Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,30

of course, but that was the subtext.”

Jones looked confused by this. “Doesn’t he know already? Isn’t that why he was out there? If they had no clue what was on that satellite, why would they hack the satellite and bring it down? Why would they risk their lives to come after it? That makes no sense at all. Nah, man. He’s playing you.”

“Or maybe they truly don’t know.” Thor was just thinking aloud now. “Maybe they were tasked with retrieving it but weren’t told what it was.”

“That sounds like the Kremlin we all know and love,” Segal joked.

“You know who else asked a lot of questions about you, Viking?” Jones chuckled. “Dr. Park wanted to know if you were single, whether you had kids, where you lived between missions, what it’s like to work with you. She’s got a thing for you.”

Thor tried to ignore the part of him that liked this news. “You’re imagining things. She’s just going through a hard time right now.”

“Hard time or not, she likes you.”

Segal changed the subject. “Any word from Tower about when we fly out?”

Thor shared what Tower had told him. “Make yourselves at home because we could be here for a while. Worst-case scenario, we won’t be leaving till November.”

Segal narrowed his eyes. “You like that idea, don’t you?”

Jones took another bite of spaghetti. “There is something beautiful about it. I’ve never seen a sky so full of stars.”

They finished eating and carried their trays back to the dish pit.

“I’ll catch up with you both later.” Thor started toward the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Segal called after him.

“I want to check on Dr. Park and see how she’s doing.”

9

Samantha stood in the center of Patty’s room, tears filling her eyes. “How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to say goodbye to you?”

Patty had strung fairy lights around the room to brighten things up, her walls covered with images from space. The Horsehead Nebula. The Whirlpool Galaxy. The Milky Way. The Milky Way photo had a pin poked into it in the Earth’s approximate location with a tag that read, “You are here.”

Academic journals. A laptop. Cell phone and computer chargers. An unopened bottle of Tylenol Patty had just bought from the store to help with cramps. Lip balm. An empty bottle of wine beside the bed—perhaps Patty’s last bottle of wine.

Artifacts of a life.

“You should still be here, Patty.” Samantha drew in a breath, exhaled.

She’d brought a couple of empty cardboard boxes up from the LO Arch—the Logistics Arch. Most of this would go home to Patty’s family, but some would go to the shrine in the ice tunnels, while the rest ended up on the Skua table, where people swapped and scavenged gear. Patty would want that.

Samantha started on the drawers, tucking Patty’s panties and bras into a box and setting her boots, socks, and long underwear aside for Skua, along with the rest of her cold-weather gear. Next, she packed the contents of Patty’s small desk—pens, sticky notes, earbuds, lip balm.

There, in one of the drawers, she found it.

Patty’s journal.

Samantha ran her fingers over the leather cover with its engraving of the Copernican model of the solar system. Patty had kept a journal for as long as Samantha had known her, taking time every night to write in it before going to bed. During grad school, she sometimes read what she’d written to Samantha—limericks about annoying professors, thoughts about her work, accounts of the fun they’d had together. Patty had filled at least twenty journals, all of them placed neatly on her bookshelves in the apartment in Chicago.

Samantha sank to the floor, hugged the journal, unable to hold back her tears, a gaping hole in her chest.

“Samantha?”

Samantha gasped, found Thor standing in the doorway. She got to her feet, set the journal aside, wiped her tears away. “Sorry, I—”

“Hey, Come here.” He drew Samantha into his arms, held her. “It’s okay to cry. Patty was a good friend. Losing her hurts.”

Samantha relaxed into his embrace, some part of her desperate for the comfort he offered, his words bringing a fresh rush of tears. And for a time, they stood there, Samantha weeping, her cheek against his chest.

She drew back. “I got your shirt wet.”

He glanced down. “That’s the closest it’s come to being washed in a while.”

She laughed, reached for a tissue, wiped her eyes. “We do have a laundry room, you know. You get to do one load a week while you’re here.”

“I just