Marshall’s blush deepened. He really did turn the most unfortunate shade of sunburned red. “I guess so,” he said. “Brooklyn, it’s your turn.”
Brooklyn breezed in and, flipping herself to hang upside down, performed the final checks on Donna’s suit. “You’ve got eight hours,” she said. “Sorry it couldn’t be more. Tango is already on her way, and she’ll be there to meet you when you land.”
“What’s Tango’s charge like?”
“She’s sprinting to meet you, so she’ll be half-empty by the time she hits the rendezvous point,” Marshall said. “But there’s a set of auxiliary batteries in the cargo area. You’d have to move them to get into the cockpit anyhow.”
Donna nodded. The reality of what was about to happen was settling on them. How odd, Khalidah thought, to be weightless and yet to feel the gravity of Donna’s mission tugging at the pit of her stomach. The first human on Mars. The first woman. The first cancer patient. She had read a metaphor of illness as another country, how patients became citizens of it, that place beyond the promise of life, and now she thought of Donna there on the blood-red sands, representing them. Not just a human, but a defiantly mortal one, one for whom all the life-extension dreams and schemes would never bear fruit. All the members of the Ganesha crew had augmentations to make their life on Mars more productive and less painful. Future colonists would doubtless have similar lifehacks. Donna was the only visitor who would ever set an unadulterated foot on that soil.
“I’ll be watching your vitals the whole time,” Song said. “If I don’t like what I see, I’ll tell Marshall to take control of Tango and bring you back.”
Donna cracked a smile. “Is that for my benefit, or the machine’s?”
“Both,” Song said. “We can’t have you passing out and crashing millions of dollars’ worth of machine learning and robotics.”
And then, too soon, the final checks were finished, and it was time for Donna to go. The others drifted to the other side of the airlock, and Brooklyn ran the final diagnostic of the detachment systems. Khalidah’s hands twitched at her veil. She had no idea what to say. Why did you lie to us? Did you really think that would make this easier? What were you so afraid of?
Donna regarded her from the interior of her suit. She looked so small inside it. Khalidah thought of her fragile body shaking inside its soft volumes, her thin neck and her bare skull juddering like a bad piece of video.
“I want—”
“Don’t,” Donna said. “Don’t, Khal. Not now.”
For the first time in a long time, Khalidah peeped at Donna’s aura through the additional layer in her lenses’ vision. It was deep blue, like a very wide and cold stretch of the sea. It was a colour she had never seen on Donna. When she looked at her own pattern, it was much the same shade.
Marshall chose this moment to poke his head in. “It’s time.”
Donna reached over to the airlock button. “I have to go now, Khalidah.”
Before Khalidah could say anything, Marshall had tugged her backward. The door rolled shut. For a moment she watched Donna through the small bright circle of glass. Then Donna’s helmet snapped shut, and she wore a halo within a halo, like a bullseye.
The landing was as Marshall promised: smooth as silk. With Corvus he was in his element. He and the vessel knew each other well. They’d moved as much of Corvus’ cargo as they could into temporary storage outside the hab; the reduced weight would give Donna the extra boost on the trip back that she might need.
Donna herself rode out the landing better than any of them expected. She took her time unburdening herself of her restraints, and they heard her breathing heavily, trying to choke back the nausea that now dominated her daily life. But eventually she lurched free of the unit, tuned up the jets on her suit, jiggered her air mix, and began the unlocking procedure to open Corvus. They watched her gloved hands hovering over the final lock.
“I hope you’re not expecting some cheesy bullshit about giant leaps for womankind,” Donna said, panting audibly. She sounded sheepish. For Donna, that meant she was nervous. “I didn’t really have time to prepare any remarks. I have a job to do.”
Brooklyn wiped her eyes and covered her mouth. Marshall passed her a tissue, and took one for himself.
“You’ve wanted this since you were a little girl, Donna,” Song said. “Go out there and get it.”
Together they watched the lock spin open, and Donna eased herself out. There was Tango, ready and waiting. And there was Mars, or at least their little corner of it, raw and open and red like a wound.
“I wish I could smell it,” Donna said. “I wish I could taste the air. It feels strange to be here and yet not be here at the same time. You can stand here all you want and never really touch it.”
“You can look at the samples when you bring them back,” Brooklyn managed to say.
Donna said nothing, only silently made her way to Tango and moved the samples back to Corvus. Then she began the procedure to get Tango into manual. Her feed cut out a couple of times, but only briefly; they hadn’t thought to test the signal on the cameras themselves. Her audio was fine, though, and Marshall talked her through when she had questions. In the end it ran like any other remote repair. Even the dig went well; clearing the dirt from the drill and re-starting it from the control panel was a lot simpler than any of them had expected.
Halfway back to Corvus, Tango slowly rolled to a stop.
“Donna, check your batteries,” Marshall suggested.
There was no answer. Only Donna’s slow, wet breathing.
“Donna, copy?”
Nothing. They looked at Song; Song pulled up Donna’s vitals. “No changes in her eye movements or alpha pattern,” Song whispered. “She’s not having a seizure. Donna. Donna! Do you need help?”
“No,” Donna said, finally. “I came here to do a job, and now I’m finished with it. I’m done.”
Something in Khalidah’s stomach turned to ice. “Don’t do this,” she whispered, as Marshall began to say “No, no, no,” over and over. He started bashing things on the console, running every override he could.
“No, you don’t, you crazy old broad,” he muttered. “I can get Tango to drive you back, you know!”
“Not if I’ve ripped out the receiver,” Donna said. She sounded exhausted. “I think I’ll just stay here, thank you. Ganesha can deal with me when they come. You don’t have to do it. You’d have had to freeze me, anyway, and vibrate me down to crystal, like cat litter, and—”
“Fuck. You.”
It was the first full complete sentence that Khalidah had spoken to her in months. So she repeated it.
“Fuck you. Fuck you for lying to us. Again. Fuck you for this selfish fucking bullshit. Oh, you think you’re being so romantic, dying on Mars. Well fuck you. We came here to prove we could live, not…” Her lips were hot. Her eyes were hot. It was getting harder to breathe. “Not whatever the fuck it is you think you’re doing.”
Nothing.
“Donna, please don’t,” Brooklyn whispered in her most wheedling tone. “Please don’t leave us. We need you.” She sounded like a child. Then again, Khalidah wasn’t sure she herself sounded any better. Somehow this loss contained within it all the other losses she’d ever experienced: her mother, her father, the slow pull away from the Earth and into the shared unknown.
“This is a bad idea,” Marshall said, his voice calm and steady. “If you want to take the Lethezine, take the Lethezine. But you don’t know how it works—what if it doesn’t go like you think it will, and you’re alone and in pain down there? Why don’t you come back up, and if something goes wrong, we’ll be there to help?”