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.

On a cool spring morning, the relief ship is first sighted, and the company explodes into glee. This means resupply, security until at least the summer, new faces, news- a hundred things that make them feel like they're not alone in the world, the only living humans on the globe.

It also means that some of their number will be leaving.

Violet, for one. Ibrahim has done right by her, and they've privately exchanged vows, even if nobody back in Civilisation will know that. She'll wait for him in Christchurch, and has left detailed copies of her notes that someone (probably not him) will carry on her work.

Next, Aodhán (left, standing) and Cornelia (right, blue). Less specialised but no less of a loss. Aodhán began to crumble after the death of his closest friend in the outbreak, and is being given the grace of being invalided out, and Cornelia has been ill on and off for months. She was a gamble to begin with, aboard with some smoothing of the way by her brother.