by Temi Oh
When she found Jesse, he was crying. He was lying on his back on a grassy platform near the radiation shelter, on the little mound of pillows and bedsheets he’d gathered there a few weeks ago in order to sleep in the garden. It was quite beautiful, Juno realized now, a bamboo skeleton of a roof above, hung with fairy-lights and wind chimes. They tinkled as she approached.
‘Jesse?’ Juno flicked on a little pen-light she’d found in a first aid kit. It gave her his face in tiny snatches, flashed off his retinas and his lips, which were blue as bruises. His skin was frozen. Juno bit back a scream. She had been surprised to tumble over the still weight of his body and for a horrible instant she thought that he was dead.
But the sound roused him and he opened his dark eyes.
‘Juno,’ he said, his breath like smoke.
‘You’re crying,’ she said, and he nodded. The side of his face was covered in dirt, and glass glittered in his hair.
Juno wasn’t sure if he was crying because of the shock, because of all that he had endured, or out of fear and grief or because – in the greenhouse – he could see that his months of work had come to almost nothing. His seedlings torn from the ground in a quick blast, their oxygen system crippled.
‘T-the air is here,’ he stammered, the words thick on his frozen lips.
Juno took off her jumper and wrapped it around him. She had learned about hypothermia before, so she already knew about the confusion that set in after core body temperature began to drop.
‘Come on. Let’s go back to the crew module. You need to warm up.’ He wouldn’t move, so Juno tried to roll him, but her own limbs were so heavy with exhaustion that she sighed and stopped. ‘Please. I’m not strong enough to carry you. You’ve got to help me. What are you doing?’
‘P-practising,’ he said.
‘Practising what?’
Jesse opened his hand. In the dim light it was difficult to see what he was holding. At first it looked as if he was bleeding, as if he’d squeezed a broken piece of glass, but then she realized that the shredded skin clumping in the lines of his palm was the slick flesh of crushed berries. The pulp ran down his wrists like blood. Near his head was the thin seedling. Half the stems had snapped off and around the roots, the water had frozen into silver veins of ice.
‘Dying,’ he said. ‘When it happens it won’t be so bad. It’ll be quick. Once the oxygen’s low enough.’ Juno pictured it, the trauma of suffocation, the tide of black horror that came with it, and suddenly the walls felt as if they were closing in on her. She had to lean back to steady herself. ‘There’s no alarm response,’ he continued. ‘You just fall asleep. It’s okay, apparently, it’s . . . euphoric.’
‘Jesse—’ she was shaking. ‘Please stop.’
His eyes rolled up to find hers.
‘Anyway,’ she knelt down beside him, ‘it’s all going to be okay. Tomorrow Igor and Eliot and maybe Astrid – since Sheppard is still sick – will do a spacewalk and fix the broken service module. Then we’ll be okay.’
‘You really think that?’ Jesse asked.
‘You don’t?’
‘What about all this?’ He looked around at the garden. ‘How will we fix this?’
‘It will take a while but . . . we’ll find a way,’ Juno said, although the words rang hollow in her ears.
‘I thought I was going to die out there,’ Jesse said.
‘But you didn’t. Apparently your flying was amazing, that’s what Harry says.’
‘Yeah. I don’t know how I did it. At first I thought it was all that practising that I did on the simulator, but just now I realized what happened to me: I’m not frightened anymore. It happened when Harry pushed me into the airlock.’
‘It took Harry’s stupid prank to teach you that?’ Juno said.
‘Yes, because when I stepped out of it, all I felt was grateful for every damned thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve seen an orbital sunrise, I’ve seen the curvature of the Earth, I’ve been close enough to touch Jupiter’s moons, I’ve lived for months in this garden in the stars . . . and I realized that if I only get to live one life, then I’m glad it’s been this one.’
When Juno opened her mouth the sobs came out. ‘Jesse,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid.’
He took her into his arms then and it was a good feeling, his beating heart, the smell of him.
‘You know,’ said Jesse, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry.’
‘I try not to,’ Juno said. Her eyes were still hot with tears, falling fast. She didn’t wipe them away.
He looked gentle in the dim light. His pupils flamed amber, and his lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks. ‘What would you do?’ she asked. ‘If you could go back?’
Jesse thought for a moment. ‘Say goodbye to my sister, Morrigan. The last night I talked to her she was trying to comfort me, about the launch and . . . I wasn’t in a great place then . . . I don’t think I ever properly said goodbye to her. I just ran out of the house. I think about her all the time, still sitting cross-legged in her pyjamas, where she was when I left her almost a year ago.’
Juno had never seen Jesse’s sister but she liked to imagine she had the same sharp features, the same full lips and easy smile, only she was bald and beautiful. Juno had heard that since the launch she’d dropped out of university to run a vegan crêperie in Camden. Maybe when people asked she told them, ‘I used to have a brother, but he went to space.’
‘I don’t know if you remember,’ said Juno, ‘but after your fight with Harry, when I met you in the games room and helped you with your wounds . . . you said—’
‘That I loved you.’ Juno felt her stomach leap, just hearing the words again.
‘That was the first time,’ she said.
‘Yeah . . .’ His voice was thoughtful. ‘I guess it must have been.’
‘Why?’ she asked, and then, annoyed by how pathetic that sounded, ‘I mean, why do you love me?’
‘I can’t give you reasons. What do you want, a list?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I can’t do that, Juno. I can’t tell you if you deserve it. Just like no one can tell me if I deserved to make it here or why Ara died. Or why an accident means that the lives of the crew on Orlando were snuffed out in an instant but our hearts are still beating. Do we deserve any of it? To live? To be loved? It’s a gift, Juno. Don’t you see that? You don’t earn it or lose it.’
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ Juno asked.
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t deserve to be here either,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking recently about whether or not I was ever even supposed to go to Terra-Two. It’s Astrid who’s always wanted to. It’s Astrid who’s dreamt about it. I did well in the tests but she scored more highly in the interviews and the personality quizzes when we were back in Dalton. I realized, one night, that it was very possible that one of us could make it into the Beta while the other one . . . was left behind. So we made a pact. We cheated.’
‘What?’ said Jesse. ‘How?’
‘Well, Astrid took my personality tests, and she went to the interviews with my name badge on. I did all the academics, the engineering, computing and astrophysics. We did that for a whole year.’ Jesse exhaled as if the wind had been knocked from him.
‘I wish you’d told me that earlier,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve spent almost a year here, feeling guilty. Feeling as if I have stolen my seat on this shuttle from a dead girl.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Juno. ‘I guess I was ashamed. I think that’s why I worked so hard on the Damocles Document and on being a good member of the crew. Maybe I thought I could carve out a purpose for myself, and really earn it. Deserve it.’
‘Well,’ said Jesse, ‘I guess everyone makes mistakes.’
‘But that’s the other thing,’ said Juno. ‘It wasn’t really a mistake. I’m glad I’m here. With you.’
There was a laid-back joy that came with letting go of her secret. It
had been easy. Easy like letting her feet go limp on the pedals of her bike, speeding down a hill just to feel how good it was, her heart in her throat, the wind in her ears.
She leant over and kissed him. He was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted. All night, fear and starvation had filled her mouth with the bitter taste of blood and metal, but Jesse was like glacé cherries. It was as if he had never kissed a girl before. He pulled away from her in surprise, tiny beads of sweat erupting from his fingertips.
‘Your heart is beating so fast,’ she said, laughing, although she could feel her own pulse throbbing in her veins. They smiled at each other, Jesse’s tooth caught on his bottom lip. Juno leant in to kiss him again, this time savouring everything, the warmth that spread through her, the way his hair felt through her fingers, like spiders’ silk. For the first time in a while, she was joyfully grateful for her whole body.
He told her that he thought she was beautiful and even before it happened, Juno could tell that he was already picturing it; the caution lights splashing her skin amber and rose, strands of her hair fluoresced chrome green, the arc of her spine and the backs of her thighs a study in electric blue.
‘Tell me when to stop,’ he said, taking off his top. Juno gazed for a moment at his skin, at the muscles he’d formed over months of labour in the greenhouse, jet hair in baby curls around his temples. She leant forward, and then her body was a warm weight on top of his. She saw, then, what an uncomplicated thing this was.
When she rolled onto her back he was slow unzipping her flight suit because his hands were shaking. He found a bleached cotton vest underneath, the same as his, and when she pulled it over her head, her breasts were like sandalwood moons, nipples like black coins. He kissed her stomach in a way that made her muscles jolt. His breath was hot on the little downy hairs that sprang up around her navel and he ran his fingers in circles along her hipbones, then lower down. Under the lace-trimmed edge of her knickers, the private warmth between her legs. It was a shock to feel someone else there, but Juno didn’t tell him to stop. His fingers were like ice, but she stared up at him, and his familiar face was all she could see, circled by a dark nimbus of stars.
‘I love you,’ he said again, and then the rest was easy.
It was a strange mix of intuitive and utterly alien. After a little embarrassed fumbling, he was inside her and she closed her eyes. They stopped, then started, then smiled at each other. Each time she felt herself clench against him with anxiety, Jesse stroked her and told her it was okay, to relax, and finally her mind was centred in her own body, drawn back the way it was sometimes when she was running, and her flesh became a Roman candle, her nerves electric. After a few minutes, their breathing grew heavy and irregular. Finally, the jolt came. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. It happened, quickly, almost accidentally, like skidding down a sloping street of black ice, one moment of terrible wonderful weightlessness and then the slap of hitting ground she forgot was there. Jesse tumbled with her with a sigh of gladness, and as soon as they finished they remembered the cold. It descended upon them like a net, the sweat on the nape of Juno’s neck freezing. Jesse had already begun shivering again.
Everything washed back on a low tide of despair. Jesse’s hair still smelt of smoke, and there was a smattering of bruises spreading across the tight ridges of his stomach.
They were running out of air.
She wondered if they could try again, and if her body would welcome her back into oblivion.
The heavy material of her flight suit was cool as a tomb when she climbed back into it, and as she did up the zip again she could tell that Jesse was still staring at her.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, and Juno was glad that when she lay back beside him he couldn’t see her. ‘Are you okay?’
She examined herself for a moment. Here were the familiar pricklings of trepidation and embarrassment – as she had expected – but then, gazing up at the stars, she realized she could feel something else too, something kinder and new.
ASTRID
08. 02.13
THE FIRST AMERICAN TO perform a spacewalk was Lieutenant Colonel Ed White, on a mission for Gemini IV. Unlike modern spacewalks, which could last for hours, he had only twenty minutes until he ran out of oxygen.
What had it been like? Astrid always wondered. The first American to behold his home from low earth orbit: the California coast, the unobscured sun. People said that those were the shortest twenty minutes of his whole life.
Right at the end, when his time was running out, he found he didn’t want to leave. He stalled, staring back at the Earth. The beauty of it cut him to the bone, but he was running out of time. His crewmates told him to turn away and hurry, that he was running out of oxygen. But what strength it took, to turn away from this gift he had been given – he, a mere mortal – gazing through the eyes of God. Mission control screamed at him to return, and when he finally did he said, ‘It’s the saddest moment of my life.’
6 A.M.
ASTRID WOKE TO THE sound of the O2 alarm, and her mind was jolted back into her body. She had fallen asleep in one of the large chairs on the flight deck and the readout on the dashboards showed that their oxygen levels were close to critical. They had about thirty hours left.
‘Astrid.’ Eliot turned to her, his eyes red with sleeplessness.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked. He glanced at his watch.
‘Our EVA’s in about forty minutes or so,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Astrid nodded. Her head was still full of sleep, but she stood up slowly. ‘Any news about Sheppard?”
‘No,’ said Eliot.
‘I’ll be watching all the time,’ Poppy said from the comms deck.
‘Right.’
‘Don’t be too nervous.’
‘It’s fine,’ Astrid assured her. ‘I’ve never done one before.’
It was true, there was a small thrill that came from being the first to do a spacewalk, even if it was only inside the ship. Astrid had spent more than 200 hours underwater in her bulky spacesuit in the Weightless Environment Training Facility at the space centre in London, so many days running through scripted procedures in the submerged mock-up of the ship that it was difficult to believe that finally she was going to do it for real.
She had always imagined that the day she donned a spacesuit it would be to step out into the darkness of space. But during this EVA she, Eliot and Commander Bovarin would only be stepping down into the vacuum of the lower deck to try to repair the damaged service module. Astrid’s stomach fluttered. If they were unable to fix it, they would not have enough oxygen or power left to perform a second EVA. Not only were her life and the lives of her crew dependent on their success, but if the mission was aborted it was possible that none of them would ever see the clear sky of Terra-Two, and the thought was too horrible to contemplate.
The ship was dark as the ocean floor. The emergency lights flared amber and red at intervals down the corridor, and the acrid smell of smoke clung to the fibres of her T-shirt. Astrid rubbed her arms – she was already beginning to feel the chill in the air. The Damocles was radiating heat into space. If they didn’t fix the temperature controls soon it was going to get a lot colder, and quickly.
Astrid climbed down the hatch and onto the middle deck, where she found their commander. ‘Dobroe utro,’ Commander Bovarin said. Good morning. He had already unpacked their spacesuits. ‘Ready to begin?’
DESCENDING INTO AN AIRLESS vacuum required a strict set of preparations. Astrid followed Igor’s lead, moving almost mechanically as they checked their EMU systems, held masks silently to their faces to pre-breathe. Then they donned their suits, a tedious process that took almost forty minutes, then more checks, examining the rubber seals in the spacesuits for leaks, then pre-breathing again. Although Astrid had long ago learned the entire process off by heart, she sometimes found herself hard pressed to remember exactly what every step was for. She knew that pre-breathing – which eliminated all the nitrogen from the bod
y – was to avoid the bends. The bends happen when the nitrogen in an astronaut’s bloodstream does what the carbon dioxide in a shaken Coke can does after it’s opened. Only, inside her. The thought of bubbles itching and creeping under her skin made her shudder.
‘I can’t count how many hours of EVA I’ve logged during my years,’ Igor said. ‘But it’s always humbling to think that there’s only this—’ he pressed his fingers together – ‘a few millimetres of fabric and metal between you and nothing.’
‘Is it true what they say?’ Eliot asked, grabbing his helmet.
‘What do they say?’ Astrid asked.
‘That space smells like gunpowder?’
‘You’ll find out for yourself soon,’ Igor said, lacing up a boot. ‘When we come back.’
‘I’ve heard it leaves a smell on the suits,’ Eliot said, looking down. ‘A smell on our spacesuits and gloves. Like burning. Smoky. Sweet.’
Astrid pulled her visor down and said, ‘I’ve heard it’s because of all the combustion going on in the stars.’
Fifteen minutes later they were finally ready to leave, and headed down to the lower deck.
The darkness was unnerving. Astrid had only the lights of her helmet to penetrate the blackness. What lightbulbs there had been had broken, or blown.
A little further along the corridor she spotted the shattered porthole window she had tried to repair the previous day. She shuddered. In the hull of the ship was a scorched hole where they’d been hit. It looked as if a missile had blasted through the metal, a black starburst of soot radiating away from the hole.
‘Heading to the first quadrant.’ Commander Bovarin’s voice crackled through her headset. Astrid followed him. Although she was breathing the clean oxygen in her suit, she could almost imagine the smell of the corridor, of charred plastic and electricity, and as she passed, she was careful to avoid the glinting fingers of exposed wires, the sliced ventilation tubes that Juno and Eliot had tossed aside to close the door to the bridge.