by Temi Oh
Commander Bovarin was heading around the corner towards the service modules. She and Eliot trudged after him, heavy in their suits.
The service modules were in uninhabited parts of the ship. Beneath the crew module, on the lowest deck, sandwiched between the equipment rooms and the escape shuttle. The service module was the compartment that contained the fuel cells and batteries that provided power to the spacecraft, as well as essential computer systems like guidance and thermal control. Igor pulled open the aft fuselage access door to reach it and when Astrid peered inside, her heart sank. The entire module was a tangle of melted copper wiring. She felt a sickening swoop in her stomach. The service module was their lifeline. Without it, they had no hope of powering the ship, and without power, there was no way to continue the mission.
The prospect of making it to Terra-Two was receding from them. Astrid’s eyes began to sting.
As Igor pulled through the wreckage, she heard his groan of despair over the headset. But his words came to her as if from a vast distance. ‘We’ve lost three essential buses, ESS1BC, ESS2CA and ESS3AB. . . . And a power surge in the fuel cells means two of them are unserviceable . . . The LiOH is . . .’
In the end, they settled for doing the only thing that they could do and patched up the holes in the wall, so that the crew would be able to access the lower deck without having to climb into spacesuits. Then they returned to the middle deck in silent misery, running through the motions of shutting down the EMU systems and other components, changing out batteries and cartridges.
‘We don’t have much time left,’ Eliot said. The entire EVA had taken six hours.
‘Yes . . .’ said Igor quietly. ‘The service module is just too damaged to support this crew. We don’t have the spare parts we need, not on this ship.’
‘We can’t just give up,’ Astrid said.
‘No. We can’t just give up. But we have to face the fact that the mission has changed now. My job now is to get the crew home safely.’
‘You mean . . . abandon the mission?’
‘We still have one serviceable escape shuttle.’ Igor was taking apart his EMU as he spoke. ‘It’s enough to get six people back home.’
A chill ran through her. ‘Six people,’ she said softly. And behind both their words, the grim understanding that four people would have to stay behind. Astrid didn’t know what would be worse; suffocating in their crippled ship or heading back to Earth in the cramped shuttle, heavy with failure and regret. There would be no gravity on the shuttle, and with each passing day, during the months it would take to return, their bones would begin to turn to dust. Even as Astrid imagined it she knew it wouldn’t be her. She knew she would not abandon the Damocles or any hope of completing their mission.
‘We’ve fought a good battle,’ Igor said.
‘No,’ Eliot and Astrid said in unison.
She remembered what Poppy had told her, about watching Harry and Jesse steer the Congreve to safety. Astrid had tried to imagine the strength it had taken to keep flying even when the sky was on fire and death was at the end of any careless turn. She knew that her father would say that their God had not brought them this far to fail. Astrid had to believe that too. She had to believe that her destiny was not to die amongst the stars but to bring her crew to rest on the still shores of Terra-Two. She had to hold on to it, and even as she did an idea crystallized in her mind.
‘Is there no chance we can be rescued? Couldn’t a resupply rocket arrive with a new service module attached, or one with all the spare parts we need?’
Such things had happened on previous missions. Two years earlier a centrifugal module had broken on Orlando, and the crew had relied on a two-person resupply shuttle from Mars, whose technicians made the repair in two months.
‘Even if the communications come back online and we request rescue,’ Igor said, ‘our nearest port of call would have been Orlando, but obviously it’s no longer possible for them to fly here and repair the damage. The next closest manned human outpost is currently the Russian expedition on Phobos. Even if they agreed to send any technicians they could spare it would take around eight to fourteen weeks. And we’re looking at a matter of hours.’
‘Because of the oxygen supply,’ Astrid said, biting her lip.
‘What if we take apart the service module in the escape shuttle?’ Eliot suggested. ‘We could fix the lithium dioxide to our filters and scrub out the excess CO2. And then . . .’ he was breathless with excitement, ‘if we take apart the fuel cells and use them as an auxiliary power supply we would have enough power and oxygen to last us six months.’
‘Three months,’ Igor said. ‘There are enough consumables on the escape shuttle to last a crew of five for twenty-four weeks. With a crew twice the size it would last half that time, or possibly a lot less; if you consider the volume of this ship compared to the shuttle, the pressure of oxygen would be lower.’
‘Three months,’ Astrid said, hope filling her like wind in sails. ‘That’s still enough time for a service shuttle from Mars – I mean, Phobos – to reach us.’
‘Just enough . . . assuming the comms are fixed and that Roscocosmos have the resources to spare. And the inclination.’
‘Ig— Commander Bovarin,’ Astrid said, ‘it’s a chance, at least . . . it’s a chance.’
‘We’ve had our chance,’ Igor said. ‘I’m not gambling anymore with the lives of young people now in my care.’
‘But—’
‘Taking apart the one working escape vessel would be like burning a life raft.’
‘It would be like using a life raft,’ Astrid implored.
‘There is no guarantee. I would rather be sure you can get back to your family alive than gamble on a chance only for us all to die here.’
‘Or for us all to live,’ Astrid said. ‘For us all to live and make it to Terra-Two.’
‘Astrid.’ His voice was harsh. ‘You just saw the damage in the service module. It’s irreparable. Short of a full replacement there is no way we’re going anywhere anytime soon. Commander Sheppard is badly injured. Dr Golinsky seems to think that he might be dying, and so am I.’ He looked away from her for a moment as if he could see it, the space station like a bright satellite above the milky surface of Europa. ‘I know what it feels like to lose a whole crew. You think you’re safe, but things change like this—’ He snapped his fingers. ‘One moment they were talking to us, smiling at us, and then . . . at least I get some time.’
Astrid shuddered at the thought of the way death had snatched the crew on Orlando, the suddenness.
‘It could have been like that for us too,’ Eliot said, his blue eyes drifting to the hatch.
‘That’s right. I’m not a religious man but thanks to some act of fate or the universe or I don’t know . . . I had a chance to save my crew. This ship didn’t turn into a coffin. Astrid, I’m not throwing that away.’
By then, her throat was thick with tears; she pleaded, pushing her hands together. ‘Just think about it?’
Igor opened and shut his mouth. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said finally. ‘In the meantime, you have work to do.’
Astrid nodded and got on with it. But all the while she was thinking about how it could happen, the machinery, the tools she would require. She thought about the different ports she would need adaptors for and then cast her mind to rescue.
She often considered all the chance events that had led her to this point; that she had come into the world screaming in a decade when interstellar travel had become possible. She had been chosen from millions, plucked from oblivion to be the glory of the people. There were other miracles too; the fact of life, of the sun rising above an ancient habitable planet, somewhere close by, waiting for her. So why give up hope today?
JESSE
1 P.M.
JESSE SLEPT IN THE greenhouse until noon. Sunk low in the dreamless oblivion of the sleep-deprived. For the first time in months, he was plagued by no visions of the buzzing simulator or the pri
ckling static of the controls or the cockpit splayed before him.
When he awoke, the flight simulating game was like a sickness he’d been cured of. His body was so stiff with cold that he couldn’t feel his own legs. His fingers were numb, his nail-beds blue, icy needles of pain prickling up his arms all the way to his elbows. He was alone.
He sat up with some difficulty and looked around, expecting to find Juno’s shadow flitting like a sylph through the trees. But she was gone, and overnight the algae spills had frozen into green floes, and water dripping from the automated sprinklers had hardened like stalactites. Everywhere, new buds were strangled by ice. Near the bridge, the blast had ripped sturdy roots right out of the ground.
‘Juno?’ He listened to his voice echo in the darkness, then stood with great difficulty. His feet were like blocks, his toes felt as if they had swollen in his boots and pain spiked up the back of his leg. He limped to the hatch and slid down the ladder.
On the middle deck, the alarm thundered in his ears. He looked up and down the half-lit corridor, calling out the names of his crew.
He knew that Astrid, Eliot and Commander Bovarin were probably coming to the end of their spacewalk by this time of the afternoon, and so he headed to the control room, expecting to find everyone chatting triumphantly, giving each other high-fives and crying joyful tears because they had repaired the ship. But when he arrived, he found that the control room was empty.
Jesse finally discovered Poppy, Fae and Juno gathered in the kitchen like mourners at a wake. Poppy was bent over the table, her hands clasped together, sobbing uncontrollably. Fae was putting cans of food in boxes. ‘We’re going home,’ Juno said. She appeared like the sun from the corner of the room, and Jesse smiled in spite of himself at the sight of her.
‘You need to pack,’ Fae told him. ‘You don’t have long. Please get your personal effects together in a box,’ she handed him one, a metal container twice the size of a shoebox, ‘and then come back here for further instructions. I would prefer if you packed within half an hour.’
‘Wait, what?’ Jesse asked. ‘Why?’
‘The service module can’t be fixed,’ Juno told him. ‘Didn’t you hear it over the headset?’
‘I was up in the greenhouse,’ Jesse told her.
‘They’re making us leave,’ Poppy said, her voice thick with despair. ‘They’re making us leave them.’
Jesse looked at Fae in disbelief. The doctor’s hands were shaking a little and she lowered her eyes. His gut twisted with grief at Poppy’s words. ‘Is this true?’ he asked Fae, desperate to believe that it wasn’t. If they left now, she and Cai, Commander Sheppard and Commander Bovarin, would only have a few more hours to live.
Before Jesse could speak, Commander Bovarin entered and they all looked up, straightening their backs. Astrid stood in his shadow, her hair still tied up under a skullcap, which made her flint-black eyes curve up like a cat’s. ‘The shuttle will depart in T-minus six hours,’ Igor said, looking at his watch, then at Fae. ‘You’ve already begun the preparations?’
Jesse simply stared wordlessly at the man, his mind reeling. He could hardly begin to accept what Igor was saying, what it meant.
‘No.’ Astrid stepped in front of the commander, but he waved her words away.
‘The decision has been made,’ he said.
‘And that’s it: you’re just giving up?’ Astrid’s voice was loud in the hush of the kitchen and her shadow stretched across the table.
‘The decision has been made,’ he repeated stiffly.
‘Aren’t you going to at least tell them?’
‘Astrid.’ Fae’s voice was full of reproach. It was rare for any one of them to deliberately disobey a senior’s orders.
‘Tell us what?’ Poppy asked.
‘That there’s a chance to save the mission.’
‘Astrid, would you please—’
‘What is she talking about?’ Poppy asked.
‘Eliot worked it out.’ Astrid grabbed a marker from the middle of the desk, flipped over a discarded document and began writing. ‘Look here. We need to survive about two months for a rescue from Phobos.’ Poppy leant over to watch her write. ‘That means we need oxygen.’ She wrote ‘O2’ next to a bullet point. ‘And enough power to get and keep the comms online. We already have more than enough food to last us, and water if we ration it, and use the rest made from the fuel cells—’
‘But the service module’s not working,’ Poppy said, as if anyone could forget.
‘Yes, the main one, the one that is supposed to last us the two decades of this journey. But the escape shuttle can support a crew for six months. If we rewired the shuttle and used it as an auxiliary life support system, it could keep us alive – all of us – for at least twelve weeks. That’s more than enough time for us to be rescued. Enough time for a team from Phobos to come with spare parts and a new module.’
‘But—’ Poppy rubbed her head in confusion. ‘It took us months to get from Mars to Europa.’
‘But Mars is closer to Jupiter in its orbit now than it was in July,’ Astrid explained. ‘And the Russian shuttle is lighter than us. It could take them only two months, even hauling a service module.’
‘If they launched this week,’ Juno said, staring down at the page.
‘And that still doesn’t solve the problem with the computers,’ Cai said. ‘The thermal control system has shut down; we’re radiating all our excess heat out into space.’
Astrid smiled as if Cai had asked the exact right question. ‘So our engine and all the electrical systems we keep running mean that we are making excess heat from electrical energy all the time, and the job of the thermal controls are to get rid of the heat, to cool us and all the equipment down—’
‘Only when all systems are nominal,’ Cai said. ‘Right now, the thermal controls are overcompensating, so we’re losing more heat than we’re making.’
‘After we follow my plan we might even have enough oxygen to schedule a second EVA and fix that manually,’ Astrid said. ‘Thermal control is pretty basic engineering, at least on the hardware side. Eliot could do it. If we just take off some of the radiators that are absorbing the heat from the ship and pouring it out into space.’
‘That sounds risky,’ said Poppy. ‘What if rescue doesn’t come, or comes too late?’
‘We’ll be in the exact same situation we are now,’ said Jesse. ‘Only without a lifeboat.’
‘Exactly!’ Igor’s voice was startling. ‘I would rather half of you made it home safely than—’
‘Take a chance to make it to Terra-Two?’ Astrid interrupted. ‘Who’s to say that, after us, there will be another mission anytime soon? What if this is our only chance for the next couple of generations? If we come back, will people want to sign up for the Off-World Colonization Programme? What if governments decide it was not worth the money – everything that was sacrificed to get us just this far. There was talk that the Orlando mission might be discontinued entirely even before we left.’
‘Astrid!’ Igor slammed his hand down on the table and Astrid dropped her pen in surprise. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this. The decision has been made.’ Tears sprang to Astrid’s eyes but she fought to stay strong. She had been trained to listen to the captain’s orders and yet Jesse could see her entire body was shaking with anger.
‘You’re just giving up,’ she said. ‘The shuttle can leave without me. I’m staying here.’ She knocked the papers off the table so they scattered on the floor and stormed out of the room. In the silence that followed, Jesse heard the heavy sound of her boots as she climbed down the hatch.
For a moment, Jesse allowed himself to imagine Astrid’s plan. If they were rescued, then this time next year they could be in interstellar space. But, during training, Jesse had been taught that there was no disaster worse than mutiny. That the crew in a spacecraft needed to operate like one body, with the commander as the head. Jesse had not truly believed it until he and Harry had steered the
shuttle out of danger. The two of them had abandoned their disagreements and navigated the shuttle together in a ballet of technical skill, Harry taking the lead and Jesse anticipating his movements. So he swallowed his objections and kept quiet.
After the meeting, he headed down to the crew module. It was baffling to him that the ship was already a hive of activity. Eliot was on the lower deck, packing up their spacesuits for the flight home. Poppy was helping Fae to pick out the rations they required for the coming months. Harry was helping Juno download files from the ship’s computer. Jesse watched her for the seconds it took her to notice him. If he had not been chosen for the mission he would not have been given the chance to love her – and for a moment fate seemed kind. But then she spotted him, and Jesse remembered that yesterday they’d had more than twenty years together and now they had only a few months. The loss was devastating.
‘It seems crazy to me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes, as if he still believed that perhaps this afternoon was a terrible dream, ‘that we’re just leaving like this. Without them.’
‘I know.’ Juno twisted a cable around in her hands and bundled it into a storage box. The whole ship was like a music festival an hour after the headline act, grim industrious stage hands working to take the whole show down and pack it up, no time for sentiment.
‘What will happen?’ he asked her.
‘We’ll board in two hours,’ she said.
‘I mean, when we get back?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, and they gazed at each other in silence.
Jesse had already pictured an alternate life for them. Imagined Juno switching from biochemistry to politics, trekking the globe to negotiate treaties, conversing in six different tongues, penning laws that were like her Damocles Document writ large. Jesse imagined himself kneading the land, working with long-haired men and women on permaculture, building compost heaps and saving rainforests. They were different people, he realized with a sinking in his chest, going different places.
He left without saying anything.
In their cabin, Jesse found that Eliot had already stripped his bed of its sheets and peeled his posters off the walls, and even Harry had taken down a few of his things. The room pulsed with the same aching vacancy as their dormitories in Dalton at the end of term. Belongings packed up, the light glaring off naked walls stripped clumsily of posters and notices. A sorry sight, the nicked metal bedframes, the plastic mattress covers, the suddenly silent halls.