Her friend put a hand to her chest in feigned shock. “He’s a fuelie, Cass. I’m just interested in his job, is all. Though if he wants to show me any of his equipment , I can’t say I’ll stop him.” She winked and sashayed toward the seat next to Dave.
Cass found herself suddenly alone with Jun, who cradled his cup of champagne in the palm of his hand like it was a Fabergé egg. She turned to look at him, thinking that the little astrophysicist couldn’t be more of a stereotype. With the top of his head barely coming up as high as her chin, she had to look down to speak to him, which meant she got a bird’s-eye view. He was thin to the point of transparency, with a white polo shirt tucked into creased, unbelted department store jeans that, as small as they were, were still too big to keep his waist from swimming in them. The ensemble ended in a pair of tatty Keds sneakers, worn by elementary school kids everywhere.
“This is fun,” she said, thinking to start out simple.
Jun smiled and nodded, said nothing, and the conversation landed with a thump. When nothing else was forthcoming, she pivoted back to look out at the galley.
The sounds of the party swelled around them, but never strongly enough to pull them in, and they stood shoulder to shoulder in silence for more than a minute. Cass groped furiously for a topic, but the harder she tried, the blanker her mind became.
She finally cleared her throat and tried again. “I know you’re with the astrophysics department, but I’m not familiar with what you actually do here, Jun.”
“Observational cosmology,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with the knuckle of his thumb. His voice was soft and difficult to hear over the party noise.
“That’s great.” Cass smiled. “What is that?”
“I measure the cosmic background radiation,” he said. When he saw that didn’t help, he said, “The Big Bang.”
“Oh.” She took a slug from her cup and grimaced. The champagne was dry to the point of sour. “Which lab do you work in?”
“COBRA,” he said.
“The microwave telescope?”
“Yes.”
Cass finally nodded in understanding—not about his work, but at least she knew where he was going to spend his days. COBRA, the Cosmic Background Radiation Array, was one of the few outlying buildings that would be staffed throughout the winter. The astronomers who worked at COBRA slept and ate at the Shackleton station, but would spend most of their time alone in the blocky, two-story lab. COBRA was just a hundred meters away from the main base, but in a dark Antarctic winter, it would seem like another planet.
She gave a little shudder. Personal time was important, but there was no way she could spend the lion’s share of the winter stuck in an otherwise empty building, staring at a computer monitor.
“There is only darkness in the winter,” Jun said. “No light means less solar radiation to interfere with the readings.”
“I guess that’s why the lab is in the Dark Sector,” she said, more as a joke than anything.
Jun smiled. “Yes! That is exactly why.”
Mistaking her quip as a wish to know more, Jun embarked on a complicated explanation of the age of the universe in terms so ridiculously large and abstract that the whole thing had the whiff of a joke, then went on to describe those terms with words that sounded as if they’d been plucked from a Dr. Seuss story. Cass didn’t consider herself an intellectual lightweight, but her brain tended toward the concrete and real, not the theoretical, and, despite Jun’s enthusiasm, she found her attention floating away. Her eyes roamed over the crowd.
Pete, tired of cutting the cake into dozens of pieces, had given up and now people were simply grabbing plastic forks and shoveling chunks of cake into their mouths straight from the pan. Biddi already had her arm woven through Dave’s and he looked down at her with a quirked eyebrow and a knowing expression. Cheeks were rosy and easily half the noise in the room came from laughter, although it had a shrill note, as if, upon finding something to laugh about, people wanted to make sure their response was noted and they were having fun . It flavored the celebration with a taste of desperation.
Cass felt a light touch on her arm and turned to Jun. His face was serious. “I’m very sorry.”
“About what, Jun?”
“About Dr. Larkin. You were in the party that found her?”
She felt as though she’d been kneed in the stomach. “I . . . I was, yes. It was sad.”
“Does anyone know what happened?”
“I don’t know . . .” Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Hanratty at the far end of the galley. “Actually, there’s someone who might. Will you excuse me for a second?”