In that moment of shared ecstasy, Tapestry forced him to hold her gaze. He tried to glance away, feeling suddenly ashamed at the way he’d pushed so far forward back into sexual territory. Tapestry cupped her cheek in her hands and made him look at her.
She has me. For her, I’ll keep myself from ever losing control.
CHAPTER 26
Certain aspects of sex in space weren’t glamorous. The interesting positions raised by the possibility of zero gravity were counterbalanced by the annoyance of dealing with the reality of moisture and fluids. Malcolm and Tapestry abandoned the bag they’d been sharing in the ship’s washing machine within the bathroom after discovering that particular reality.
They slept in separate sleeping bags, though they drifted close by each other. It was the most restful sleep Malcolm had experienced in months.
Tapestry announced to him the next morning that the ship was nearing position for the Europa landing. She told him that ground control had decided that only one of them should take the lander down, even though the mission had originally planned for two to be inside the small moon craft.
“I’ll do it,” said Malcolm. “I’ve already experienced being inside a spacesuit once. It just makes more sense.”
He expected Tapestry to protest, but instead, she nodded in agreement.
“I think so too.” She frowned, looking worried. “Just… be careful. The last time you went outside the ship…”
I came back as a demon.
“Yeah, I think that can only happen once,” he said, with a smile. “Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve burned through my supply of bad luck for the mission.”
The only thing they had left to wait on was for the tiny orbital probes Tapestry had released at ground control’s behest to find Savior’s exact location. The moon was large, but small enough for the task to not be quite as daunting as it had originally sounded. Within a couple of hours, Tapestry informed him that they’d found what appeared to be Savior near one of Europa’s equatorial regions.
“And he’s still alive?” asked Malcolm, voicing the fear that he was sure Tapestry also shared.
“There’s no way to tell,” said Tapestry. “He’s just a dot on the sensors to the orbital probes.”
“Well, we can at least hope,” said Malcolm. “This is Savior we’re talking about.”
He thought back to the time he’d spent with the leader of the Champion Authority. Savior had been immune to essentially everything. Malcolm smiled a little as he thought about how that immunity had also seemed to extend to Savior’s public persona, his social and political gaffes never doing more than entertaining anyone who witnessed them.
Another hour went by before the orbital probes returned with confirmation of Savior’s location, and then it took another two for the ship to orbit around into position. Tapestry busied herself in the cockpit, poring over ground control’s instructions. When it was time, Malcolm heard her voice over the intercom.
“We have to do it now, Malcolm,” she said. “Get a space suit on and get yourself into the lander.”
Still as bossy as ever.
He picked a different suit than the damaged one he’d worn during his spacewalk. Tapestry came into the back of the ship to help him put it on, which he appreciated. Pulling the helmet in place triggered a sudden anxiety in him, fear leftover from what he’d felt while floating aimlessly through the void.
“You can do this,” said Tapestry. “I’ll still be within quick radio contact. All you need to do is ride the lander down, find Savior, and ride it back up. He should be within sight of wherever you touch down.”
“Got it.”
He climbed into the lander, which was attached to the side of the airlock. Tapestry sealed the door behind him using the controls in the cockpit. It was a cramped vessel, with a battery of controls that Malcolm didn’t know the function of and a small, circular viewport that looked out over Europa and Jupiter.
The view was breath taking, but not just for its beauty. The blackness of space meant something new to him after what he’d been though in his spacewalk. His palms began to sweat, and his heart fluttered with panic. It was the opposite of claustrophobia, a deep, not so irrational fear of being lost to the immensity of open space.
“Malcolm?” asked Tapestry. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he lied. “Can you see my heart rate?”
“I can see all your vitals,” she said. “I’m closing the door to the airlock and depressurizing it, as launch procedure dictates. You’ll be detaching shortly.”
Malcolm nodded, though of course, Tapestry couldn’t see the movement. He barely listened as she went through several other protocols, too distracted by what he could see outside the viewport. It felt as though he was preparing to face his own death.
Nothing will go wrong this time. I won’t even be in space, just on Europa and in the lander.
“Are you ready Malcolm?” asked Tapestry, over the speaker in his helmet.
“More than ready,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Alright. Good luck.”
There was the noise of a lock releasing, and then the lander was moving freely, falling away from the main ship. Messages streamed across one of the screens on the control console to his side. Tapestry had explained to him that most of the landing was automated, so there was very little for him to do when it came to “flying” the lander.
It fell toward Europa at a swift rate, the moon growing brighter and bigger as he approached its grand visage from space. He hadn’t been on the ship during its launch from Earth, so he’d never gotten a chance to see his own planet like this, a chance to really appreciate the scale of it.
Europa was huge, a moon, but also a world. The idea of finding a single man on its surface suddenly seemed like a ludicrous task. Malcolm tried to push the thought away, knowing that it was the worst possible time for him to be having such doubts.
Tiny rockets in the feet of the lander ignited as it began to pick up real speed, slowing his descent. The gravity was less than Earth’s, less than Luna, even, but still enough to make gliding down necessary.
More details of Europa’s surface began to come into view. It was a massive sheet of ice, with cracks in places, and thermal vents releasing vapor in others. Though the lander was descending toward a flat, open plain, Malcolm still felt fear prickle his neck as he imagined what would happen if he accidentally landed in one of the cracks.
Scientists had long theorized that underneath Europa’s ice could exist an entire ocean of life. Malcolm was looking for life on top of it, for a single living organism to bring back to Earth. And he desperately hoped that he’d be able to find him.
CHAPTER 27
The lander bounced on the ice as it touched down. Malcolm could hear Tapestry’s voice in his ear, though she was muttering to herself more than speaking to him. She read from a checklist, asking him for info on a dozen different stats from the command display before sounding satisfied that the landing had gone off without a hitch.
“Malcolm?” she called, over the speaker. “Are you ready?”
“About as ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.
“Once the lander depressurizes and opens its door, it stays open until you come back with Savior,” she said. “There’s no point in pressurizing it with nobody inside. This will make it easier when it comes time for you to leave, but it also means that the oxygen in your suit is all you have to breathe for the entire search.”
Malcolm took a calming breath, trying and failing to keep his thoughts away from the last time he’d been in his suit, reliant on a tiny supply of oxygen.