"Don't think I'm being all soft-hearted and letting you get away with it. I am gonna have to tell the rest of the staff what you did. They'll probably watch you a little closer, you'll probably lose a little freedom, but that's something you probably expected too."

He went silent for a moment, pondering how best to answer the question, then shrugged. "Look, I could give you a big speech about what this bike means to me, how I proposed to my fiancee on it, how it's the only thing I have from my home... but it'd be lying. It does mean a lot to me, but not so much that I'd spend the rest of my days miserable without it. I lost it once, I could lose it again."

Snow looked over his shoulder at the pair of them. "I was afraid you were going to get hurt. You flew it really well, but you were lucky, too. There's all sorts of things like air currents up there. If you hit a gust of wind, or stalled the engine..." He let that hang a moment, let them savor the implications, then said in utter sincerity, "I was worried. I was afraid you'd be hurt, or killed."

If they chose not to believe that, for whatever reason, then they were disbelieving the truth.