I hope you don’t have to go, I said.
I can wait.
How long have you been up?
Awhile. I had to check the gyroscopes.
I looked at her. She was pale and thinner than she’d been when I first arrived; the skin under her eyes was dark purple in the dim light.
I don’t need a lot of sleep, she said, as if she could read my mind.
She finished the apple, pulled her body closer, and grabbed the wrench I’d velcroed to my jumpsuit.
Did Simon show you how to do this?
No.
You didn’t learn how to do it at Peter Reed—
I figured it out just now.
I didn’t learn a whole lot that was useful there either, she said.
Together we disconnected and capped all the fluid lines, including the one that filtered into the brine reservoir, pulled out the broken assembly unit, and began installing the new one. It was hot in the small compartment with the two of us wedged inside and I started to sweat, but we worked efficiently and fast.
I learned a lot from your sister, I said.
Carla? You weren’t in the same group.
We were my first year. Our beds were next to each other.
We reconnected the fluid lines, careful not to mix up gray water and brine.
I haven’t seen her in a long time, I said. How is she?
She works at one of the private labs. She’s got a boyfriend, or she did the last time we talked.
You must be glad to see her in between rotations.
There was an empty pause. The vent overhead whirred.
I’m better with machines than people, she said.
The metal wrench was cold against my palm. Me too.
She stretched her body in the air. You’re like your uncle. She looked at my face and seemed to appraise it. My nose, my chin. A lot like him.
I felt warmth and a sense of solidness despite my floating limbs.
He understood me, Amelia said. Maybe better than anyone.
I nodded.
She folded her body in the air. Everything went to shit when he died. She shut the urine processor’s cabinet, bolted it closed, and powered it up. You go first, she said.
I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and pressed my ear to the tank. One second—
But she was already pressing the button to vent the brine reservoir. I heard a rush of air, then seven high pops, and something about it tugged at my memory. I knew it. I knew that sound—
29
I hit the vent button over and over. Every time: a rush of air and seven pops.
Why are you doing that? Amelia asked. The processor’s good to go—
I just— I put my tools away quickly. I need to check something. I left her and pulled myself into the next module. I bumped into things; I caught my elbow on an open panel, knocked my head as I swung my body through the airlock between the SM and the galley.
When I reached the sleeping module I grabbed my locker, crawled into my bunk, and pulled the partition closed. My breath was warm and loud in the tiny space as I rummaged through the locker. I had it somewhere, the static log I’d begun five years ago after Inquiry went dark. I knew I did because I’d nearly thrown it out when I was cleaning out my dorm room after Candidate Group graduation. I’d found it at the bottom of an old duffel bag and laughed when I pulled it out.
I did have it, a dented green notebook with my name written inside the cover. I turned on the tiny reading light attached to the side of my bunk compartment, opened the book, and began to read. I scanned every page, squinting at my twelve-year-old handwriting in the lamp’s small spotlight, until I found my notes on G1 and H2. They included the dates I heard the static, the channel’s letter and number designation, AUX27, and the interval between the sounds, between seventy and seventy-four hours.
I stayed in my bunk and thought for a long time. No one talked about Inquiry anymore. During my training the Explorer program was rarely mentioned, and when it was it was handled in a clinical way. No one talked about the crew. No one said their names.
But since I’d arrived at the Sundew I’d thought about them a lot. They were with me as I floated through the station’s modules and airlocks, hauled crates and sacks from one hold to another, and ate breakfast with Amelia or Simon in the galley. When I strapped myself into a jump seat, the restraints tight against my chest, I pictured Anu secured in an identical seat. When I squeezed behind a panel with a tool in my hand, I wondered how many times she’d done the same on Inquiry.
It was a wild thought that they could still be alive, five years later. I pressed the notebook to my chest and swam to the SM.
Simon was there, strapped into a seat, doing a systems check. One of the gyroscopes is trying to die, he said. For real this time.
I hung in the air in front of him. I need to listen to something.
What?
The Inquiry feed.
He looked at me steadily and I remembered the day he sat next to me on the bus to Peter Reed, the picture of Anu he’d tucked inside his book. Why?
I’m just…curious about something.
Okay. He pressed buttons, and the screen lit up with the familiar communications log, the one-way conversation between mission control and the Inquiry explorer. Only now it was a no-way conversation because control had stopped sending status checks two years ago.
I belted myself into the seat next to him, opened my log, and pointed at the list of channels. That one. AUX27. Start it from a week ago, I said.
But he was unstrapping himself from his seat. I’ll leave you to it.
Stay. I started pressing buttons and turned the channel up loud.
His face was grim. I don’t want to.
But he didn’t leave—he hung on to the back of his seat, his feet waving in the air behind him.
The channel was a long unbroken fizz. I waited and nothing happened. I checked its designation again. AUX27. I skipped ahead several hours. And then a full day. Still nothing. No hums, no pops.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. That was it then. I turned the channel down.
What were you listening for? Simon asked.
It was stupid. I thought—
A low hum filled the room, broken by seven snapping pops. G1 and H2, just the same as I remembered them. Just the same as the sound I’d heard inside our own urine processing tank.
I pulled myself to the screen, skipped ahead three days. Again, a low hum and seven snapping pops.
Tell me what that is, Simon said.
It’s going to sound crazy.
Say it. He held the back of his seat with two hands.
Proof the Inquiry crew are still alive.
His mouth was a thin line. It seemed for a minute he might turn and swim out of the module. But he didn’t; he pulled himself into his seat, strapped himself in. Start from the beginning, he said.
The Sundew and Inquiry are the same age, I said. They have a lot of the same equipment.
Right.
They have the same urine processor. Same manufacturer, same model, installed within months of each other. Its brine reservoir has to be vented manually.
I played back G1 and H2. The vent makes a distinctive sound. Exactly like this—
NSP has been listening to the feed all along, he interrupted. There’s nothing there.
There’s static.
Interference that could be a million different things.