Tennal accompanied Surit to the morning command meeting. They had fallen into a pattern of not speaking to each other or to anyone else while they got through it. This time, at least, it was short. “We’re in range of the last known location of the laboratory,” the commander announced. “The far-range scanners will be picking our route for the day. Every piece of debris could be a clue to our target. Shuttles are to take a perimeter position and stand by for retrieval.”

“I don’t see the other teams volunteering to retrieve anything,” Tennal muttered, after the meeting dispersed. “Don’t their fancy Resolution scanners do anything useful?”

“Sometimes you need a pair of pliers,” Surit said.

Back in the ops room, the shuttle launch was tense. Surit went over and over the checklists in his head: Had he forgotten anything? The drive should be able to handle the load. The alert system was working again. He’d had the maintenance team double-check every diagnostic test and had rerun half of them himself. There was no reason to believe they were in trouble.

Tennal settled back into his seat by the pilots, whom he seemed to have found an equilibrium with based on, as far as Surit could tell, gossip and mutual insults. Surit took the lieutenant’s station. “Authorize launch for patrol.” The floor shuddered as they slid gradually from the haven of the Note’s bay.

“We’re out, sir,” Private Istara reported. The screens started to blur. “Status clean.”

“Want me to check out the landscape?” Tennal asked, leaning back in his chair until his eyes caught Surit’s. “Your instruments are crap at showing chaotic space. Let me do the reader thing.”

Surit looked down at him. Tennal had an insistent grin and a glint in his eye, as if he’d forgotten that whatever he’d done yesterday had wrung him out into a wet gray rag. A shiver went down Surit’s shoulder blades. He’d tried to follow the current of Tennal’s mind and guide it back toward his body, and instead he had found himself caught in a riptide. Tennal had welcomed him, pulled him in, as if he’d expected Surit would follow him out to the universe. As if Tennal had instinctively wanted something from him. And Surit’s first instinct hadn’t been to pull back and protect himself from danger—it had been to fling himself forward and sink into Tennal’s mind. He’d only just stopped himself in time.

Yet he had to let Tennal practice; navigating was what readers did. This was exactly what the mothership’s pilots would want from him. “Later. Wait until we have something to retrieve. And Private Halkana—when you do, be careful.”

“Care is half my name,” Tennal said. “Don’t speculate on the other half.”

“I mean it. Don’t go far.”