She did feel a warm wash of gratitude towards him. Finally someone who empathized with her, understood her frustration—understood too that she could do a lot more damage, bumbling blindly around in the dark, than she could with full knowledge of what was going on. But she couldn’t help but say, a little anxiously: “If Holt knew all about this anomaly, and Boone still shot him for potentially compromising the data . . .”

Wick waved his hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m commander. And I say we need to trust you. They won’t do anything out of line.”

But she couldn’t tamp down that little bubble of fear. She thought of the hostility that Boone had towards her, the suspicion Sagara held that she had something to do with the nightmares. Then, remembering the nightmares, she said: “This anomaly. Is there any way it could be—affecting people?”

Wick looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

Park clasped her hands together, thinking. “Holt showed signs of disturbance only on the day we landed. Not before. Ma, too. So could the Fold be radioactive? Toxic in some way? Did either of them have contact with it?”

Wick was shaking his head, troubled. Somehow the light in the room had shifted, throwing his eyes and mouth into shadow. He said, “No, neither of them were ever allowed near it. Ma didn’t even know about it, being non-conscripted. Holt did, but he never had contact with it. We wouldn’t let him go out until Natalya and the others had secured the area.”

“Still,” Park persisted. “You said you know next to nothing about it. Could it alter anyone’s mental state?”

“The anomaly doesn’t work like that,” Wick told her flatly. “It affects things, not people. Matter and space, not . . . dreams. It can’t influence anyone the way you’re thinking, no more than a black hole or the sun could.”

Only it could, Park thought later as Wick stood and shook her hand—an outdated Earth custom that gave her the brief silvery flash of pleasure and anxiety that came with unexpected bodily contact. People were things just as much as anything else, in their own way. But she had to take him at his word: Wick wouldn’t allow them to stay there if it could potentially harm his crew. They were safe. She was safe. She had to believe that.