. A glass scale flashed in the corner of the console. The digits moved backwards, the dates passing like passing stations: 2019... 2002... 1986... 1969... and then stopped on something that was not a year. On something that resembled coordinates. - Look - Iga touched the dome with her fingertips. The light did not blur on her skin, on the contrary, it focused. And Orion... Orion lowered his arm. The whole figure of the hunter tilted, and his belt with three stars shone lashingly and moved towards the bottom of the dome, as if pointing to a point on the ground. On the plan that had just begun to be drawn. Beneath their feet, the wooden floor trembled. The planks collapsed a tad, as if something underneath had moved after a long sleep. Some of the stardust fell lower, smearing into the shape of a river bend. The camera seemed to be painting a map of the town - parks, bridges, streets - all woven with specks of light. Where the river made an elegant curve, a point pulsed. Three times slow, once fast. Three times slow, once fast. - A signal? - Antek tilted his head. - Or... an invitation. They heard a quiet crack. Something in the floor was letting go. A narrow crack appeared at the edge of the platform, drawing a perfect circle. The air thickened. It smelled of ozone, like before a storm. - I can feel it in my teeth - Iga touched her chest. - My sternum is vibrating. A whisper echoed from the speakers - or perhaps from within the projector itself - reminiscent simultaneously of a radio at the limit of its range and listening to the sea in a shell: - Pair found. Calibration: matching. - Pair? - repeated Antek. - How... a pair of observers? - Or maybe a pair like two wings - replied Iga thoughtfully. - Two needed to launch something that won't move on its own. The gap widened by another millimetre, and another. The circle beneath their feet began to rotate so slowly that, were it not for the vibration of the air, they would not have believed it was really moving. A chill gushed from inside. Not the chill of the cellar. A chill that was high, transparent, as if someone had opened a window to a winter night over the Tatras. And then a light clung to their fingers. The one that danced on the dome drifted down, touched the hands of the two teenagers and for a moment bound them to each other in a thin, silvery line. They were frightened and at the same time felt a strange relief, like when you are in the right place. - 'We're not going into this mindlessly,' Iga warned him, although her voice sounded more like a request than a prohibition. Antek wanted to reply, but suddenly our names - their names - rang out in the hall. Whispered the way very old people do, who remember not only the face, but also the gait, and the first laugh: "Iga... Antek...". From below, from under the turning circle, came the single sound of a foot on metal. It was not heavy. It wasn't light. It was confident. A second. A third. And then someone's hand, which they couldn't see, laid on the edge from underneath and began to lift the flap higher and higher until a burst of light and cold cut the darkness just before their knees