Why should I? Park thought, sullen. Fulbreech saw it in her face and laughed; she felt an uncomfortable swooping sensation, as if she’d missed a step climbing the stairs in the dark. She looked away and said, “I don’t know why it matters to you. Whether I trust anyone or not.”

She really was angry with him, she realized. He expected her to share her thoughts with him, to open herself up—and yet he had shown he wouldn’t do the same. Of course she mistrusted that. But then the sense of wellbeing planted by the MAD picked up on her negative feeling and swarmed on it. Dampened it. She shifted in her seat and suddenly noticed that a light on her desk console was blinking.

“Have you ever been to the New York biodome?” Fulbreech asked after a moment. She noticed that he didn’t answer her question. But had she even really asked one? And was it something she wanted an outright answer to?

“No, I haven’t.” Park shuddered, thinking of the claustrophobia, the smog forming dirty gray stains against the biofilm as it curved over the city. “Well, once. For the flight to Baikonur. I didn’t leave the airport.”

“Where are you from originally?”

“I grew up in the New Diego biodome.” No harm in disclosing that.

“Ah,” Fulbreech said, a little lamely. “I was born in the New Chicago dome—but we moved to Mars when I was a teen. After that, Cambien, Elysium, Halla. I was a ship-brat.”

Of course she knew all this: it was in his files. She even knew that his great-great-grandfather had been a famous NASA astronaut, and his uncle, Isaac Fulbreech, was one of the engineers who’d settled Phobos. His brother was a lead ship-builder for the fleet there, too. ISF ran in his blood. But she said, just to be polite: “I hear that Halla is nice.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Is your family there now?”

He paused. “My parents are. My brother and his wife still live on Phobos. They just had their first baby. A boy.”

Park looked at him. She read no lie in his countenance, but there had been that barest flicker of hesitation. “Congratulations,” was all she could think to say.

Fulbreech made a visible effort to change the subject, turning toward her. “Your story is a different one,” he said. “This is your first trip into space, isn’t it?”

Now where had he heard that from? She supposed he was more observant than she gave him credit for; she’d been careful not to tell anybody that explicitly, wary of coming off as inexperienced. Easy to undermine. She thought about how Sagara had found the anti-emesis tabs. “I enjoy space travel,” Park said, levelly.

Fulbreech smiled. “You’re not much for talking, are you? Not when it’s about stuff you’re not interested in.”

“I talk.”