Rachel’s face was in the porthole now. We’re going to open the door. But there’s a pressure difference. Things are going to shift. I want you to crouch down between two of the biggest, most secure crates—on the starboard side. And I want you to protect your head.
My vision blurred, and a peculiar fizzing sensation bloomed on my tongue. The pain in my head had become a single needle point behind my right eye. Okay.
Repeat back to me.
I’m going to— I squeezed my right eye shut and ignored a shadow that seemed to creep, and then recede, along the wall. I’m going to crouch somewhere secure. I’m going to protect my head.
In five, Rachel said.
I scanned the area where I was floating and chose my spot.
In four.
I tucked my head to my chest, put my arms over my head, and squeezed my eyes shut.
In three.
In two.
In one—
There was a slow suck and a terrific howl of air. A jetlike thrust against my chest. My shoulders smacked the wall behind me and my head bounced. My eyes jolted open and the air was full of things. Beans, salt, feathers. Flashing bits of metal. A twist of clear tubing, a spray of bolts.
White arms grabbed me. Amelia and Rachel in their suits, their faces pink and flat behind their visors. My limbs unfolded and I shut my eyes and oh! They were full of glass and I swallowed a scream.
Then we were inside the lock. The exterior and interior doors shut, and the alarm ceased. I held on to a handrail. My body was strange, my lungs rigid, my face like a stone. As if all my soft parts had turned hard. I held my eyes open—if I blinked it was much, much worse.
My eyes, I said. There’s something in them. Rachel was pulling off her suit; she floated near my face. Okay. I see.
Amelia took off her suit too.
There’s something in them, I said again and my chest shook and my eyes ran.
One thing at a time, Rachel said, and the two of them pulled off my track pants, my socks. Amelia cut off my overshirt. Their hands were warm and firm as they brushed bits of debris from my face and hair. They steered me to the galley, where they wiped more debris from my body with a sponge and I shivered.
Amelia opened a table and laid my body flat. Simon’s face appeared over my own, his long eyelashes dark against his face. He secured my arms and legs to the table with Velcro straps. He moved quickly but was careful not to jostle my head. We’re good, he said.
I lay flat on the table in my tank top and underwear, my eyes stinging and tearing. A long moment passed while they opened drawers and retrieved things. Eyewash and tweezers and gauze. I blinked once and yelped, and then Simon pressed his fingers above and below my eyelids to hold them open. Rachel washed the cuts on my face with antiseptic and then readied the eyewash and leaned in close. My eyes teared and I tried to blink but Simon’s fingers were steady.
She’s got at least one shard in her right eye, Rachel said. I think two in the left.
My body tensed as she lowered the tweezers. I squirmed. I had been cold but now I felt sweat on my forehead under Simon’s thumb.
Still, Rachel said. I need you to be still.
She took aim and again I wriggled.
Don’t look at the tweezers, Rachel said. Look at Amelia. Talk to Amelia.
I did what she said. I looked at Amelia’s oval face and long ears. Her cheeks were red and her hair wet at the temples.
Say something Amelia, Rachel said.
What were you doing in that hold? Amelia asked.
Not about that, Rachel said.
You said talk.
Rachel lowered the tweezers and I felt her breath on my cheek and the pressure of Simon’s fingers on my skin. I kept my eyes on Amelia’s face.
Got it. Rachel held something tiny and glinting in the light and then carefully stuck it to a loop of surgical tape on the medical tray. Then she lowered the tweezers again and hummed between her teeth. She held up another shard. Two down, one to go.
She squinted into my right eye. Wider, she said. Simon pulled my eyelid taut and tears wet my cheek.
I watched Amelia.
The tweezers grew large again.
Done, Rachel said.
Simon irrigated my eye and droplets danced around us. He released his fingers. Rachel handed me some gauze and I blinked and dabbed at my cheeks. I coughed. I shut my eyes and felt them all watching.
Damn, I said.
Does it hurt? Simon asked.
I coughed again and opened my eyes halfway. Not really. I feel okay.
Simon unstrapped me from the table and I floated.
So why were you in that hold? he asked.
I saw something. A rat.
Amelia laughed, and Simon did too.
I guess we should be thankful for that rat, Rachel said.
I listed to one side. Outside the porthole was a dark blank. Exhaustion stole over my body and I moved my limbs to try to wake them up. I said I would help investigate the leak but Amelia shook her head and said, Straight to bed.
My eyes were already closing as I floated to the sleeping module. I felt my way into my bunk and hugged my sleeping bag to my chest. My tongue was tender; I ran it over the roof of my mouth once, twice, and then I fell immediately into a doze.
When I woke my crewmates were in their bunks, their eyes closed. Simon was on his back, his eyelashes long and dark, his forehead smooth, and Rachel was turned toward the wall, her sleeping bag tucked around her chin. Amelia floated just above her bunk, her mouth open. Her eyelids trembled and her feet waved gently in the air.
The sound of everyone’s breathing filled up the small space. Up, down, sideways. Simon’s breathing was soft and rhythmic. Rachel’s was a nasal sigh. Amelia’s was a loud inhale followed by an airy exhale. The noises kept me awake but this time I didn’t mind. I listened to them for a long time until eventually sleep came again.
27
In the morning two packets arrived within hours of each other. Simon was still testing the seal in Cargo 2 so we had to fill every other space. The airlocks, Storage and Systems, even the galley. The interior of the station transformed. We could barely move through the tight spaces, and for two days it felt like we were moles crawling through a narrow burrow. I’d push my way into the opening of a tunnel into darkness only to bump heads with Simon or Amelia or Rachel in the middle, laugh, and have to slowly crawl out feetfirst.
I ate nothing but nut bars and squeezable milk packets for a full forty-eight hours. My arms ached from pushing crates and sacks through the station and pulling them out again. But I didn’t care. My head was clear, my body light. My nausea had dissipated; my eyes were sore but as soon as I was out of my bunk and working it was easy to ignore the discomfort. The tasks I was assigned were challenging, and it felt good to do them well.
Then there was a sudden lull in our schedule—an unexpected twenty-four hours when we had nothing to do. We’d moved the last packet out. We’d cleaned and done systems checks, and Simon had fixed the seal leak in Cargo 2 to his satisfaction. Both holds were empty and ready, and the next packet wasn’t due for a full day.
We could move freely through the station again and the space felt vast. We swam through the modules with our arms out, did somersaults in the air, and whooped. After a while we all drifted in different directions. Amelia and Rachel played a game with a ball and a storage bin only they seemed to fully understand. Simon ran on the treadmill in our tiny gym.
I floated through the station and looked out portholes that had been obstructed by cargo. I hovered outside the largest porthole—in the SM, port side—and watched the Earth’s expanse of ocean and clouds move past like a massive ball rolling in slow motion. My stomach didn’t lurch anymore looking at it. I didn’t feel out of control. It felt less like I was teetering on a precipice and more like I was standing, firm footed and secure, at the edge of an ocean cliff.