14

 

 

WE GET HIM INSIDE. It’s harder in real gravity; he’s heavier than I expected. Roderick and Mikk want to remove the suit, to see what really happened, but I talk them out of it.

We’ll do it on the Business.

We fill out logs, download information, remove equipment—all the things you’re supposed to do at the end of a dive. We do it without speaking, and while trying not to look at the body on the floor behind us.

Then Roderick goes to the cockpit. Mikk sinks down beside Karl, as if staring at him would bring him back. I take out the device. It’s still on. The lights run along the bottom in the same pattern they did when I picked it up from Mikk.

I shut it off again, then turn it on. I can feel no vibration, nothing to signal that the thing is working. Nothing changes around me—no visual shift, no audio hallucination.

Nothing.

Just like before.

I should have seen that as a warning.

But I didn’t.

It was my fault for trusting technology I didn’t understand.