“In which case,” I said, “we ought to send the message back to Earth and ask whether anyone can vouch for Mr. Lazlo.”

“We could do that,” Paul said, “but no matter what we hear back, we should stick to the original mission. If we’d wanted to just cannonball into the planet, there wouldn’t be any need for a human crew and all this lovely life support.” He held up a forkful of mushroom. “We could’ve just put an autonomous AI pilot on the iceberg and set it loose. But we are on board, and in charge, and we’ll do what we’re supposed to do.”

He looked around the table. “So I second Carmen’s idea—send the message back and see what the reaction is. But continue on regardless. Is everyone in favor of that?”

People nodded and shrugged. Moonboy said, “It’s not as if they could do anything to us, right? I mean, there’s no way they could set up another starship and have it overtake us before we got to Wolf 25.”

“No,” Paul said, “even if they had an identical iceberg in place, and all the people and resources. They couldn’t catch up with us. We’re already going two-tenths the speed of light.”

“They couldn’t catch us with a starship and crew,” Namir said. “But they could catch us with a probe. A bomb.”

“Always Mr. Sunshine,” his wife said.

Chapter 12 - MEDICAL HISTORY

12

MEDICAL HISTORY

1 September 2088

So Elza thinks Moonboy is a little crazy. Maybe more than a little. He’d been acting more odd than usual for a couple of weeks, I saw in retrospect, but it hadn’t made a big impression. He’d been moody as long as we’d known him; so now he was a little moodier, withdrawn.

I’m somewhat snoopy, but then that is what I’m paid to do. So when Elza said she was going down to the kitchen for a snack and set down her notebook without turning it off, I did what was natural for me and leaned over to take a look.

It was Moonboy’s medical file, open to a confidential psychological evaluation, eighteen years ago. It was in a folder labeled “Aptitude for long-term assignment, Mars Base.”

The box the psychiatrist had checked said “marginally acceptable,” with a scrawled “see attached” alongside. I tapped on it, and the document was fascinating. Disturbing.

Moonboy had had inpatient psychiatric treatment, on Earth, for assault and claustrophobia. When he was eleven, a stepfather had gotten angry with him for crying and taped his mouth shut, then bound his arms and legs in tape, too, and pushed him into a dark closet for punishment. He choked on vomit and died, but was revived on the way to the hospital. He never saw the stepfather again, but the damage was done.

“Pretty interesting?” I hadn’t heard Elza come back.

“I’m sorry. Compromising professional ethics.”