“We weren’t careless,” Dr. Summers repeated. “We took every precaution we knew to take. We knew better than to trust that the people of Mournful Evening Song were benevolent. So many humans before the Collapse were violent, selfish creatures. We searched for even the tiniest sign of viral or bacterial contamination—human or alien—before we took the probe on board. We didn’t find anything. We began to believe they had not meant us harm. We learned everything we could at every step before we proceeded to the next one. We didn’t ignore Gregory’s theories, no matter what he says.”

My heart skipped at the sound of my father’s name.

“I know he’s angry with us. But he didn’t trust us—worse, he didn’t think we were clever enough to follow where he led. Hubris was always his flaw. He should have let us all work together. We did listen to him, but we didn’t have all the information.”

Dr. Summers didn’t sound angry with him, or frightened of him. She didn’t sound as though she blamed him at all. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Gregory, I wish you had, for once in your bloody life, risked a share of the glory. I wish you had trusted us.” Here Dr. Summers looked directly at the camera. Her eyes, a deep soft brown, filled with tears. “Do you remember that week we spent diving at Piopiotahi when we were students? You found the wreck of that old twenty-first-century rocket. It was marked on the wrong spot on the maps, so you thought it was an unknown wreck, one nobody had found yet? You were so disappointed when we realized it was the same one others had explored a thousand times before.”

Dr. Summers stopped again to clear her throat. She looked to her right and extended her arm. She reached beyond the range of the camera, but I knew she was touching the probe.