She nearly smiled, too; it felt good to joke again, to pretend at normalcy. Fulbreech, looking at her almost-smile, said, “You couldn’t have come just to talk to me. Or could you?”

“I did want to thank you,” Park told him, trying not to rush the words, so that he knew she meant them. “For last night. And to tell you something else that we didn’t have time for—”

“I love you, too, Park.”

“—Wick told me,” she finished, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “About the Fold. I know what you know.”

She watched a shadow pass over Fulbreech’s eyes; wordlessly, he went to the door of his workspace and palmed it shut. He couldn’t know the futility of the action. “Wick told you?” he asked then, turning. “About all of it?”

“He told me enough,” Park replied. “About why we’re really here, about what you’re studying. The . . . quantum effects. And how the conscripted couldn’t tell anyone. Well—you told me that last part. But he told me the rest of it. The gist.”

“I see,” Fulbreech said. He coughed into his shoulder. “Then—you know pretty much everything, I suppose. So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Have you found any plant life out there?” Park asked. “Any fungi? You don’t have to tell me any details: just confirm or deny.”

Spores, she was thinking. Maybe the side effect of some alien plant. If they’d brought it aboard the ship, it could have contaminated the air, affecting some of the crewmembers. Unbalancing the chemicals in their brains. Maybe it disturbed their sleep cycles, or emitted hallucinogens. But Fulbreech was shaking his head.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said, “but it’s all ice out there. If there’s any possibility for plant life to grow, we haven’t found it, and probably won’t for a long time.”

Damn, Park thought. “What about ice samples? Or air canisters?”

“Why are you asking about all of this?” Fulbreech asked in turn. He moved away from the door and took a closer look at her. Instinctively, Park took a step back. “Because you think some material is causing Hunter to sleepwalk?”

“We have to examine all possibilities,” she said, “when dealing with alien worlds. I’m just going through the process of elimination.”

“You don’t think her having too much coffee is a more probable cause? Or doing drugs? Maybe sharing them with Holt and Ma, to relieve stress, and it having a bad effect on all three of them?”

“What about Keller?” Park challenged. “Or Reimi?”

Fulbreech shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s the answer, Park, just something like it.”