Glacia drops onto her bed and lays on her back, her legs hanging over the edge. I almost don’t follow, but she pats the space next to her. Still, I hesitate to sit down, suddenly aware of the hum and how alone we are here.

Neither of us says a word. I look at her once, but her eyes are closed, and I’m afraid she’s fallen asleep until she turns her head toward me and opens her eyes. I try to smile, but it comes across as a weird tug on my mouth. She’s about to smile back, but a long yawn interrupts her. Then she sits up, rests her back against the wall, and pulls her knees to her chest. She pats the space behind me again, so I slide backward until I’m leaning on the wall, too.

“Arman?”

“Mmhmm?”

She doesn’t respond immediately, and I begin to think she fell asleep again, until,

“I’m scared.”

“About what?”

She doesn’t answer for a few moments again, then, “I have to take a maneuvering test in the Perihelids.”

The Perihelids aren’t too crowded. Officer Remmit’s model showed us that. Still, Glacia never gets nervous about anything.

“Fallsten will be with me, but I…” She tilts her head back. “What if I—”

“You won’t,” I say, my voice hard. “You won’t.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know if—”

“You’re Glacia Haverns. Nothing stops Glacia Haverns.” I reach my hand across her and push up the corners of her mouth with my thumb and forefinger. “Hang in there and just keep smiling.”

A smile flickers over her face. She yawns again, then leans her head on my shoulder and lets her hair fall over my arm.

“You keep smiling too, mister.”

Chapter Twenty-One

A black line streaks through the light of the stars: the Perihelid asteroid field. We dropped out of FTL this morning, so far away that the Perihelids weren’t visible yet, but over the last few hours, they’ve grown larger…and larger…and larger. Now the field is a cloud of darkness. As the fleet drifts closer, I can make out individual asteroids, and the pilots activate the Ember’s floodlights.

Officer Remmit’s voice echoes through the intercoms. He’s monitoring our deceleration from his lab. Down in Station Control, Glacia stands behind one of the pilots to observe the process.

“Hold straight,” Officer Remmit says. “Hold, hold, now.”

A pilot activates the reverse thrusters, and a faint blue glow emanates from the front side of the engines. The Ember slows even more. Above us and to our sides, the engines of the other three stations flare as those crews mimic the sequence. We’re within a thousand miles of the field, then five hundred, then one hundred.

And then we’re inside.