When I arrived at Materials lab the next morning, Carla, Lion, and Nico were all standing around the table. They had the hand—my hand—in front of them.
Where is number five? Carla asked.
That is number five.
Nico shook his head. Oh man.
What did you do? Lion asked.
Rain fell outside and it tapped against the windows.
I fixed it, I said. I didn’t think it was going to work, but then it did.
Carla picked up the pump and put it back down. Work how?
I’ll show you.
I plugged it in and as the hand grasped the ball Carla’s face changed. Her brow smoothed.
Why didn’t you tell us? Lion asked. We could have helped you.
I tried. But I couldn’t explain it even to myself. I just had to do it.
She didn’t need our help, Carla said evenly. She was better off on her own.
Now we can all be Candidates, I said. I looked at each of them and waited for them to smile.
My sister’s like that, Carla said. She says other people’s ideas crowd her own.
Did you hear what I said Carla? Now we can all move up—
A teacher approached our table. Theresa’s substitute.
What’s this? He was surprised. You’ve made a big change.
The rain grew louder outside. No one said anything.
He asked Carla to demonstrate the hand.
Carla hesitated, but Lion nodded, and she did.
The teacher asked several questions, about the material inside the glove and about the pump.
Whose idea was it to use the beads?
June’s, Carla said.
Really? The teacher looked at me for the first time. It’s very inventive. He asked us to show him the glove, and Carla did.
Who designed this? the teacher asked.
June, Carla said.
Who sewed all these compartments into the inside?
June, Lion said.
What did the rest of you do?
It’s got the internal structure and wiring of one of our prototypes, Lion said. Number five.
I see. He picked the hand up and moved its fingers and thumb. And who combined the two models?
We all did, I said quickly. As a team.
Lion looked at the table, and Carla’s cheeks turned pink. The rain had stopped but the wind rattled the walls.
The teacher wrote on his pad for a minute.
Thank you. I’m impressed, he said. You’ll know the results in a week. Then he turned from the table to move to another group.
But Carla called out after him, It’s not true. June did that too.
II
22
The day of my first launch was a month after I turned eighteen, in early spring. It was cold and damp, and melting snow covered the ground. When I got to the launch pad I was given my papers and told to wait. I was assigned to be an engineer on the Sundew, a cargo station orbiting Earth that distributed supplies to the moon, Mars, and the Pink Planet. As good a post as I could hope for. NSP maintained several cargo stations in orbit, as well as small satellite and research outposts on the moon, Mars, and the Pink Planet, but that was it. The Explorer program had never been revived.
The rest of my crew were already in orbit. Three times I’d requested a post with the only woman station commander in orbit, Carla’s sister and my uncle’s former student, Amelia Silva. And three times I’d been slated to serve at another post. Then at the last minute my assignment was changed, and not only Amelia’s name but also Simon’s was listed at the top of my paperwork.
I suited up for the trip to the Sundew in a mobile office. Up until that moment I felt fine. Candidate Group had made me stronger. The physical training hardened my body, built me up in some places, and whittled me down in others. My arm and leg muscles grew round; I lost the soft spots on my stomach and thighs. I knew how to do things now—run a mile in seven minutes, do five pull-ups without stopping, hold my breath under water longer than anyone else in my year—and I could count on my body to do them. I also knew things, lots of things. About advanced astrophysics, space materials science, robotics. I’d been trained in survival skills and basic emergency medicine. I knew how to tread water for hours, set a broken bone, stitch up a wound.
But when I saw my suit on the wall—small and shrunken looking on its hook—I hung back. In my uncle’s books astronauts wore suits that glowed white against the flat black of open space; they were the brightest things on the page. In the videos I’d watched of astronauts floating in zero gravity, they took up the whole screen, and their arms and legs drifted like leaves on the surface of water. This was what I’d been waiting for my whole life, but now that it was here, I wasn’t thinking of the astronauts themselves, strong and full of all the things they knew. I was thinking of the deep and endless expanse they floated in. My hands shook as I took the suit from the wall. I steadied myself, stepped backward into the suit, pulled the neck ring down over my head, and worked my hands through the arms. Then I straightened my ponytail and put my helmet on. I didn’t need to be wearing my helmet, not yet, but I wanted to check the pop and suck of its seal.
It was just me, the pilot, and his second-in-command, and we walked, bowlegged and slow, the few yards to an open cage elevator. There was a partitioned area for relatives and friends to say goodbye to crew members who were going into orbit for months at a time. I barely glanced at it. But Lion was there; he was waving at me. He stood wearing a puffy blue coat (he was a trainer in the NSP neutral buoyancy tanks now). I hadn’t seen him in months. I swallowed hard and waved back.
When I moved up to Candidate Group I didn’t see Carla and Lion and Nico as much. We would talk when we ran into one another in the yard or at the dive pool. For a while Lion and I lifted weights on Saturday mornings. But we didn’t have classes together, or Materials lab, and it wasn’t the same.
The elevator went up. I held my helmet in my hands and the wind whipped and pulled at my hair. Lion was still standing in the same spot. He put his hood up against the wind. He smiled and kept waving. The elevator rose higher and soon I couldn’t see his face anymore, just the spot of blue that was his coat.
At the top the wind was terrific and I held on to the platform as it buffeted my body. The pilot secured the Velcro on my suit, tightening it at my back, elbows, ankles, and wrists, and we crossed a swing arm toward the open hatch of the capsule. The pilot and second-in-command entered first and I followed. Dark and cramped and crammed with supplies, there was only enough space for the three of us to wedge ourselves into our molded plastic seats. I had an advantage being so small, but even still it was a tight squeeze in my suit. I strapped myself in and felt the walls above my head and against my left elbow; I could move only my right arm freely.
The hatch door closed. Minus fifty-four minutes was announced. I grabbed at my checklist but couldn’t reach it. I strained against my chest belt and was just able to pull the checklist free. The pilot and his second went through their own lists and called things out to each other in a mix of English and Japanese. The compartment began to warm and I started to sweat. Oxygen was flowing but it didn’t feel like it. The air was hot and still. I tried to concentrate on my tasks, but I was intensely aware of the walls pressing against my arms and legs, the lack of air. My eyes strayed to the low ceiling, to the sealed hatch door.
When the high-pitched whine of the fuel and oxidizer turbo pumps filled the small space I felt relief. Ten minutes to launch. I completed the tasks on my list, put on my helmet, locked it, and checked its seal. At two minutes to launch the whine grew. Even with my helmet to dampen the sound. I felt it vibrating through my chest, my jaw.