Ivan continued after a moment. “My wife, she’s an actuary. She can do the numbers. We would be falling farther behind every year. Further in debt, fewer assets, never catching up. The mining thing, it was short-term pain, but it could have reversed the flow. We could break even, then even get slightly ahead. Better pay, the ship absorbs my living expenses for most of the year, the guild takes care of life insurance… In the worst case, paying off the debt for the training and the share might have taken the rest of my life and then some, but any strike at all would be a bonus.”

He gave Dr. Kemp a brief, rueful smile. “She even had the chances of that worked out. Actuary, right? It was a reasonable risk. Except now, I may die up here without ever touching her or my kids again.”

The two men were silent for a few moments. It was a common topic of conversation, as predictable and well-worn as politics or the ongoing cold war with the SSE.

“Am I news all over Earth?” Ivan asked.

“I’m not privy to everything that goes on, Ivan, but I don’t think it’s been made public. The captain would have played everything very close to the vest in order to not screw up the bid process. The ICDC doesn’t want a panic over the possibility of extraterrestrial contact, or even just a lot of armchair generals telling them how it should be handled. Not that you’re actually an alien in the normal sense of the word.”

“I do feel something, though. Something there. It started this morning, when I woke up. I think it’s because my conversion is complete.”

Kemp’s eyes widened. He tried to remain as outwardly calm as possible. “How do you mean?”

Ivan sighed. “I can’t put my finger on it, quite yet. It might even be just my overheated imagination. But I feel as if there’s something in the background. It’s like when you can’t quite remember a word, or someone’s name, or what you did last Wednesday. Except I’m having that just-out-of-reach feeling about things that I don’t know anything about. It’s like tip-of-the-tongue times ten.” He scrubbed his face with his hands, an act that created a strange scritch sound. “And a couple of times, I’ve gotten a picture of a bear cub. Why a bear? And why a little one?”

“If what you’re saying is true, Ivan, that may just be something poking the neurons that contain your concept of bear. Like when surgeons are mapping a patient’s brain using electrodes.”

“I’ll have to ask it if it can find the coffee neuron, then.” Ivan smiled briefly, but he seemed to have run down, for the moment. The resigned expression on his face reminded Kemp of patients who had just come to terms with a terminal diagnosis.