Jack, her husband for ten years, her ex for five. She started by picturing his hair, which he always kept shorter than she liked it, and then she tried to fill in the features one by one: eyes, green and fringed with thick lashes, shadowed by dark eyebrows; nose, a little bent, broken one too many times; mouth, dimples on either side, thin lips, good teeth. She thought about the day they met, the day she married him, the day she left him, trying to account for every minute, every word. She re-created the scenery of their life together: that tiny apartment in Toronto they shared when she was pregnant for the first time, while she was finishing her dissertation and he was teaching particle physics to undergrads, and then the brick loft with big windows they moved to after the miscarriage. He’d been so disappointed when she told him that the baby they’d only just learned about was lost—it was early, only six weeks in, and Sully’d barely had time to settle into the idea. When she felt the cramping she knew it was over, and when she saw the blood soaking through her underwear she was relieved. She cleaned it up, took four ibuprofen tablets, and wondered how to tell Jack. That afternoon she cradled his head in her lap and tried to feel the sadness she could see written on his face. But she couldn’t feel anything. The light had faded from the big windows in the living room, but still they sat, the curtains undrawn, the glass darkening to tall black eyes—looking in, or looking out, she couldn’t tell.
Their wedding a year later, at city hall, with the gray tiled corridors and the dark polished wood benches that lined them, other couples sitting and waiting their turn. The birth of Lucy, four years after that, in a minty green hospital room. The unquenchable joy on Jack’s face when he held her, the unmistakable fear in Sully’s chest when he handed the baby back to her. Lucy’s first steps, on the linoleum kitchen floor, first words, Daddy, no, when they tried to leave her with a babysitter. Sully thought of the day the space program invited her to join the new class of astronaut candidates, the day she left Jack and five-year-old Lucy behind and went to Houston. At first she remembered the milestone moments, the days that changed everything, but as time wore on she began to think more about the little things.
Lucy’s hair, how it looked like spun gold when she was small, then darkened as she grew. The veins pulsing beneath her translucent skin just after she was born. Jack’s broad torso, the way he left the top button undone and rolled up his sleeves, never wore a tie and rarely bothered with a jacket. The lines of his clavicle, the hint of chest hair, the inevitable smudge of blackboard chalk on his shirt. The copper saucepans that hung above the gas stove in the Vancouver house where they moved after Sully got her PhD; the color of the front door, raspberry red; the sheets Lucy liked best, midnight blue, scattered with yellow stars.
Everyone on Aether was lost in a private past, each bunk like a bubble of memory. The absorption with things gone by was visible on all of their faces when they weren’t exchanging terse, necessary words with one another, struggling through the grim demands of the present. Sometimes Sully watched the others, imagining what they were thinking about. The crew had been training together in Houston for almost two years before the launch; they’d grown close, but the things you tell your colleagues when you’re practicing simulated disasters and the things you think about when the world ends while you’re far away are so very different.
IN HOUSTON, ABOUT a year before the mission launched, Sully recognized the Ivanov family having an early dinner at an outdoor café in the city. She was parking on the other side of the street and watched them while she slotted change into the meter. She thought about crossing to say hello but stayed where she was. They were all lit up and sun-gold, five heads of white-blond hair illuminated like dandelion puffs. She saw Ivanov lean over to cut up his youngest daughter’s dinner. His wife was animated, gesticulating wildly with silverware in her hands, her husband and children laughing with open, food-filled mouths.
A waiter stopped at their table with a ramekin, and when he set it down next to Ivanov’s elbow a chorus of thank-yous erupted from the children. Sully could hear it from across the street. Arms loaded down with half-empty plates, the waiter was beaming when he left the table. Sully’s gaze rested on Ivanov’s wife—now waving a salad-loaded fork while she talked. Sully wondered if she’d ever looked so joyful with her own family, or so present. Sully lingered at the meter until she felt that she was trespassing on a moment that didn’t belong to her, then moved off down the street to a small greengrocer’s where she bought her produce. Ivanov seemed chronically serious at work, but not tonight, not with his family. She selected peaches, and as she cupped the warm heaviness of the fruit and felt the delicate fuzz against her palm, she was reminded of the weight of her daughter’s head when she was born.
SIX WEEKS INTO the communication blackout, Ivanov returned to Little Earth late, after a few of the others had eaten dinner together. He went straight to his bunk and snapped the curtain shut behind him. Thebes considered the drawn curtain for a moment and knocked on the side of his compartment.
“There is a stew if you’re interested, Ivanov,” he said to the gray partition.
Tal, from his usual place in front of the gaming console, snorted. “He won’t come out,” he said, with a taunting edge in his voice. “He’s probably too busy crying himself to sleep.”
Sully froze in her bunk, where she had been making notes on a telemetry readout. So she hadn’t imagined it. There was a beat of silence, then Ivanov ripped his curtain back and charged across the centrifuge toward Tal. He had his fists buried in the fabric of Tal’s jumpsuit and had yanked him to his feet before Tal even saw him coming. Tal snarled in Hebrew and broke Ivanov’s grip with a blow to his wrists, and then Thebes was on them both, dragging Tal back toward the sofa while Ivanov spat on the floor. Ivanov’s face was a vivid red, and he stalked back to the zero-G section of the ship. Harper arrived just as Tal kicked his game controller across the room. The centrifuge was suddenly quiet. Sully sat on her bunk, unsure what to do, whether to say anything. Harper and Thebes conferred in low tones. They came to some sort of conclusion and Thebes left Little Earth, presumably to speak with Ivanov. Harper absentmindedly massaged the muscles of his jaw with the heel of his hand, then he went to Tal’s bunk. Sully drew her own curtain, not wanting to eavesdrop.
In the beginning, when communication with Earth was clear and easy and uninterrupted, Tal would spend hours talking to his wife and sons. The boys were eight and eleven years old when Aether launched. There had been a little party at a training facility in Houston for them before the launch, their birthdays only a week apart. Tal’s sons played the same video games back in Texas, and on board the spacecraft Tal kept his high scores handy for when he video-chatted with his family, so that he and the boys could compare. Later, even when the time lapse became unwieldy and they could only send one-sided messages, the competition continued. A few days ago, Sully had watched Tal beat his sons’ record for one of the racing games. His triumphant fist shot into the air, but then his face crumpled, his breath became shallow, and the plastic controller fell from his hands. Sully went to sit with him, cautiously placing a hand on his back, and he pressed his face into her shoulder, something he’d never done before. It was the most vulnerable she’d ever seen him.