“You okay, Doc?” We were out of the exosphere, but I thought he was looking a little pale.
“I’m fine.”
Before I could challenge him on that, Hank finished what he was doing, handed off his coordinates to Ed, then turned to me and said, “Contact Terra for me, would you, Nick?” It was easy to see he was excited about the prospect of leaving this last orbit and heading home.
“Sure thing, Hank.”
“We’re coming up on a magnetic field,” Ed announced abruptly. Mars had magnetic fields, but they were erratic and transitory. “I’d swear this wasn’t anywhere around when we first—”
I jerked around to stare at him. He was trying to disguise his tension, but I hadn’t roomed with the guy for six months without getting to know him. He was tense, all right.
“I don’t know if I can avoid it.” His finger
