“So, no?”

“So, no.”

On the other side of the little campstove, Indigo unfurled himself. I had the odd impression that he had been actually sleeping, instead of closing his eyes and doing whatever passed for sleeping when a Minister expected a knife through the back at any second. He passed one hand over his face, looking very young, then sat up straight, letting his hand drop to his lap and the odd youthfulness vanished.

I sat up too, determined to match my companions’ readiness. “So, how close are we?”

“We’re on the edge of the labs now.” Tamara reached out to the campstove and shut it off; the radiant heat against my arm dimmed. “This is Lab One. The other labs are deeper in.”

“We want to go deeper in,” I said.

“I’m not as familiar with this part of the ship. My team only made it a little further than here, and then only once.” She fussed with the campstove. “This is my last saferoom. We didn’t have enough time after this point to establish another… and we didn’t find any safe places to establish one, either.”

“This is where your team died,” I realized.

“Yes. I haven’t been back here since; I spent the last few months exploring the less dangerous parts of the ship instead. It’s my own damn bad luck that the data’s in here somewhere.”

The ship so far had been pretty dangerous. Exactly how much worse could it get? “How did you survive last time?”

“We tried to set up defenses,” Tamara said. “Traps, deeper in. Didn’t do us much good, but it gave me just enough time to escape. I survived because I ran, Sean. Humanity’s last hope to get this data; I knew I couldn’t die. So I ran away.”

I had mistaken Tamara’s willingness to move forward for indifference. I’d thought maybe she didn’t feel grief. But maybe it was more like the way she’d jumped over the edge of the spiral staircase holding nothing but a rope even though she was afraid of heights, doing what she had to do because it had to be done.

I couldn’t imagine ever going back to Itaka, walking the streets where everyone I’d known had died. I wondered if it was something like that for Lantern-Eyes, to return back here.

“Can we use any of the defenses your team left behind?” Indigo asked.

Tamara shook her head tightly. “They won’t do us any good now. From here on out we have no more safe rooms, no more supplies, no more resources. I have no more maps, just memories.”

“You still know more than we do,” I said.

She acknowledged me with a nod, rustling through her bag for some dry rations, which she passed out to me and Indigo. Moments after she handed Indigo his, he pulled a small bag out of his pocket and tossed it at her.

It landed lightly in her lap. “What’s this?” she asked, picking it up and unsealing the top.