Richard doesn’t seem to register the significance of receiving an answer. It was an honest question, in that it is the kind of thing a person asks when they’re high-stepping awkwardly around the disembodied components of a chicken coop.

It might occur to him later.

For now, he is well and truly occupied with getting himself into the middle of the base without treading on an exposed nail or cracking any wood.

“I’ve never kept an animal.”

Or built anything sturdier than a tent. This goes without saying. So much so that his next question is inevitable.

“Aren’t there others who live here?”

Where are they and why aren’t they helping?