She forced herself to calm down, to breathe deep that stale, recycled air, to try to look hopeful and composed. When the stranger’s face on the tablet camera looked the way she wished, Neta touched start to record.
She said all the things she felt she was supposed to say. She told Paul she loved him. She talked about how much fun she’d had in Hawaii for their twenty-fifth anniversary and how she would cherish that week with him right to the end. She asked him to look after Lucita, their little light—and as she said it she imagined her daughter rolling her dark eyes. Lucita went by Lucy now, feeling Lucy Goodwin was a more American name, shoving away her mother’s Puerto Rican roots as she came into her age of fierce independence.
She told Lucita to follow her joy, even if that joy wasn’t in the sciences. She told her she was sorry they had argued so much and not to hold on to those memories. Neta called Lucita Lucy in her final goodbye to her, to Paul. It was her way of apologizing, of saying all the things she didn’t feel strong enough to say aloud. She could only pray it was enough.
It was only at the end that she broke down a little, her eyes burning with tears she refused to show to the camera.
“Love her, Paul,” she whispered. “Give our little light all the love I won’t be there to give. And don’t hang on to me. I want you both to live, to be happy.”
She shut off the tablet after marking the file. She would be long gone before her family saw the video. NASA and the government would have to review everything, but she trusted they would let the message through. It was the best she could do.
Neta made her way back to the common room. Ray was there with Graham, both of them looking as though they’d aged a decade in the last hour.
Ray poured her a cup of tea and Neta stirred powdered milk into it, staring at the swirls as she worked up the courage to ask more questions.
“What happens after the moon and this rogue dwarf planet collide? How safe will Earth be? How safe will the coasts be?” She asked, thinking of her daughter in California.
Ray shook his head. It was Graham who answered her. “We aren’t sure. We don’t have the programs and time we’d need to model it. The moon will be knocked out of orbit. Or at least into a new one. Or it might break apart. And yes, there will be a hell of a debris storm back on Earth. They have atmosphere to protect them, but this could get bad.”
“Bad?” Visions of Hollywood apocalypse movies churned through her brain and fear for her family wrapped freezing fingers around her ribcage.
“Well, it won’t be good. The tides and weather might go haywire, but the moon is going to save the Earth. At least in the short run.”
“True,” Kirill said as he ducked into the common room. “Without moon getting in way, everything would bchwhew.” He emphasized the exploding noise with a large gesture.
“I think we call it a ‘global extinction event,’” Graham said.
“So we’re lucky,” Neta said. She glanced around the room and saw the confused stares. “I mean, ‘We’ as in the human race.”
Ray nodded. “More or less. We should give our governments enough notice to move people out of low-laying areas and stuff like that. We’ve got a lot more man-power and computing power on Earth to deal with the fallout. I think we’ll come out okay.”
It went unsaid that all they could do was warn Earth and hope. That the four staying behind could do nothing at all.
The goodbyes were subdued. The four who were staying handed Anson their tablets containing their messages home and their data from the Array. There were no speeches. Tears were sniffled back or quickly wiped away. If anyone was panicking, they kept it deep inside.
Graham, Shannon, and Anson ascended the ladder for the last time, and Neta didn’t stay to watch them go. She returned to the common room and drank the gritty dregs of her cold tea.
“What now?” Ray asked when he came back in.
Neta shrugged. “How long?” She didn’t have to specify.
“Thirty-four hours-ish.”
“Ish? And they call you a scientist.” Neta smiled at him.
“I am going to bed,” Kirill announced from the doorway.
Neta agreed. It was too long to wait, staring at blank walls. She returned to her bunk and tried to sleep. She turned fitfully; the light gravity that usually let her sleep with a comfortable weightlessness she never felt on Earth was instead a constant reminder that she was here, not home. Her mind gave her disaster scenarios, visions of the Earth’s surface turning to giant, moon-barren craters and the seas churning and rising up, drowning her house. When she did sleep, she startled awake multiple times, thinking she’d heard Lucita calling for her.
Finally she gave up. Her little clock told her in bright green light that she had twenty hours left to live. Ish. Her mouth was thick with sleep-fuzz, and her nose caught the ghost of Paul’s citrus-laced aftershave as her brain struggled to shake off her dreams.
No one was in the common room. Neta made soup, forced herself to drink it, and then washed out her metal bowl. She rested her fingers in the dish, remembering her plans for when she returned home. The tepid water gave her an idea.
Neta pulled on her moon-walking suit for one final time. She climbed up the ladder but did not go outside. Pluto’s big brother would be visible to the naked eye now, from what Ray and the others had told her, but she didn’t want to look that closely at death, no matter how impressive it might seem. Besides, she wasn’t sure if it would bring debris with it, or if it would be safe to be out on the surface of the Daedalus crater.
Instead she went through to the big bay where they stored equipment for repairs and extra supplies for the Array—the items that didn’t need as much radiation shielding. They didn’t bother to keep this spares shed full of air. Neta searched the large NASA bins and found something that would work for her plan. She spent long sweaty minutes clearing out a barrel and hauling it to the ladder.
She dropped it down. On Earth, she wasn’t even sure she could have moved the plastic and steel barrel. Here, it was awkward, but not impossible.
Scraping and hauling it through the narrow hallway brought Kirill and Ray out of their room.
“What are you doing with that?” Ray asked. What little hair he had was mussed from sleeping; it looked as though he’d been as restless as she.
“Taking a bath,” Neta said. “It was something I planned to do first thing when I got home.”
Kirill laughed, and even Ray was able to crack a smile. They helped her get the barrel down to the women’s bathroom just past Neta and Shannon’s room. It didn’t quite fit in the tiny shower pan, so they left it just outside. Duct tape, some wires, a repurposed length of lab tubing, and a lot of swearing later, they had a way to fill the makeshift “tub.”
“I don’t know how clean this thing is,” Ray said.
“What’s it going to do, give me cancer?” Neta waved them both out of the bathroom. “Go away so I can bathe in peace.”
The water was stale, and calling it tepid would’ve been generous, but she climbed into the barrel and sank down, curling her tired body up until only her nose and eyes were above the surface.
She half-floated and finally let herself feel the panic, the grief, the crushing weight of knowing she was going to die. She hung inside the barrel, her body wedged down in the water, and let herself breathe through the complete helplessness.
The tears that had been burning inside her eyes and throat all day broke free and were lost into the bath, her cries muffled by the water, her face washed clean even as she wept. She wanted to scream, to tear at her hair, to beg God or the universe or anything for a way to change her fate. Finally, exhausted, she just let herself cry until no more tears would come.