Floating from mark to mark, scrabbling for handholds on the tin can that had been her home for almost two years, she remembered the day they announced the search for Aether’s crew, seven years ago. She also remembered the day they offered her a spot on the crew, sixteen months later, and the look on Jack’s face when she told him. They were living separately by then, but no one had said the word divorce yet. She couldn’t recall Lucy’s expression because she hadn’t been the one to tell her. Jack had done it. They agreed that the news would be easier coming from Jack, but they both knew the real reason—that Sully was the one who couldn’t handle telling her only child that she would voluntarily be spending more than two years apart from her. Was it worth it? Would she do it again? All the hard work and sacrifice and endless training had landed her here: the loneliest place in the solar system. She almost laughed out loud. If only she could have warned her past self how it was all going to turn out. But even if she had known—she wouldn’t have done a thing differently. Ivanov’s words returned to her: Not everyone has a calling. Out there, floating in the emptiness, she felt a sad serenity: she had followed hers. She hadn’t been outside the spacecraft since Callisto and it was a beautiful day for a walk, just like all the days, and all the nights, that had come before. She let her memories recede, and she let the future spin away from her. None of that mattered anymore. There was only the next handhold, and then the one after that.
“Try the fourth storage pod—there should be a ladder on the side facing away from you.” It was Harper, mistaking her pause for indecision. She glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of Devi, making her way across the row of storage pods on the other side of the ship.
“Copy,” she said, and leaped out across the smooth, cylindrical pods labeled with tall black numerals. She grabbed hold of the rungs she hadn’t quite been able to see. The two women arrived at the aft, where the comm. dish had been ripped away, at the same time. Sully laid her white hand on Devi’s shoulder and Devi flashed her a thumbs-up.
“Good so far?” Sully asked.
“Good so far,” Devi repeated.
They tethered themselves to the site and set to work inspecting the damage, prepping for the installation.
SULLY PULLED THE airlock shut behind her and they waited for the chamber to pressurize before they began taking off their suits. They’d been outside for more than five hours. The rest of the crew was crowded against the other side of the lock, waiting for them to reenter the ship. Eventually the interior airlock hissed and Harper pulled it open. Devi and Sully went through to join the others in the greenhouse corridor. Ivanov shook Sully’s hand. Thebes and Tal hugged her. Harper’s expression of worry collapsed into one of relief, and Sully draped an arm across Tal’s shoulders so that she didn’t have to decide whether to hug Harper like a friend or shake his hand like a colleague. Thebes didn’t seem to want to let go of Devi; he held on to her for a long time, like a parent reunited with his child. The others followed Harper back to the observation deck and gathered in the cupola as they discussed the next spacewalk. They went over the footage from the helmet cameras.
The walk had been successful in that they’d made a viable plan for the replacement installation and had sent a few pieces of the old system that were too damaged spinning out into the asteroid belt, where they would drift for more than a million human lifetimes. There were compliments and cheers all around as they fast-forwarded through the footage of the day, letting the more complex moments play in real time; but when the screen went dark, the mood grew somber. The success of the second walk was less certain. The repair work would be improvised as they went. There had been no training in the underwater facility for what came next. Concerns for the second walk were raised, solutions brainstormed, but after a few hours Harper called an end to the session. The crew was exhausted, the sudden burst of activity over the past days had begun to show on their faces.
“Take a day,” Harper said. “I want everyone rested for round two. Let’s get some dinner started and go over the fine print.”
Ivanov insisted on making dinner, which he never did. They sat at the long table and watched as he threw together an odd-looking stew of canned tomatoes, potatoes, kale, and frozen sausage, which in the end tasted quite good. Tal picked up his bowl to slurp down the vivid red broth and came up for air with a smear of orange across his mouth.
“Not bad,” he said, and served himself a second bowl.
Ivanov shrugged. “Old recipe,” he said, and almost smiled—not quite.
As they ate, they revisited plans for the second spacewalk. The new comm. dish was much smaller, reaped from the lunar module, but with a few adjustments and a couple of attachments, they had figured out how to make it work. Thebes would recalibrate the system from within while Sully and Devi installed it outside. The trickiest part would be getting the thing out the airlock and over where it needed to go.
Tal, Thebes, and Harper cleaned up after dinner while Ivanov had a go at the gaming console. Sully and Devi were falling asleep at the kitchen table and went to bed almost immediately after dinner. Sometime in the night Sully awoke to the sound of Devi whimpering in her compartment. She pulled back her curtain, shuffled across the centrifuge, and slipped inside the bunk. Devi was having a nightmare, and when Sully shook her awake, the terror in her eyes was so deep and wild that it unsettled Sully too.
“What is it?” Sully whispered. “Bad dream? You’re safe, Devi, you’re safe.”
Devi scrabbled at Sully’s shirt, pulling at the thin gray fabric as if she were drowning. It took Devi a moment to realize she was awake. Eventually she lay back against her sweat-drenched pillow, her breath shallow and her muscles tense.
“Tell me about your dream,” Sully instructed.
Devi curled against her and shuddered. “We failed.”
“What happened?”
“We lost the dish. I let it go and it drifted into the sun, and then we—we drifted into the sun too. It was my fault.”
Sully began to stroke Devi’s hair, as she might have done once for Lucy, combing her fingers through it and stopping to gently undo each tangle she encountered. Devi sniffled beneath her hands, her chest shivering with unexpressed sobs. Sully imagined the dream Devi had described to her, and it frightened her too. Not only that they might fail, or that they might all die without ever returning home, without ever knowing what had happened to Earth and everyone on it—but that it would be her fault. Sully realized anew how much responsibility she and Devi had in their hands.
Devi drifted back to sleep but Sully stayed with her, the younger woman’s head nestled into the curve of her shoulder. Her arm ached but she kept still, waiting and thinking, until the artificial dawn began to creep over Little Earth. Finally she slipped out of Devi’s bunk and returned to her own, padding across the quiet centrifuge, bare feet and bare legs, her long hair limp and wavy from yesterday’s braid. In her bunk she changed her underclothes, slid on her jumpsuit, and tied the arms around her waist. She set about combing her hair into sections with her fingers and opened her curtain while she wove them together, watching the lights glow, then strengthen, then shine.