I try to lift my head and look up at him, but he presses on it gently and keeps stroking my hair. “You really should rest.”

He’s right. We both should. So I push a leg between his, and he lets me. Like his body is a thing of mine. “I am sorry. About what I said to you back in Houston.”

“Shh.”

“And that I’ve put you in danger—”

“Shh, it’s okay.” He kisses my temple. It’s wet from the slide of my tears. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not. You could be working with your team, or asleep in your own bed, but you’re here because of me, and—”

“Hannah, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.”

I laugh, watery. “Not even—not even literally anywhere else?”

I hear him chuckle just before I fall asleep.

Eight

Before we can leave for Houston, we spend one night in a hotel in Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s main settlement. It offers a bottomless breakfast buffet and keeps the rooms’ temperature about ten degrees higher than needed for comfortable inside dwelling—truly the stuff of post-crevasse-Hannah’s dreams. I’m not sure whether Ian shares my bliss, as he disappears as soon as I’m settled in. It’s fine, though, because I have stuff to do. Mostly writing a detailed report updating NASA on what happened, which doesn’t mention Ian (at his request) but ends in a formal complaint against Merel. After that, I stumble upon a rare moment of grace: I manage to connect to the mini-rover out in the field. I let out a squeal of delight when I realize that it’s collecting the precise type of data I needed. I stare at the incoming feed, remember what Ian said on the boat about how valuable my project would be for future missions, and nearly tear up.

I don’t know. I must still be shaken up.

We leave the following day. I’ve done what I came to AMASE for (surprisingly successfully), and Ian needs to be at JPL in three days. The first plane ride is from Svalbard to Oslo, on one of those minuscule aircraft that take off from minuscule airports with their minuscule seats and minuscule complimentary snacks. Ian and I don’t get to sit next to each other, nor do we from Oslo to Frankfurt. I pass the time staring out the window and watching JAG reruns with Norwegian subtitles. By the end of the third episode, I strongly suspect skyldig means “guilty.”

“I guess ikke means ‘not,’ then,” Ian tells me as he wheels my still-injured self through the Frankfurt airport. I turn back to look up at him, puzzled. “What? I was watching JAG, too. It’s a good show. Reminds me of my childhood.”

“Really? You used to watch a show about military lawyers with your weird smuggler dad?”

He gives me a sheepish look, and I burst into laughter.

“Do Harm and Mac end up together in the end?” I ask him.