Today, she had already cleared the air vent filters in each module — that had taken an hour and a half — and she had bundled the week’s laundry and food waste into containers and put them in the FGB, where they were stored for collection. Now she was checking the water reclamation tanks to make sure they were working as they should. Novitskiy had shown her how to do it, and it was fairly simple: most of the work only required her to check on self-regulating automated systems.
There was a clipboard fastened to the wall next to the water reclamation tanks, and she ran through each step, pushing the corresponding button indicated and checking that the LED flashed green. The system confirmed that all was well. With no one else on board there was less humidity and urine to reclaim, but because she was drinking less it seemed to even out and the storage tank remained within the safe limits.
‘Done and done,’ she said, affixing the clipboard back to the wall.
Just one more thing to do today: air mix test. The main tanks and readouts were located in the front portion of the FGB, and she paddled her way from the American half, through the tight, conical PMA One, and into the FGB. It was a different environment in here compared to the quiet, computerised water reclamation tanks. It was noisy, industrial and complicated. Pipes wound in from every direction, valves and gauges sprouting from them like wild mushrooms, hissing and vibrating to the touch. Another checklist was fastened to the wall, and she followed through it. Most things were fine, but the odd valve needed a tweak here and there to bring the gauges back to their centres. One smaller valve was particularly tight, and as she gripped and twisted with all her strength it snapped open, exhaling a jet of gas that made her jump. She tightened it up again, watching as the gauge needle crept back into the safe zone, and breathed a sigh of relief.
The clipboard had been flung out of her hand by the jet of gas and was still spinning off towards the service module. She pushed off to get it. As easy as weightlessness made some activities, for others it was a pain, the casual ability for small items to wander off being one of them. As the clipboard tumbled, it collided with the walls, and soon it came to a stop against a laptop. She breezed over the storage crates in the FGB and entered the service module, and as she reached out for the clipboard, something caught her eye. With a small flutter of apprehension, she looked downwards into the MLM, but saw nothing. Dismissing it as a trick of the light, she grabbed the clipboard, but then she saw the movement again. She hesitated, then entered the MLM, letting her eyes adjust to the dark.
‘Hello?’ she called out, her own voice making her skin prickle.
A flash of shadow from the bulbous end of the MLM made her stop, her heart beating fast in her throat.
‘Hello?’ she called again.
There was no response, so she continued downwards, feeling the horrible closeness of fear wind her senses into overdrive. And then she saw it: completely naked and curled up into a ball, was a man.
It didn’t take much persuasion to get Novitskiy into the car. Bales’ stooges were coming round, and once that was pointed out to him, he did as they asked. Sean filled him in during the car journey back to Grigory’s.
‘That’s quite a story,’ Novitskiy said. ‘If only half right.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sean said.
‘You said that me, Romanenko and Williams were back. That’s not right. Gardner’s back — Romanenko isn’t. Neither is Fisher.’
This revelation made no sense to Sean. He thought about it for a moment, but nothing came of it. There was no reason to leave Romanenko and Sally up there together.
‘Why bring Gardner back? Why not Romanenko?’
Novitskiy pulled a face. ‘I guess you haven’t heard, then. Mikhail — he disappeared.’
The car swerved as Aleks turned to look at Novitskiy from the driver’s seat. He didn’t look happy. ‘What? Is he hurt?’ he said, snatching at the wheel to correct the wobble.
‘He just upped and left, taking Soyuz, but not before destroying the comms system.’
Sean shook his head. He wasn’t disagreeing with Novitskiy, just trying to understand what he was hearing. It made no sense. ‘And he didn’t come back?’
‘Nope. Chris was mortified. He unwittingly helped Romanenko take Soyuz during what he thought was a routine check.’ He faltered, and looked out the window. ‘I can’t say it was easy for me, either. He was a good friend.’
‘Yes he was,’ Aleks said from up front.
‘The strangest thing,’ Novitskiy said, turning back to Sean with a thought lighting his face, ‘was when we recovered Soyuz.’
‘I thought you said Romanenko didn’t come back?’ Sean said.
‘That’s the strange thing. Soyuz was empty. Romanenko was gone. Gardner had fallen into a coma trying to recover it, and Williams, he… he injured himself. Neither could stay.’
It was like there was a brick wall just behind Sean’s eyes. What Novitskiy was saying was going in like it should but bouncing off without him being able to fully comprehend what had happened. He struggled to focus — trying to understand Romanenko’s behaviour seemed like an impossibility. But from the mist, one thought came through clear as a bell. ‘So Sally’s on her own?’
Novitskiy looked out the window again. ‘Yes.’
‘Jesus…’ Aleks said.
Aleks and Novitskiy continued talking about Sally and Romanenko, but Sean wasn’t really listening. He was busy untangling the world’s largest ball of mental wool. What he realised was that Bales would need to send someone else up soon. His logic was simple: Gardner had gone to plant the bomb, but had failed. He deduced this from the fact that the station was still in one piece, and as a consequence, so was Sally. That made it a straightforward connection to realise that Bales would need to replace Gardner with someone else, send them up to kick start the mission and destroy UV One. But what if he hasn’t done it because he doesn’t want to kill Sally? No. That didn’t fit the profile. Bales had killed Lev for standing in his way, and Sally was a much more insignificant blot than he was. Sean imagined that Bales was probably mortified at Gardner’s return, coma or no coma. Maybe UV One knew what Gardner was trying to do, and stopped him? The thought made a cold shiver run down his spine.
‘Did Bales say how he felt about you coming back?’ Sean asked.
‘Well, he wasn’t to fussed about my return,’ Novitskiy said. ‘But he seemed pretty concerned about Gardner. I wanted him to let me go back, you know, to get Sally, but he said no. That was when I left. It made me so angry.’
If Sean was certain of his hypothesis before, he was convinced now. Novitskiy may not have known it, but by coming back to Earth he had bought Sean — and Sally — a bit more time. ‘How long do you think it’ll be before he can send someone else up?’
‘I don’t know… a few weeks at best? There’s a resupply mission due soon, I expect he’ll commandeer that.’
Two weeks. It wasn’t long, but it was better than nothing.
Back at Grigory’s — and after another delicious meal while Novitskiy filled them in with all the details of UV One — Sean discovered through a twenty-year–old scanned news clipping that Ruth Shaw’s last-known address was the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, Nevada, but that was the most recent thing he could find on her. There was nothing on her relatives, her current state of wellbeing—nothing at all. Pretty much every trace of her personal life was absent from public record. Sean needed to go and see her, but first he needed to make sure she was still alive at the very least, and that meant a trip to the forest.