Almost done!
Despite my best efforts, I’m just not cut out to be a spy. Syad probably figured it out a couple of days before he said anything, though. We were doing a survey run through the upper atmosphere for his calibration project (which would also get him enough hours for his pilot’s ticket) when he said, “You don’t think the thing with the Redacted is settled, do you?”
The fuzz was a little different that day. More… fuzzy. I’m sorry, it’s hard to describe how it sounded to me. I must have sounded a little distracted then as I replied, “Nope, Syad. Not that it matters: they’re going away anyway. They’ve got their space-happy maniac, so off they go to Earth. Mission accomplished! Hurray!”
“Sorry. I know he was a friend of yours.” Syad looked at me. “What are they gonna do with him?”
“Well, it’s Earth, so they’ll probably take his mind apart, then put it back together.” I scowled at the screens. We were pretty far away from all the bases at this point, and I didn’t have the same feel for the upper air here. Anybody who tells you that a planetary atmosphere is completely inchoate doesn’t fly in the Tomb Worlds. There’s a sense of finality here, like everything has stopped and it’s never starting up again. “They still think you can cure the space-happy. Hell, maybe they can. Either way, Nur’s never coming back here. Oh, hey, we’re coming up on a node that’d suit you.”