“What now?” Alison said. She looked as flat as he felt, he thought. Turned out coming back down to Earth was a bit of an anticlimax, even if it was a hugely welcome one.

“I have to call Josie,” he said automatically.

They stood there, Alison nodding reasonably.

“I should probably call Derek. Later. After a drink, maybe. Or a week. Where the hell are we, Spiker?”

He wanted to pick her up and carry her off, was what he wanted to do. He was absolutely bursting with the need to tell her…just how much he loved her. The one time they’d got together, for real—that was the true him. That was the man who’d finally shaken off the shackles and followed his heart. Instead of words, which would just have stuck in his throat, he reached for her, and they held each other.

“I’ll call Josie,” he said finally. “I’ll go home and be a responsible human being. But then we need to talk about us. You, me and Josie need to have that talk.” All beautifully worded to avoid committing to any particular proposals.

Alison nodded, squeezed his arm and then let go. “You do that,” she agreed, as respectable as ever. But they were both smiling, somewhat shyly. And as she was turning to go, she said, “You know how much polyamory there is in Josie’s books, right? Just saying.”

II

Stig looked utterly sour when he came out to greet them, but Lee reckoned she knew him by now. There was a glint in his eye and a certain tilt to his head when he scowled off into the distance which said he was pleased to see them.

He was still moving gingerly, and his abdomen was bulked out with what was probably more complicated than a bandage. They hadn’t had the full Nissa medical kit with them on board Cam, so he was healing slower than he might, but he was already back on his feet. He wouldn’t be on any active expeditions for a while, but would instead be tutoring new recruits for the interdimensional-explorer business.

“Still want to do this, do you?” he muttered, as though they were either mad or had been stringing him along.

“Absolutely.” Lee clasped Mal’s hand. They were robed like natives, hoods up against the drizzling rain. It hadn’t let up since they’d arrived.

“Not going to be easy,” Stig went on mournfully, rivulets finding paths down the lines of his face. “Worlds out there, they won’t ever have seen a hominid before. Worlds been at war for a thousand years, worlds that’re nothing but ruins. All kinds of bad stuff.”

“Don’t oversell it, there,” Mal said. “Anyone’d think you didn’t want to see the back of us.”