“The field moves like this”—Glacia swipes a hand sideways—“and we’re moving like this, but kind of sideways, too.” She swipes her other hand almost perpendicular to the first. “Imagine the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Flying out there is a hundred times harder.”

“So a hundred times harder than beating you in Hologis?” I ask with a straight face.

“Ha-ha.” Then she smugly adds, “And yes, exactly like that.”

Glacia pulls her feet onto the couch and tucks them sideways. “But seriously, I was watching one asteroid and the next thing I know, Fallsten slammed the thrusters, screaming her head off because I didn’t check behind us. You literally can’t stop moving your eyes or you will get hit.”

“Glad I got the easy job,” I say.

“Yeah, because you can’t handle the hard stuff, mister.”

Silence overtakes us, and the four of us sit there, all our eyes pointed up at the dome as we watch the asteroids float by and collide with other asteroids. The boulders mesmerize me. The rocky behemoths drift out of the darkness, glide over the Ember, twisting and rotating in place, and then sink back into the shadows.

After several minutes, Ellin stands and stretches.

“I’m calling it a night.” She looks at Glacia. “You coming?”

Glacia shakes her head. “I took a nap earlier.”

Ellin waves and walks away. Michael stays with me and Glacia but doesn’t say much. Occasionally he’ll zone out for a while, then shake his head and regain his senses. Glacia keeps quiet too. She’s tired—that much is obvious—but she won’t admit it. Twice I catch her looking at me, but she pretends to be watching the asteroids.

What’s holding me back? The other day it felt so natural when she fell asleep against me. Today there’s a gap that’s too large to make any inconspicuous movements. Maybe she would lean against me if Michael wasn’t here.

I glance at her again. She perks her eyes to hide her exhaustion. I perk my eyes, too. She smiles. I smile. She looks away.

I don’t.

Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, meet Orcher. The same routine and the easiest routine. When I go to Captain Crowe’s lab, he immediately sends me to Floor 5 to work with Officer Remmit, something I’ve never done before, and we spend the next two hours mapping the Perihelids. He has me recite densities, velocities, and trajectories of specific asteroids, then plugs the data into an algorithm. The resulting map shows what the density of the field will look like when we pass through on our way back to Undil. It’s based on predicted collisions and the field’s orbit within its solar system. Using this data, Officer Remmit will chart a flight path through the least-dense section of the field before we leave Belvun.