Foolish of her to assume anything of him, she told herself as Fulbreech got up to claim his lunch. Foolish of her to assume he’d tell a non-conscripted person anything about the new planet. It was ISF’s mandate, after all.

But—was it that foolish? He’d offered to take her outside just yesterday, hadn’t he? He’d stolen a suit and was willing to outright flout the rules. For her sake, he’d claimed. Now he wouldn’t even talk about it? What had changed?

She picked at her food. Was it because they’d been caught? Had Fulbreech been scared off by Sagara? Was he now rethinking the consequences of helping Park—or rethinking his attempt to start a dalliance with her?

Why bother at all, then? she thought with a growing measure of annoyance. Why bother establishing that level of confidence, of intimacy, only to withdraw it again the next day? How was she supposed to know where the line was?

Her frustration mounted as she watched him collect his tray of food from Megex, making light conversation with their physicist, Eric Holt. It wasn’t all Fulbreech’s fault, she knew. Mostly this was about her own vexations with ISF, and the mission they’d assigned her to. Why couldn’t she see Eos, or know anything about it? Why were they so concerned with keeping information about the planet from the data companies, when colonists would be landing here soon enough?

Park dropped her fork down onto her barely-touched tray, her appetite now completely gone. Maybe there was something wrong with the whole thing. Something they weren’t telling her, something that would deflate hopes back on Earth. Their researchers had declared beforehand that conditions on the planet were suitable for human life. There was the great rush to claim it, to begin the process of reconnaissance, exploration, settlement. Things on Earth were deteriorating fast. The ISF had to hustle, establishing outposts farther and farther out, trying to mitigate strain on the existing colonies for when the great diaspora came. Eos was the farthest from home that mankind had ever ventured.

But it’d all be for naught if something was wrong with the place.

They’d fast-tracked the prep time for this mission, she knew. There was a truncated training period on Earth, a scramble to assemble a crew. An anemic four weeks in a simulation dome in Antarctica. Within a matter of weeks the Deucalion was launched and propelled towards the farthest arms of the next galaxy, speeding towards a planet that awaited it like a pale-gleaming lighthouse, hanging in space.

They’d wanted it—and badly—and now perhaps they were hiding that the great rush had been pointless. But the accelerated timespan didn’t account for the other oddities about the mission. There was all the secrecy, the missing procedures. The need for a disproportionate amount of combat specialists—and a robotic crew. No one ever quite gave her a straight answer about anything. Rushing didn’t account for that, did it?