Much as he tries, Kodiak can’t hide that he’s laughing at me.Laughing at me.“Kodiak, tell me you arenotdoing what I think you’re doing right now.”
Now the laughs come out full force. He pounds the table. Tears stream down his face, enough to drip downthat dimple. He swipes his cheeks with his palms, takes long exaggerated breaths.
“Are you quite done?” I ask.
“It’s just that your voice got so small and scratchy toward the end.”
“Screw you, Kodiak Celius.”
“It was adorable. And you’re right. We’re all we have.”
“Iamright. I don’t need you to tell me that!”
“I know. This is what it looks like when I agree with you.”
“ApparentlyI’ve neverwitnessedthat before!”
We stare at each other as our breathing slows.
Kodiak busies himself with the important task of straightening his sleeves. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t prefer Minerva to you.”
My eyebrow cocks as I watch him not look at me. Kodiak presses up from the table and stands. “Shall we go?” he says.
“Could you say that part about Minerva again?” I ask, testing out the tender back side of my hand.
He reaches a hand under his collar to rub an itch on his shoulder. “Really?”
I nod, bottom lip pinned between my teeth. “About how you’d choose me over her?”
He sighs. “You, Ambrose. I prefer to be with you.”
I give a little shimmy-shiver as I stand. “Thank you. Youdon’t know how much joy that just gave to my petty and competitive Cusk soul.”
“I’ve created a monster,” Kodiak says.
“Where are we headed?” I chirp.
“Back to your quarters. I want to see this dead body for myself.”
“Really?” I ask. “You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.”
“Oh!”
“So, about your sister’s SOS signal,” Kodiak says, waiting for me to catch up before climbing the rungs to the ship’s zero-g center.
“Yes,” I say. “What’s weird about it? Or at least, weirder than before?”
“It doesn’t exist.”
I stop on the ladder. While Kodiak’s been speaking, my mind started Minerva’s last distress reel playing in my head, desperately calling for help. “What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t exist’?”
“I can’t detect it on the antenna we rigged up.” He looks at me closely. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m just confused, is what I am. It must have been manually turned off... which means Minerva is alive but not in distress anymore?”
“I’m not sure she waseverthere,” Kodiak says, holding his hands out in a pose of surrender when he sees my scowl.“Follow with me here: the distress signal was picked up on Earth across all the noise of our solar system. The antenna I’ve rigged is strong enough to pick up transmissions from Earth that were never intended to leave orbit. The Titan camp is even closer to us now. In the vacuum of space, its transmission should be absolutely deafening. But there’s... nothing. That frequency is just static. Unless it’s the OS relaying the distress signal to us.Thenapparently everything comes through crystal clear.”
