She shakes her head against his. “This is what we were always for. To touch the unknown, or die trying.” She smiles. “Even if I never see it, I’m glad I got to make it this far.”

They walk slowly back across the night-lit bridge, through the small-hours quiet of the old town.

“We don’t have to do this now,” Santi says. “We have a few more months. We could live them, first.”

“You really think I could live like that? With my death hanging over me?” Thora looks at him. “I know what you’d want, if you were me. A farewell tour of your favourite haunts. A heart-to-heart with Héloïse and your parents. A series of murals summing up the meaning of your existence.” She looks away from his rueful smile. “But that’s not me. I’m taking one last look at the city, and then we’re doing this.” One last look. Thora pushes down what she’s really afraid of: if she has time to think about it, time to slow down and look her decision in the face, she might change her mind.

They take their time climbing the tower. Thora tells herself they’re being careful. She knows what they’re really doing is pushing back the moment when they will have to say goodbye.

At the top, they sit side by side looking over the city: the cathedral, the river, the Hohenzollernbrücke covered in beautiful foolish gestures of love. Thora closes her eyes to a vision, clear as a gift: Santi stepping onto the surface of a new world, its dust rising to welcome his feet.

“Bury me there,” she decides. “If I don’t make it.”

“Where?”

She opens her eyes to Santi’s beloved, shattered face. “On the new world.”

He takes a long breath before he speaks. “If that’s what you want.”

She frowns at the implication. “What, would you want your corpse hauled back to Earth? I assume the training we can’t remember included briefings on cargo efficiency.”

He shakes his head, looking up with a soft smile. “No. No, I’d want to be buried among the stars.”

She snorts. “You mean drift forever through space as a human icicle? Whatever floats your boat.”

Behind his smile, he’s starting to cry again. Thora feels herself buckling like a tin in a vacuum. If she doesn’t do this now, she won’t have the strength. “Peregrine!” she yells, her voice ringing out.

Nothing happens. She looks uncertainly at Santi.

“Can he even come up here?” he wonders.

“I was kind of expecting him to float down from a cloud, if I’m honest.”

A scrabbling from inside the tower. Peregrine climbs up through the opening, dusting off his coat. “Yes?”

Thora clears her throat. “We decided.”

Peregrine looks uncertainly at Santi. “Both?”