The eve before the walk, Harper pulled Sully aside on the command deck. As he spoke to her, the bright blackness of the cupola’s view behind him transfixed her. It was intoxicating. Knowing she was hours away from stepping out of the airlock and into the vacuum, she struggled to focus on his face, to move her gaze away from the subtle movements of swirling atoms just outside the glass and to meet his eyes, which were boring into her.
“Sully,” he said. “Sully.” She had no idea how many times he’d already said it.
“Yes, sorry, I’m listening.”
“I want you to promise me that if something seems off, if anything goes even the slightest bit awry, you’ll abort and come straight back to the airlock. I know how it feels once you’re out there, but please. Not having the comm.s online won’t kill anyone. We can always try again. We can always wait to dock with the ISS. We can always—I don’t know, but there are other options, okay? I know we’ve been friendly these past few months, you and I—shit, Sully, there’s little enough fun to be had—but I need to know you’re going to follow my orders when you’re out there. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand, Commander.”
“All right, then. Get some rest. We open the airlock at 0900 tomorrow, let’s be ready.”
Harper turned and floated back toward Little Earth, leaving Sully alone on the command deck. She watched him go and then let her gaze drift back toward the cupola. She reflected on Devi’s words, wondering what it would feel like to love him back—wondering if she already did. Unsure, she tried to reject the possibility, and instead let the black glow of space fill her imagination with its emptiness.
NINE
AUGUSTINE WALKED DOWN to the hangar alone. Iris stayed behind, packing. The hike was difficult for him, but that felt right somehow, like penance for his many sins. At the hangar, everything was as they’d left it. The bay doors were open, the snow piling up inside in wind-carved slopes, the constellation of ratchet heads still strewn across the oil-stained concrete. The two snowmobiles were uncovered, and the flashlight he had carried with him on their last journey out here lay exactly where he’d left it. He tried to start the snowmobile he’d gotten running the last time, but during the commotion he had left the key in the On position and now the battery was dead. Augie tried the other snowmobile, and after some coaxing he got it going. He fed it a little gas every time the engine slowed and eventually it hummed peacefully, its sleek gray body vibrating and a fog of white smoke rising off the tailpipe, no longer needing his ministrations.
Augie slid onto the seat and took stock of the controls. He was accustomed to being a passenger on this particular machine, but after a few moments he decided he’d figured out the main features. As a young man he’d ridden motorcycles—how hard could a snowmobile be? No double yellow line, no traffic, nothing to run into, just forward movement across the vast, empty tundra. He backed it up out of the hangar without much trouble and retrieved some of the full fuel canisters while it idled, lashing the containers to the luggage rack with a bungee cord. He thought of the pink-stained grave just a few yards away, marring the pristine runway. He had avoided looking in that direction, had kept his gaze trained on the hangar, but now, as he prepared to ride away, he found he couldn’t leave without at least casting a glance toward the fallen staircase and the mound of bloody snow.
The unlocked wheel of the staircase still spun lazily in the wind, while a thin layer of powder on top of the hard-packed tundra moved across the ground in intricate wind-driven spirals. Swinging his leg over the seat of the snowmobile, Augie turned away from the grave and felt the vibrations of the vehicle enter his bloodstream, shaking his organs as he lay on the gas and sped away from the hangar, back up the mountain.
Iris pushed open the control room door and came bounding down the stairs to meet him halfway. “Are we riding?” she asked, out of breath. It was a reaction he’d never gotten from her before, this kind of delight. Her entire face seemed to change, to become more childish and less feral. He remembered that she was only a little girl, and that recollection kindled emotions he didn’t quite recognize. Tenderness, perhaps, but something else as well, something darker—fear. Not of her, but for her. Was the journey safe? Had he thought it through? Should he be more careful with this tiny spark of life that had somehow ended up in his care? He wondered what her father would do in his place, and the thought was so outlandish, so incomprehensible, that he pushed aside the fear and the tenderness and occupied his mind with other things.
In the control room, they went over the packing. There was so much they needed to bring, so much they had to leave behind, so little they knew about the weather station on the lake. There was no way of knowing what they would find there. They made a pile of necessities: the tent and the subzero sleeping bags, food and water, extra fuel, one very warm set of clothing each, helmets and goggles, a camp stove, a map, a compass, and two flashlights. Everything else was deemed luxury items that they would take only if there was room: Iris’s books, spare clothes, extra batteries, and a second fuel canister. They hauled the luggage down to the snowmobile and strapped it all on. With a passenger and all this gear, the load was heavy, but Augie was shrinking in his old age and Iris had been pocket-sized from the start. The vehicle was rugged, built for steep, roadless terrain and substantial weight. It might not handle perfectly, but it would take them where they needed to go.
They shut the observatory down, leaving just enough heat on to keep the pipes from freezing and the telescope from cracking. As Augie adjusted the furnace, he wondered whom he was leaving it on for—perhaps them, if they had to turn back, or perhaps no one if Lake Hazen proved to be a more hospitable home. The furnace would run out of fuel eventually, of course. The cold would creep into the building, the pipes would freeze, the giant telescope lens would crack. Frost would creep across the windows, and eventually it would consume their cozy control room sanctuary, just as it had the rest of the outpost. Soon enough, winter would live here for good.
Iris wrapped her little arms around Augie’s waist and they rode down toward the tundra, veering east before the hangar came into view. Iris tightened her grip, clinging to him as snow-covered rocks jolted them this way and that. Her helmet was a few sizes too big and he had insisted that she wear three hats to pad it out. The goggles were also too large—the single wide, yellow eye engulfing most of her face—but she wore them with a safety pin to tighten the elastic band around her tiny head. Once they made it down to level ground, the ride became smoother, and Iris relaxed her grip. The journey was already under way—no point second-guessing things now. After four or five hours riding into the white stare of the distance, Augustine let the snowmobile roll to a stop.
They climbed off to have a drink of water and eat a few crackers. Iris’s face was a vigorous red, imprinted with the white outline of her goggles, wisps of dark hair escaping her many hats and curling wildly around her cheeks. She seemed thrilled by the adventure so far. Augustine looked back the way they had come, but the outline of the observatory was no longer visible. The air around them was opaque, shimmering with a curtain of snow that rippled in time with the wind. He had been on edge since they left, counting the miles as they passed, resisting the urge to make a U-turn and speed back toward the safe haven they’d left behind. He clung to the faint hope that lay ahead, that they were doing the right thing. The empty stillness around them felt ominous.
After they finished eating, Iris put her goggles back on, and then her hats, one by one. Augustine crumpled the plastic wrapper the crackers had come in and tucked it into the pocket of his parka as Iris climbed back onto the snowmobile. He pressed the starter button, but nothing happened. He pressed it again. Nothing. His heart began to beat faster and he inhaled a long, slow, icy breath. Stay calm, he thought. It was working five minutes ago. He tried again, then fiddled with the key, the throttle, back to the starter button. He pulled his goggles down to rest around his neck, staring at the silent snowmobile in disbelief. He got off and took a step back, as if he might see the problem better from there, but all he saw was a machine he didn’t understand. A sour panic rose in the back of his throat. They were stranded, miles from the observatory, even more miles from the weather station. There was nothing in between—no oasis, no shelter, nothing but empty, endless tundra. They would probably freeze to death if they tried to walk. Iris was shifting on the pillion seat of the snowmobile, waiting to see what he would do next. Augustine collapsed down into the snow—not because he decided to, but because his legs would no longer hold him. He’d been so foolish to leave the one sanctuary on this forsaken island. He leaned his head back against the flank of the snowmobile and stared up into the white swirl of sky. Already the wind was erasing their tracks. This was it: the quiet, cold death he had only just decided was unacceptable. Iris’s tiny foot tickled his shoulder, and without thinking he reached up and took her boot in his mittened hand, holding it against his cheek.