(This has no real scope if you are close to the event; schoolchildren gather with shoeboxes to peer into the eclipse, that’s all.
This has no meaning until you are watching your new home become a black pearl against a far-off disc of light.)
Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star, warm and small, twenty light-years from the Earth. It hangs in Libra, if you’re watching from the ground. It has four planets ringing it. One of them transits at the right speed; it’s close enough to Gliese for light, far enough for water.
(The classification is Gliese 581-d; when people begin to pin hopes on it, it shrinks to “Gliese Dee”; to “Dee.” Marika calls it Gliese 581, never mentions Dee at all.)
There is a chance Dee is an ocean planet.
In the ops bay, there is construction on a small-scale human transport. There are calculations being made.
It is a very slight chance, but these are desperate days, and people must put a lot of faith, sometimes, in very slight chances.
Sometimes when they were still running from place to place, it was a comfort for Marika to watch the sky and see there was no balance there, either. The stars you knew would roll beyond your sight and be replaced by strangers, and there was nothing you could do.
After a while she couldn’t breathe in cities, wanted only to be in the wild, watching a war she couldn’t win.
(The sky is a battle; stars are always falling.)
Seeing can be mitigated on cold, clear nights. From a refuge on top of a mountain, the seeing is so clear that, if you didn’t know better, it might not occur to you that the star is even moving.
(You know better now; you can’t trust your eyes.)
Sometimes there’s no such luck, and even the Moon wavers like a coin submerged in shallow water. When seeing is at its worst, the Aristarchus crater on the Oceanus Procellarum can suffer so much distortion that it’s only intermittently visible. If you know what you’re looking for, and you know your numbers, you can calculate the seeing from that.
Marika doesn’t learn this until it’s too late. For her, Aristarchus is always just a pale dot in a black sea, washing in and out of sight; a star on dark water, or a drowning man.
Maybe the old man held out a hand as he toppled—a reflex, second thoughts—but Marika never remembers. Maybe he called for help, or tried to pull himself up before the water took him, but it might be a lie.
This moment always blurs when she tries to recall it; it wavers like the Moon, sneaks sidelong into her imagination when she’s running checklists on the three-seat ship that will carry them to Gliese 581.
(She doesn’t think she was terrified watching the old man drop into the water, but she must have been; whenever he appears in her thoughts she freezes, fumbles for something to hold on to.)
When she’s drunk enough and dreaming, sometimes he holds out his arm and the star-wake catches him, pulls him smoothly across the water until he disappears into the sky.
But it was only Jupiter, she thinks, not a star; you know that now.
She wakes up grieving, doesn’t know why.
Marika calls it Gliese 581 because she doesn’t ever want to pin her hopes on a planet by mistake.
Their spacesuits are molded in the Orlan model—a thick skin they can pull on and clamp shut—and Konstantinova thinks it’s remarkably like wearing an elephant.
Apparently it’s not as bad as it used to be. The gloves are more articulated, the legs less bulky. There’s still no joint at the neck; the chest is stiff to support the oxygen and coolant strapped to the back.
Before Alkonost I, she and Zeke and Marika run drills until they can all get in, attach the water-coolant hoses, and seal up in five minutes; in four; in three.
Konstantinova always hears an exhale over the mike when Marika’s fastened in. For a long time she thinks it’s relief. Exertion, maybe. Panic, maybe. (Marika is a liability; why they’re sending her up is anyone’s guess.)
But once, Konstantinova sees Marika’s face as Zeke seals her in: Marika frowns, brushes at the helmet’s gold-coated visor like she’s cleaning a dirty glass.
(The sound is a sigh. It hurts.)
Konstantinova’s life-support system whirrs awake.
“Clear,” she says, turns her mind to important things.
“The life-support system isn’t active in the pods,” says Zeke. “Shit. Mission Control, are you reading me?”
An acknowledgement comes back over the static; then a plan. Marika and Zeke fish around in the toolbox and do as they’re told. Konstantinova takes comm, passing along a series of orders that become wild guesses.
No one panics until they realize the ambient heat from the launch melted a circuit in the outer hull that can’t be set right again.
Mission Control goes quiet for a long time.
Marika and Zeke wait, holding the handrails to keep from floating away; at the comm, Konstantinova is bent over like someone punched her in the stomach.
Then the Director says, “At full speed, it’s forty years to Dee. Operations calculates that it’s possible to make it, without suspension, on the existing life support.” A pause. “There’s not enough for a return.”
He doesn’t say, We might not have this chance again, if this ship comes down in pieces. He doesn’t say, You might as well take your chances, things aren’t any better on the ground.
Konstantinova’s visor trembles against the net of stars.
“You’ll have some life support after landing,” comes over the line. “A day, maybe, maybe a week. Depends how much oxygen you use on the trip. But even a day is long enough to find out if Dee is really habitable.”
The Director clears his throat. “This isn’t a call we’re going to make, Alkonost. It’s up to you.”
After a long time, Konstantinova says, “No.”
Zeke says, “And I’m a No. That’s majority—we’re no-go, Control. We’re inputting a new trajectory. Confirm.”
Konstantinova curses under her breath, until the roar of the atmosphere swallows the words.
After it’s over, Konstantinova pulls Marika out of the hatch.
“My hand hurts,” Marika says, absently.
Konstantinova says, “We broke your fingers.”
(This is the second; it is nearly the eclipse.)
Marika doesn’t remember anything until they play the recording.
Then she listens as Zeke orders her more and more sharply to let go of the handhold and strap in for re-entry, where are you going, the decision’s been made, this is an order, don’t touch the hatch, have you lost your mind, that’s an order, answer me goddammit, move back now or I’ll make you move.
“Why didn’t you answer?” they ask her.
She says, “I did.”
(Not then—when Zeke blocked the hatch and broke her fingers, it was Konstantinova who yelped.
But on the recorder, as soon as the Director said “It’s possible to make it,” she said “Go.”)
They put Marika back at the computer bank, and she gauges wind resistance and plots angles and tells the telescope where it should be pointing.
(She’s still good at it; she just doesn’t look behind her any more where the map is, where the ghosts of the stars flicker and shine.)
It’s a week before anyone talks to her.
The first person who does is Konstantinova.
“Can you move your fingers?”
Marika says, “Yes.”
A week later, Konstantinova hands her a screwdriver, says, “Prove it.”
Konstantinova makes her do mechanic drills at night, after the others are asleep.