“Sure looks big from all the way down here,” Wash said. With a frown, he added, “And kinda greenish. What’s that all about?”

“That’s just the tylinn gas in the air, hon’,” Zoë said, following her husband’s look up to the open sky. “Just means there’s a little less oxygen to breathe here, but we’ll be fine. Personally, I’m just glad there’s not enough tylinn on this rock for it to have gotten into the water. First year of the war, the captain and I waded through a river on Demeter, and I swear to God it took me three weeks to scrub that green tone from my skin.”

Wash chose to ignore the tale of warrior bonding, and opted instead to focus on the interesting part. “Ooooh,” he grinned, putting his arms around his wife’s waist, “scrubbing! Baths! Bring on the gasses!”

Zoë patted his arm where it lay around her middle. “Well, I’m all for it. Are you ready? Have you finally packed?”

He winced. “Honey, we talked about this, didn’t we? I really want to hang around at the dry-dock for a while, make sure that these people know what they’re doing, see if they need pointing out where my baby’s hurting. My *other* baby,” he quickly reassured Zoë.

“We did talk about it,” she agreed, and Wash could hear the exasperation growing in her voice, “and we came to the conclusion that you and Kaylee would just get in the way of a well-oiled team of professionals if you tried to help out.”

“This isn’t helping out!” Wash objected, then thought about it. “Well, OK, it’s helping out—but not getting in the way! I just need to keep an eye on things, just for maybe a couple of days.”

Zoë untangled herself from Wash’s arms, and they walked back up the ramp, into the ship. “Aren’t you that guy that’s always pressuring his wife to take more vacations?”

“Oh, I definitively am,” Wash agreed. “But we’ve got four-to-six weeks for the vacationing. Time aplenty for you to get extremely bored and itching to get back to the exciting and potentially life-threatening space jobs. You need the running and the shooting; I need this. Honestly, I don’t