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bottom of some crevasse on Earth forty years ago. But the man with a lucky clover on his bicep is a fucking astronaut . This tat helps me remember which of those men I am.”
    Matt’s intensity was almost scary. “You’re taking your own death a lot better than I did.”
    “Well, for me it’s just theoretical. No one here went to my funeral.”
    I looked down. “Unlike me.”
    “Buck up, mate. You’ve got a whole new life to screw up.”
    I had to grin at that. “Thanks.”

    -o0o-

    I used the remote to move the pointer on the big monitor. “So here’s Anansi crater, the feature that first gave me the clue. You can see how the two halves appear to have been pulled apart by tectonic activity. But Achebe’s too small and cold to be tectonically active. So what’s up?”
    Mari didn’t look up from her omelet. She had barely had a word for me since the day I’d been vived. Tien, too, had been very distant ever since I’d spoiled her solar wind experiment. But the others looked on with varying levels of interest. I’d been keeping to myself for the last week, thrashing out the details on my theory, and they wanted to know what I’d come up with.
    I swallowed, then continued. “I’d like you to note how badly hammered the crater is by later impacts. It looks like it’s a million years old. But when I did a gravitic scan for mascons, I found what I think is the original impact body just a few kilometers below the surface. That, and a seismic ring analysis, lead me to conclude that this crater is less than ten thousand years old. Achebe gets a lot of impacts.”
    My heart, already pounding hard, picked up the pace even further. I’d always been nervous about public speaking, never more so than when introducing a new idea, and in this case I was venturing into entirely new theoretical territory. I put up a slide full of statistics and formulae.
    “We don’t yet know exactly how many megatons of rock and ice land on Achebe every year. But based on Matt’s preliminary orbital analyses of the planetesimal disk, I’ve estimated the average impact frequency and the impacting objects’ mass and velocity.” I switched to the next slide, which showed a graph of estimated temperature overlaid with an annotated cross-section of the planet. “Based on these estimates, the total energy added from infall is between ten to the twenty-first and ten to the twenty-third joules per year.” Another slide crammed with data. “That might be just enough to keep the magma layer below the crust liquid, accounting for the otherwise unexplainable crustal movement.”
    No one said anything. They were all just looking at me.
    This wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. I’d investigated an extremely interesting anomaly and devised a radical new theory to explain it. I’d hoped for acclaim, but had been prepared for an argument. I got... silence.
    I managed a wavery grin. “Any questions?”
    After another interminable pause, Kyra spoke. “That’s an excellent confirmation of Pederson and Wu. But do you have anything new to add?”
    I felt blindsided. “I’m sorry?”
    “Pederson and Wu. From Washington University. They published after... after you died, but surely you did a literature search?”
    “I... I did, yes, of course I did, but it didn’t turn up those names.” I stared from face to face, in hopes that someone would rescue me from this appalling situation. But Tien just looked exasperated, Bobb refused to meet my eyes, and Nuru was slowly shaking her head. I fumbled with the remote, keyed in a search. “Peterson?”
    “Pe d erson,” said Kyra. “With a D as in dog.”
    There it was, right at the top of the first page of results. Dynamic analysis of particulate interaction with prolate spheroids , from the American Journal of Topology . It was dated over a year after my last Earth memory. “This is pure mathematics,” I said. “It doesn’t have any relevant keywords.” No wonder it hadn’t turned up in my