Harper stood up straighter, as if to physically invoke the power of his command in front of the assembled crew. “I want to be talking about how to fix our communication capabilities, and at this moment I don’t give a damn how it happened unless it’s relevant to that goal. At this point the retrieval of the antenna is probably impossible. Other options.”
The crewmembers were silent, staring at the floor. Tal kept his back turned. Sully could hear the quiet, shrill squeak of Ivanov’s teeth grinding together. Thebes cracked his knuckles one at a time. Devi drew a circle on the floor with the toe of her shoe.
“Other options,” Harper repeated, and this time there was a warning in his voice. “Now.”
“We can make a new antenna,” Sully suggested. “I think I have all the main components, especially if we take the paraboloid from the landing module. The gain won’t be as high, but it should work.”
Thebes laced his fingers together and began to nod. “A replacement antenna is plausible, I agree,” he said. “But the installation will require a great deal of EVA work—probably two space walks, one to assess the damage and prep the site, another to actually install it. The risk is unavoidable. I think we have to go ahead and do it, but we needn’t rush—Earth wasn’t saying much anyway.”
“That’s a good point,” Sully said. “The scheduled uplinks from the probes are lost as long as the receivers are dark, but they’re not high on our list of priorities right now. I’m not even sure the new system would be strong enough to pick up those signals, and in the meantime Earth has been silent this whole time—no noise pollution, no satellite activity, nothing. I’ve been checking. It’s all been spooky quiet. So might as well take our time and do it right.”
Tal finally turned back to the group. “If I have a few days I can try and up the radar sensitivity. I don’t know if it will work, but it might. If we’re sending warm bodies out there I’d like to have a handle on the micrometeoroid population.”
Ivanov’s teeth squeaked again and Sully cringed at the sound. Devi still hadn’t said anything. Harper sighed and ran his hands through his hair, making an unconscious tsk tsk sound with his tongue against the back of his teeth while he considered. He crossed, then uncrossed his arms. Finally he spoke.
“So we’ll assess the damage as best we can from inside and get to work on the antenna replacement. Sullivan, Devi, Thebes—I’d like the three of you to work on this together. Sully, let’s not worry about the Jovian probes. If we can pick up their signals, great; if not, Earth is the focus. Tal, I want you to work on the radar system, see what took a bite out of us and what we can do to prevent or at least anticipate a repeat. Ivanov, you and I will take stock of the damage from the EV cams. Thanks, everyone—take your time, do it right, but let’s get moving.”
Devi hadn’t said anything since the meeting began, and Sully wasn’t sure she had been paying attention. But as they left the centrifuge to go look at the equipment in the lunar module, Devi turned to Sully and started chattering. She was brimming with ideas for the replacement they were about to cobble together. Beneath Devi’s nonstop stream of consciousness, Sully let out a soft sigh of relief. If there was anyone who could make this plan work, it was Devi.
THERE WAS FINALLY work to do again. Important work. Aether was abuzz for the first time since leaving Jovian space, four months ago. Sully, Devi, and Thebes began by raiding the rest of the ship for the components that could be spared. They appropriated the dish from the lunar landing module, and the comm. pod was full of redundancies they could pilfer. The replacement was well under way by the time Harper and Ivanov reported back on what little they could glean from the installment site. Sully and the engineers used the table in Little Earth as a staging area so that their tools wouldn’t keep floating away.
They were still at it when the main LED lights on Little Earth automatically dimmed, signaling the end of the day. Each of the individual bunk lamps was illuminated, giving the centrifuge a soft, candlelit glow. It was midnight by their watches, but the constraints of time no longer seemed relevant. They were tired, but also invigorated. The problem had woken them up, snapped them into the moment. They finally had something to do, a reason to pay attention. Even Ivanov rose to the occasion, acting more amiable than he had in months.
Sully and Devi were doing most of the construction, while Thebes handed them tools and prepared the components they needed.
“Drill,” Devi said, and Thebes put it into her hand before she had a chance to look up.
“Wire cutters,” Sully said, and Thebes was already at her elbow.
The construction of the new dish was moving along faster than anything had since they’d worked on the logistics of the Jovian moon landings. After Thebes and Devi left, Sully stayed at the table for another hour, making a few more adjustments but mostly thinking. After tidying up the area, Sully walked back toward the sleeping compartments. Tal was on the couch studying a notebook full of dense calculations while he fiddled with the tablet on his lap. Harper and Ivanov were conferring quietly near the lavatory. Harper said something she couldn’t quite hear, and a genuine smile appeared on Ivanov’s lips. Ivanov laid his hand on the commander’s shoulder for a brief second, then disappeared into the lavatory while Harper continued on to his own compartment. Sully noticed that Ivanov had left his curtain open. Looking in, she saw a panorama of photos showing rosy faces and white-blond heads—his family, every one of them smiling—on every surface. Ivanov returned sooner than expected and caught her staring. She blushed, ready to be scolded, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“It is a bit much, no?” he asked.
Sully shook her head. “Not at all,” she said. “I think it’s perfect. I wish I’d brought more things from home, but I didn’t…well, I didn’t anticipate wanting them so much.”
“You have one daughter,” he said, not a question but a statement. “And your husband—he didn’t understand?”
She was surprised, first at his boldness and then at his accuracy. Ivanov understood her, in some essential way, and she was surprised. He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, but suddenly he saw her more fully than she could see herself. She remembered watching him have dinner with his family in Houston at the outdoor café, the tender way that he cut his daughter’s food into little pieces, the rapt attention he paid to his wife as she told a funny story, the love visible on all their faces.
“No, he didn’t,” Sully said.
“My wife also did not understand, but she tried to, and I believe this makes me lucky.” Ivanov patted her arm. “Not everyone has a calling,” he said, and shrugged. “It is difficult for them to comprehend, I think. Good night.” He climbed into his bunk and closed the curtain.
The lone photograph of Lucy seemed so small where it was pinned to the wall, the empty space around it like an ocean. Sully reached out and touched her daughter’s face, already smudged with fingerprints. She turned out the light and lay back in the darkness, but even when she closed her eyes, the negative image of the photograph burned on the inside of her eyelids. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, she was so energized by the renewal of their work. But eventually she did, and dreamed of fireflies dressed as little girls.
THE STRENGTHENING DAWN light beyond her curtain pulled her out of her dreams, but it had been only a few hours since she’d gone to bed. She closed her eyes, ignoring her alarm, and when she opened them again it was almost 1100. As she wriggled into her jumpsuit and braided her hair she’d already begun thinking, planning a mount for the replacement antenna. Harper was sitting at the long table with a set of Aether’s blueprints laid out in front of him and a cup of instant coffee. He didn’t look up as she slid onto the bench beside him.