Long enough. A voice was loud and insistent in my ear. My uncle’s or James’s. Or my own. Long enough, long enough.
My arm wouldn’t move. I needed to hit the button to close the lock. In my mind I screamed at it to move. I dragged myself closer. I pulled myself up to the button and hit it with my head—
The door shut; the silt fell to the ground. I leaned against the wall and waited until feeling returned to my legs. Then I pulled myself to standing and felt my way back to the shower module, to the mirror. The pain in my jaw was there but far away, like a speck on the ground seen from a terrific height. I braced my hips against the sink, secured the pliers around my molar, and pulled. Nothing happened. I widened my feet; I felt the weight of gravity on my shoulders, like the weight of someone’s hands. I imagined they were James’s hands. He held me steady and I pulled again. Hard. There was a crunch and a suck and a pop, and tears streamed down my stinging cheeks. I held up the pliers and my molar was in them, flat and white on the top, long and pointed and bloody on the bottom.
I sat down on the rubber floor. Minutes passed. Feeling began to return to my face and hands. The shapes of the room got sharper. The square of the sink, the rectangle of plastic sheet that separated the showers. The caged light. The colors became more saturated. Gray and black and blue inside, and through the porthole, coral pink. Sensation returned to my eyelids and my lips and the inside of my nose.
The light changed. It was too bright, the outline of things too distinct. The floor was hard against my bottom, my tooth like a sharp rock in my palm. I wished someone was here, someone to help me up, to press a cold cloth to my cheek. I rubbed tears and snot and blood from my face, put my head in my hands, and pushed my tongue into the tender, pulpy spot where my tooth used to be.
Then I heard a voice, a human voice. Someone calling my name. I lifted my head. But it wasn’t real. I was alone. I didn’t want to be alone but I was.
The voice came again: June, June, June. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. People in suits crowded in the doorway. Amelia, Simon, and Rachel. They held their helmets in their hands and stared.
Were they real?
Rachel moved into the room, bent down beside me, and touched my shoulder. What happened?
Simon pushed in too.
I had to pull my tooth out, I said, and the words came out like a sob.
Amelia reached down with her good hand and pulled me up. She rubbed my head. Look at you. You’re a mess.
I wiped my eyes. I’m okay.
Simon pulled me close and hugged me hard. You were right June. His eyes shined.
Inquiry made contact with NSP, Amelia said. They’re alive.
All of them? I asked.
Yes, all of them. Simon let me go and started talking fast. Anu figured out how to rebuild the communications system. She sent a message—
Where’s James? Amelia interrupted.
I shook my head.
You’re supposed to be with him, she said. You’re supposed to be working.
I was. We rebuilt the cell. But then it all went…bad.
So where is he?
I didn’t answer her. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face and wiped the blood from my cheeks. I grabbed my suit from the corridor outside and pulled it on. We’ll go find him.
48
The Gateway was an outline of gray in the pink haze. The wind battered the rover as I punched in the code to open the cargo bay door, but it didn’t budge. Amelia parked and we put our helmets on and got out. My stomach dropped. Heaps of silt stood against the bay doors; it looked as if no one had opened them in weeks.
Let’s try the exterior entry hatch. Simon’s voice came through the radio in my helmet.
I led them around the perimeter of the station and the silt popped against our helmets. When we reached the spot where the hatch should be I paused and squinted through the silt. It’s here. I felt along the wall. Somewhere. My glove found the hatch’s groove. I brought my face close to it, dug silt out of the door’s hinges. Then I grabbed its latch and pulled hard, and it swung open with a crunching thunk.
On the other side was complete darkness. We stepped inside. Rachel pressed the button to repressurize the lock. Through the porthole the corridor was an empty black and I felt a deep sense of unease. We took off our helmets, and our flashlights made four spots of light on the floor as we moved forward, through corridors that were like tunnels in the darkness. This route had become familiar over the weeks I’d lived here but now I became disoriented. Walls looked like doors, and doors like walls. In our bulky suits we elbowed one another and tripped on the step-ups and step-downs. The corridor we were following reached a dead end, and when we doubled back, nothing was where I thought it should be. The turn for the central module seemed to have disappeared.
Finally after going in what appeared to be the wrong direction we found it. I shined my flashlight into the galley and stepped inside. Everything was as it had been. Table, chairs. The coffee maker was in its spot, clean and empty. I opened cupboards; plates and bowls and silverware were where they always were.
We kept going. My bunk was also as I left it, and so were the equipment rooms. James’s room was empty, the sheets stripped from the bed and the floor cleared of its papers and mugs. Back in the corridor Rachel and Simon went to check the other side of the station, and Amelia and I walked to the workshop, the last place I had seen James. It was completely clean. Empty of everything. The shattered fuel cell was gone from the floor, the table. The shelves were bare of tools. I scanned every surface, looked in drawers and cabinets and under the table. There was nothing. Not even a single loose screw.
I touched the metal worktable. It was clean and shining; even our fingerprints were wiped clean. The spot where James had stood in the rubble of the destroyed fuel cell was empty. I had thought he was so ugly in that moment, his legs wide, his arms crossed. But now I remembered his expression differently, more hurt than defiant. The trapped look of someone who couldn’t stop himself from doing harm.
There’s one more place to look, I said, and led Amelia to the south corridor, to the door, which was unlocked, and then to the short passageway to Theresa’s room. The power was on here—light shined through the plastic that covered the door.
This room wasn’t cleaned and stripped like the others. In the cabinet between the two portholes were Theresa’s books. Her hairbrush still stood on the table beside the bed, her slippers on the floor nearby.
Amelia walked to the cabinet. This is Theresa’s room, she said.
Yes.
I saw her, only once. She was so small. I couldn’t believe how small—
She died, I said, and Amelia nodded.
I moved closer to the bed. The sheets were rumpled and twisted, as if someone had slept in them only a day or two ago, and there was a head-shaped indentation in the pillow. I leaned in. A few dark hairs lay curled on the pillowcase; I put my hand in the middle of the shallow hollow and imagined I felt the warmth of James’s head there.
Simon and Rachel were at the airlock leading to the cargo bay. The other side of the station’s got power, Simon said. But there’s no one there.
We headed through the dark corridors to the access hatch and back to the rover. Then I stopped. Silt tapped at my helmet. I know where he is, I said, and my boots sank into pits and hollows as I made my way to the north side of the station. I slid around, held on to the exterior walls, kept going. The wind picked up and it pulled at my suit, buffeted my helmet. Amelia, Simon, and Rachel followed close behind. I rounded the cargo bay and the hangar containing Endurance came into view, bright against the pink sky.