Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            Plus, she’s a generous soul. She’d want her friend and her cousin-or-something to get laid.

            “Did you get randomly assigned to the Attitude and Position Estimation team?” I ask him when we get to the last few lines of code.

            “No.” He lets out a small laugh. His profile is a work of near perfection, even with the broken nose. “Clawed my way there, actually.”

            “Oh?”

            He saves and closes our work with a few rapid keystrokes. “For Curiosity, I joined the team pretty late into the development stage, and I mostly focused on launch.”

            “Did you like it?”

            “A lot.” He angles his chair to face me. Our knees, elbows, shoulders have been brushing so much, the closeness feels familiar by now. So does the liquid warmth under my belly button. “But after that I began working on Perseverance and I asked for a change. Something actually related to the rover being on Mars as opposed to three hours in Cape Canaveral.”

            “So they put you on A & PE?”

            “First, I joined the NASA expedition to Norway’s Mars Analog site.”

            I inhale audibly. “AMASE?” The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE, for friends) is what happens when a bunch of nerds travel to Norway, in the Bockfjorden area of Svalbard. One might think that the North Pole has nothing to do with space, but because of all the volcanic activity and glaciers it’s actually the place on Earth most similar to Mars. It even has one-of-a-kind carbonate spherules that are almost identical to the ones we found on meteorites of Martian origin. NASA researchers like to use it as a location to test the functionality of equipment they plan to send on space exploration missions, collect samples, examine fun science questions that can prepare astronauts for future space missions.

            I want to be part of it so bad, a shiver runs down my spine.

            “Yup. When I came back I asked for an A & PE placement, which apparently everyone wanted. To the point that the mission leader sent out a NASA-wide email asking whether we thought we’d get double pay and free beer.”

            “Did you?”

            I laugh at the look he gives me. He is just so hilariously, deliciously teasable. “Why did everyone want to be part of that team, anyway?”

            He shrugs. “I’m not sure why everyone else did. I assume because it’s challenging. Lots of high-risk, high-reward projects. But for me it was . . .” He glances out of the window, at a maple tree in the JPL campus. Actually, no: I think he might be looking up. At the sky. “It just felt like . . .” He trails off, as though not sure how to continue.

            “Like it was as close as possible to actually being on Mars? With the rover?” I ask him.

            His eyes return to me. “Yeah.” He seems surprised. Like I managed to put something elusive into words. “Yeah, that’s exactly it.”

            I nod, because I get it. The idea of helping build something that will explore Mars, the idea of being able to control where it goes and what it does . . . that does it for me, too.

            Ian and I study each other for a few seconds in silence, both of us smiling faintly. Long enough for the idea that’s been bouncing in my head to solidify once and for all.

            Yeah. I’m gonna go for it. Sorry, Mara. I like your cousin-or-something a little too much to pass this up.

            “Okay, I do have a career question for you. To save our informational interview appearances.”

            “Shoot.”

            “So, I graduate with my Ph.D. Which should take me about four more years.”

            “That’s a while,” he says, his tone a bit unreadable.

            Yes, it feels like forever. “Not that long. So, I graduate, and I decide that I want to work at NASA and not for some weirdo billionaire who treats space exploration like it’s his own homemade penis-enlargement remedy.”

            Ian’s nod is pained. “Wise.”

            “What would make me look like a strong candidate? What does a great application package look like?”