And great sorrow.
This is not the kind of place anyone can gaurantee a return from. And sometimes, it becomes startlingly easy to forget that- until something throws it into sharp relief.
The trip itself is successful. Valuable data is gathered, and nobody is injured, at least not drastically. The sickness that takes Robert McCoy upon his return is a matter of poor luck, nothing more.
Were they elsewhere in the world, he would have had a chance. Not much of one- there is a surgery, successful in the past few years, when carried out in an operating room with instruments as clean as technology can make them.
Not when carried out here. But when your captain tells you to try, even though there is near-nill chance of success... you do.
And on the last day of his life, just as on the first, Robert McCoy falls asleep in his mother's arms.
