Fulbreech palmed open the hatch to the escape pod and, looking around, quickly shut it behind them. Park had to give herself a sweaty moment to let her eyes adjust to the gloom inside—the pod, of course, was inactive—but soon she was able to make out another shape, lying there in front of her in the dark. A body, Park realized. She nearly screamed.

“It’s exo-armor,” Fulbreech whispered conspiratorially, right in her ear. “I snuck it in here a few hours ago. It’s Natalya’s, but she won’t miss it until the expedition team goes out again tomorrow.”

Park couldn’t make sense of it. She stared at the bench with the stiff exo-armor lying on it like a corpse, inert. “What would we need it for?”

Fulbreech bent to pick up the gold-visored helmet that came with the suit. “Well,” he said slowly, “I was thinking. You’re officially barred from going outside—from even seeing Eos, since you’re not part of the expedition crew. But I hardly think that’s fair. If it were me, it’d drive me crazy to land on a virgin planet, but never get to see it. To never touch it—smell it, walk on it . . .” He stared at her. “Don’t you think it’s a little silly of ISF to expect you to be fine with all that?”

There was suddenly a kind of tightness in her throat. “So you’re saying . . .”

“There’s a hatch down in the floor,” Fulbreech explained. “This pod’s terminal is—let’s say tangentially connected to the ship’s system. If I play my cards right, I think I could get it to open the hatch without alerting the Deucalion.” At her stare he gave a kind of grin and a shrug. “I’m good with computers. I have to be, working with METIS to chart everything.”

METIS was the ship’s governing AI, a heuristic brain tasked with managing the Deucalion’s massive nexus of systems, from its navigation to communications to surveillance. It was what their neural inlays were plugged into. “I thought only Reimi had the authorization to manipulate METIS’s protocols,” Park said. She didn’t add: She’s also the only one with the know-how to make sure all of our brains aren’t fried.

Fulbreech shrugged again. “It would be kind of stupid to have only one tech-savvy crewmember on board,” he said lightly. “I have a degree, if you want to look at my credentials. A minor one, mind, way at the bottom of the list—but my point is, I generally know what I’m doing.”