I’m all right, she said in a whisper. I’ll be all right.
Outside her room I listened but all was still. We started moving. Through the door and down the corridors, softly, haltingly. Through one airlock, then another, through warm air and then cool. I remembered where all the step-ups and step-downs were, and all the unexpected turns.
We passed James’s room in slow motion, our bodies stiff with stillness. The minutes seemed to expand. Theresa stumbled. I caught her noiselessly before she fell, and we paused, our arms around each other, our faces blue tinted in the runner lights. A faint rumble of breath came from James’s room, and as we moved away I shivered at the thought of his face in the morning, his cheeks pink with sleep, dark stubble on his chin.
We finally reached the airlock leading to the cargo bay and I helped Theresa into a suit, a painfully slow process. I pulled her fingers from the suit’s armholes as she pushed them through, and I thought of Simon, who had done the same for me with my wet suit before my first dive at Peter Reed. Theresa was breathing hard by the time we were done, but her helmet was on now, and oxygen was flowing. She smiled weakly through her visor.
Once Theresa was folded into the driver’s seat of a rover and covered with a foil blanket I punched the destination into the navigation.
She held on to the steering wheel. Her face had receded inside her helmet but her voice was clear. Thank you June.
My finger hovered over the button to open the cargo door and my heart quickened at the thought of James hearing it. I pressed it and the rover pulled forward with a low whine into the chalky night.
I went to my room but didn’t sleep. I stayed in my clothes and counted down the minutes until the capsule’s scheduled departure just after dawn, watched the dull pink glow of morning creep across my floor. Then James’s footsteps sounded outside. He was moving up and down the corridors, in and out of airlocks calling, Theresa!
His anxious voice drew closer and strangled the sound of her name.
And then, at my door: June! Theresa’s gone!
I didn’t answer. He banged on the door. Wake up. Wake up God damn it.
He moved away, toward the north corridor and the cargo bay. My breath was fast. He would find the empty spot. Little piles of silt where the rover used to be.
Soon he was back, his voice a growl outside the door.
My body vibrated; my teeth chattered. I unlocked the door and he pushed his way inside.
Where is she?
She’s already gone. I stepped back and braced myself, and his body seemed to change shape, to bend, to distort. But he didn’t yell. His voice was low and tight. What did you do?
I’d seen him angry, many times, and had laughed at it. Laughed at his hot temper, his easy irritation with equipment, weather, me. But I couldn’t laugh at this.
I backed farther away. He stepped closer.
I did what she wanted, I said. I did what was right.
He kept coming. I turned and tripped. He caught me, pulled me to him; he tucked his head and wrapped his arms tightly around my chest.
You’ve killed her, he said in my ear. He squeezed me and my breath strained against his chest. Do you know that? He squeezed harder.
I couldn’t get enough air. I tried to pull away but his arms were a tightening vise. Stop it, I choked. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
He let go, and I collapsed onto my bed, coughing.
That’s what she’ll say. His hair was wild; he moved like his body was broken. That’s what she’ll say in the end.
I stayed in my bunk; I sat on my mattress and took big breaths. My lungs inflated and deflated, and I pictured Theresa in the capsule, strapped into a jump seat. Her thin face was tired but happy. Then I heard a horrible noise. It sounded like pieces of metal hitting the walls, the floor. James was breaking something. What?
I ran out of my bunk, my hands pushing against the walls, my feet clumsy. I moved in and out of light and dark, hot and cold. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t— But he had. He stood in the workshop in the midst of a pile of glittering debris. Metal panels, wiring, connectors, bolts, screws. Our cell. It was a pile of pieces again, only this time even they were broken—cables torn, soldered connections split, circuit boards cracked.
He stood with his legs wide and panted with the effort of smashing it all. It was ugly. He was ugly. I thought I knew him—that I understood him—but I didn’t. I thought we were the same, but we weren’t.
I walked away from him; in my bunk I put some clothes in a bag and went to the cargo bay. My hands shook as I pulled on my suit, but I got it on, went through the airlock, and climbed into the remaining rover. The bay door opened into the pink glow of early dawn.
IV
44
I drove straight ahead until I couldn’t see the lights of the Gateway behind me. My body vibrated but I kept my hands on the steering wheel and my eyes straight ahead. The visibility was poor. The sun was rising but it was barely a smudge of yellow on the horizon. Mountains of silt stretched out before me, uneven, undulating.
I had admired the Pink Planet my whole life. Read about it, talked about it, dreamed about it. It was June’s moon. I thought if I belonged anywhere, it was here. The terrain rumbled through my body as I drove up and down the silty crags, one after the other, and around rusted-out landers and satellites and probes. The rover slid into a valley, its wheels spinning as they hit the ground, and silt-covered shapes rose up all around me. Some were discernible—the flat broken wing of a shuttle, the popped dome of an abandoned mobile habitation unit. Others weren’t, and specters seemed to rise from their shapes. The steep-angled roof of my aunt’s house. Inquiry’s tall, pointed rocket. My uncle’s high hospital bed. The sharp slope of James’s bare shoulder.
I blinked tears as I swerved away from the shapes, kept driving, on and on, until my body felt shattered. I hadn’t set my position before I left the station and now numbers on the navigation controls jumped haphazardly around the screen.
67889.0009 00032.0000 7860.0023
21450.0001 12569.5900
00007.0000 45000.9865
10050.0090 90401.0526
I had thought I was headed toward the satellite station—it was due north from the Gateway. Now I wasn’t so sure. A series of plateau-like ridges blocked out the sun ahead. I braked, tried to get my bearings, turned. I drove for a while, second-guessed myself, and turned again. I felt a flutter of panic. I’d been driving for a long time, too long. The rovers didn’t keep more than a few hours of charge at a time. Ten minutes later lights flashed on the dashboard, and the rover rolled to a stop.
I found the controls for the solar charger and deployed the panels, but nothing happened. I pressed the button again and there was a grinding sound, and then silence. A fiery heat rose in my body; I grabbed the steering wheel, laid my burning forehead against it, and screamed.
The interior of the rover cooled. My breath fogged the windows and obscured the ridges of silt surrounding me. I pulled my helmet on, and my gloves, grabbed a tool kit, and depressurized the rover. Outside, the pink haze had thinned. I climbed on top of the rover and stood; I could see for a long way and there was nothing. No structure, no solar field, no beacon or cable relay. My breath was loud and singular inside my helmet. I was entirely alone.
It took me more than six hours to fix the solar deploy mechanism. It was an almost impossible job to do alone, and the sun was intense. Tools kept slipping out of my gloves. By the time I was finished only an hour of sunlight remained in the day. I got only a partial charge on the rover, three, four hours max—which meant I wouldn’t have heat for at least four hours of the night.