“Could have been anyone.” DeBeer pushed Rafael’s hand away, exposing the full sign.
Colored Restroom.
I slammed the measuring spoons on the counter. “You asshole.”
“It was over the zero-g toilet.” Rafael ripped the newspaper out of DeBeer’s hands. “Vai pentear macacos.”
DeBeer surged up out of his seat, shoving the chair back. He had a good seven centimeters on Rafael, and used all of them to loom over him. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Why? Am I too dark for you?” Rafael put both hands on DeBeer’s chest and shoved. “Are you dirty now?”
DeBeer pushed back. And then they both just snapped, fists and words flinging around the room.
I ran forward. “Guys! Stop. Stop! This isn’t—”
I had to dodge backward as they tumbled toward me. Dawn chose a more useful course, and ran to the wall intercom. She slapped the button. “Parker. Benkoski. Fight in the kitchen. Request aid, ASAP.”
Heidi and I both circled around the men. DeBeer had blood streaming out of his nose. Rafael nailed him with another punch to the gut, but came in too close, and DeBeer grabbed him. They tussled, spinning around like a pair of angry cats.
I reached back for the bowl of chocolate filling and flung it at their heads. The syrupy mess smacked into both of them, coating their eyes and cheeks with mud. Sputtering, they broke apart just enough that Heidi and I could push between them.
I got my hands on Rafael’s chest and tried to stay between him and DeBeer. Beneath my hands, Rafael’s heart beat against his chest like a series of sonic booms. This close, I could see he wasn’t just angry, but had tears streaking his cheeks and mixing with the chocolate.
“Please.” I dug my fingers into his flight suit, trying to keep a grip on him. “Please, don’t.”
“DeBeer!” Heidi grunted and staggered into my field of vision.
A moment later, he barreled into Rafael from the side. My hands were tangled in his flight suit so I staggered along with them.
“What the hell is going on?” Parker grabbed DeBeer, throwing an arm around his neck and hauling backward.
Benkoski pulled Rafael back, too. I let go. Sticky chocolate coated my hands.
Now all the adrenaline made itself known. My hands shook and my pulse pounded in the backs of my knees and heated my neck.
“I repeat: what the hell is going on?” Parker had somehow gotten DeBeer’s arm twisted up behind him and had forced the man to his knees. Chocolate coated the front of his flight suit.
Both men glowered at the floor, but their damned military “honor” kept them quiet. They’d throw a punch, but God forbid they snitch. The evidence of their fight was all too clear, though, even if I hadn’t thrown chocolate on them.
“York. Status.” Parker turned his glare on me.
I suppose I have just as much pilot’s honor as they did, because I did not want to get Rafael in trouble. If DeBeer had instigated it, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but the military would turn a blind eye to the sign. All that would matter was that Rafael began the physical conflict.
“York, you were in the thick of it when I came in, and I’m covered in chocolate. Status. Now.”
Sighing, I bent and picked the sign up off the floor. “DeBeer put this on the zero-g toilet.”
DeBeer winced. At first I thought it was because he had been confronted with his sign, but his breath hissed in slowly. Parker had cranked his arm higher up his back. “That your work?”
Behind Rafael, Benkoski rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Van.”
How the hell had DeBeer gotten cleared for this mission? He didn’t back down, even a little. He jutted his chin toward Rafael. “No one else saw this except him. Maybe he put it there.”
Parker switched to Afrikaans and bent his head to DeBeer’s ear. “Begin met ’n verskoning en laat my glo dit, of jy sal nie aan Mars raak nie.”
Whatever Parker said to DeBeer caused him to pale a little. He wet his lips and had a moment of blinking in bewilderment at the taste of chocolate. “Am I to get an apology from him as well?”
I could have slapped him, but that would have been useless. Still tempting, though. What surprised me was that Rafael had succumbed to the temptation. He was probably the least volatile of all of us. On the other hand, he had reason to be unsteady now. Poor guy.
In Benkoski’s grip, Rafael had sagged, so it looked more like he was being supported than restrained. He lifted his head. “I am sorry that I struck you. It would have been more appropriate for me to take my concerns to my S.O. I apologize for the problems I have caused. And for wasting Elma’s pie.”
You could almost feel the gravity in the room shift to DeBeer. I wouldn’t have been able to stand being under the weight of all of those gazes. Parker had not relaxed his grip at all, and the pressure caused DeBeer to bend forward.
Maybe Parker tweaked DeBeer’s arm further, or maybe he finally realized that he wasn’t going to convince anyone that he hadn’t made the sign. Whatever the cause, he let his breath out in one explosive rush, free shoulder sagging. “It was a joke.”
“Funny thing.” Parker bent over DeBeer’s shoulder, but he was staring at me. “Turns out that doesn’t stop it from being offensive. Also. Not an apology.”
My breath caught in my throat. DeBeer hadn’t apologized, but had Parker just apologized to me?
“You’re both confined until you’ve had a chance to cool down.” Parker released DeBeer’s arm. “Benkoski, you got them?”
“Confirmed.” He released Rafael and stepped back, hands on his hips to look at both of them.
Heidi, Dawn, and I stood awkwardly for a moment as Benkoski led Rafael and DeBeer away. I walked over to the counter to grab a towel. Behind me, Parker said, “Next time, York, don’t throw the batter on them.”
“It was the first thing I could grab.”
“Sure. But it’s a waste of a damn fine pie.” Parker cleared his throat. “Sabados … Don’t send that to Mission Control. I don’t want it to get into the news back home. We’ll deal with it internally.”
* * *
I stared at the letter I’d written to Nathaniel, chewing my lower lip. Much as I wanted to tell him about yesterday’s fight, I agreed with Parker about keeping it out of reports.
The corner of the paper stirred in the breeze from the fan circulating air in the observation dome. Leonard floated in the dome too, reading the latest data from the Mars orbiter that had been circling the planet since dropping the Friendship probe. With DeBeer released from confinement, I didn’t like leaving him alone, but I wanted to go to comms when Florence was on shift. And Leonard was an adult.
Clearing my throat, I pushed off to float a little closer to him. “I’m heading down to comms. Holler if you need anything.”
“I’ll be fine, Elma.” He lifted his head, countering the movement with a twist of a hand to keep himself from spinning.
“I know. I just…” The fact that both of us had had the thought that it might not be fine was a giant glaring red alert. I hadn’t managed to work that problem, though. Not yet.
I twisted in the air and pushed toward the hatch. One of the ways in which our crews had handled the merger was that Florence was sending the letters for the Niña crew, and Dawn handled them for the Pinta. It had the effect of making me reluctant to write, and knowing that Florence had to key in the letters made me keep them short. I didn’t want to give her additional reasons to resent me by making more work for her. I assumed Nathaniel was keeping them short for similar reasons. Our rapid back-and-forth exchanges had been cut out with the garbage.
I kicked down the spindle toward comms with a letter folded in my flight suit pocket. Ahead of me, Parker hung in the spindle just outside the ComMod. As I closed the distance between us, I flipped to orient myself with him. He barely glanced away from the door.
The tension on his face … I did not like it. Grabbing a guide rail, I pulled myself to a stop next to Parker. Inside, Da
wn and Florence bent over the comms unit, while Rafael and Wilburt floated below them, looking at the innards of the teletype.
“What’s…?”
“We’ve lost contact with Earth.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
First Mars Expedition Mission Log, Cmdr. Stetson Parker:
May 29, 1963, 11:47 a.m.—Contact protocols completed. After two days, communication with IAC not reestablished.
“York.” Parker’s voice made me jump, spraying dirt around the garden room, where I had retreated to try to stay out of the way. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to … Got a minute?”
With my hand to my bosom like some bimbo out of the old Flash Gordon serials, I turned to face Parker. I was pretty sure he could see my heart pounding through my hand, but my voice was calm, at least. “Sure.”
“I need your opinion on a staffing question.”
I walked over to the tool rack, ostensibly to get the broom so I could salvage the dirt before it got tracked everywhere, but really so that I could let my jaw drop open in peace. Parker wanted my opinion. Mine. Wind whistled through my open mouth before I swallowed. “Go on?”
When I turned back, he looked relieved. Who was this man? With a nod, he got down to business, and the confident pilot came back to the surface. “They can’t find anything wrong with the Pinta’s comms system. We can still get the remote guidance signals the Santa Maria is bouncing at us, but nothing from Earth.”
In that hesitation, I saw why Parker was so troubled, even if he was masking it beautifully. We’d been out of contact with Earth for two days now. “The problem might be on the IAC’s end.”
“They have five radio dishes pointed at us, and auxiliary systems for the auxiliary systems.”
“Right.” It’s strange to hope that something is wrong with your ship while you’re millions of kilometers from home, because the alternative is that something terrible has happened on Earth. They would have spotted another meteor, wouldn’t they? With all the satellites we had now, and Lunetta? Surely everyone on Earth was fine and it was just an electrical thing here.
“So it’s still likely that it’s us, and the best way to eliminate that possibility is to get the Niña fully back online and check our radio as well. Do you think Avelino can handle an EVA?”
Gripping the broom, I swept the dirt I’d scattered into a little pile. He hadn’t fought anyone else, but the grieving was deep. On the other hand, he was a professional, and knew the Niña better than anyone. “Yes … But maybe do a three-person team, the way we did for the solar panel deployment. That way if he runs into problems, there are two people who can guide him back in.”
Parker nodded. “That’s similar to what I was thinking. So, you and Flannery.”
That time I made an actual sound, somewhere between a laugh and a gasp, as if I’d been punched. Crouching, I scraped the little pile of dirt into the dustpan. “Where does this sudden faith in me come from?”
“Sorry.” That was another apology. I clutched the broom just in case he turned out to be a space alien who had taken over Parker’s body. “I … I’m aware that we’re—that we haven’t exactly been compatible in the past, but with Terrazas gone, you’re the senior astronaut. I function better with a copilot.”
He was staring at the floor, leaning against one of the raised beds. It suddenly and belatedly occurred to me that he had known Terrazas longer than any of us had. Parker was so good at that military mask of calm that I hadn’t actually considered that he might be in mourning. He just got on with business.
Straightening, I dumped the dirt back into the radish bed and then set down the broom and dustpan. “I miss him too.”
The muscles in Parker’s jaw stood out in hard contrast to his relaxed body posture. His gaze stayed cast down to the floor, but he gave one of his signature sharp nods.
“Good. I’ll speak to Flannery and Avelino, and then we can all start working the EVA plans.” Parker straightened, turning toward the door without meeting my eyes. “Carry on.”
* * *
Inside my helmet, my breath competed with the hiss of my EVA suit’s fans. I kept my eyes on the delta-pressure gauge so we could open the airlock into space. The airlock closest to the antenna wasn’t big enough for all three of us to exit at once. Even if we hadn’t each had gear for the repair, we couldn’t have all fit in our stiff, pressurized EVA suits, so we were using one of the larger forward airlocks, which was designed for loading cargo into a BusyBee.
Outside the suit, our gear drifted from tethers, clanging metal against metal. The delta-pressure gauge eased down as the air evacuated and left us drifting in an eerie silence. I floated forward, pushing against the suit’s pressurized rigid joints, and undogged the hatch. Pulling it open, I reached through to clip the tether hook for my safety cable to one of the handrails that covered the surface of the Niña. Bail closed. Slide lock. Black on black. Next I guided my bag of gear through and secured it as well. A tug of my fingers sent me floating through the broad hatch. Using one of the handholds, I translated down to the far end of the handrail to make room for Rafael and anchored myself with a local tether.
Both tethers tugged me gently toward the ship. It doesn’t happen in the NBL pool, because of the water resistance, but in space they exert a steady pull. As if I needed a reminder that this was not a sim. My nails scraped the inside of my gloves as I tethered the bag of gear to my suit so I could haul it with me down the outside of the spindle. Only when everything was secure and double-checked did I stop to look out.
All the tight grief and anger in my chest unpacked a little as I floated in space. There is a part of me that expects it to be blue, because of the hours spent in the NBL pool, with the mock-ups of the Niña. But space was a rich black. If the lights were off inside the ship, and we were pointed nightward, you could see the stars, but there was always a barrier. On an EVA, I was still looking at space through glass, but with no limit to my field of vision.
It doesn’t matter how many spacewalks I do, the stars will never lose their wonder. Against that limitless black, they blazed. Our ship defined the only edge, etched in gold and silver by the sun.
As Rafael reached out, I didn’t start breathing again until he’d clipped on. He faced away from me, looking out over that expanse in one of the few leisure moments we would have during the spacewalk.
While we waited for Leonard, I stared into the infinite. I don’t think it will ever matter how many times I see the stars like this, it will always seem holy. Under my breath, I murmured, “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, she’hekheyanu v’kiy’manu v’higi’anu la’z’man ha’ze…”
Parker crackled in my radio. “Come again, York?”
“I was…” Praying. “Talking to myself.”
“In Yiddish?”
“Hebrew, actually.” Of all the times to trigger his love of languages, this was not one I wanted to explain. “We’ll do a lesson when we get back.”
“Try to keep the channels clear until then.” As if he weren’t the one who was asking me about language.
But we were doing an EVA without being able to consult with Mission Control, and even after taking three days to plan it, Parker had to be feeling the pressure. I wasn’t going to give him any grief for this. “Yes, sir.”
Leonard clipped on and spun to pull the thermal shield into place over the airlock hatch. The hatch would stay open in case there was an emergency and we needed to get back in quickly. I prayed to God that we wouldn’t need that contingency.
As he turned from the airlock, Leonard said, “Niña, EV1. All three spacewalkers are in position and ready to begin.”
“Confirmed, EV1. We have you in our sights.”
“Let’s get this done.” Rafael’s urgency fairly pushed me away from the hatch.
I propelled myself after Leonard with carefully placed grips on the handrails. As we worked our way down the spindle, my legs trailed after me like Superwoman. Of course, she didn’t have a tether to keep her from
drifting off into space. Coming untethered … that’s my fear. As much as I love this view, it is impossible to forget that if you fall, you fall forever. But, being afraid of that means that I’m very, very careful about clipping the tether hook and following proper tether protocol at all times. Bail closed. Slide lock. Black on black.
“My nephew thinks I’m Superman, because of this.” Leonard did not get chastised by Parker for chattering.
I resecured my tether at the next handrail and kept translating down the ship. If Tommy could see me he would be whooping with excitement. A lump filled my throat. “Same with mine.”
Ahead of me, Leonard reached the stump where the antenna used to be. He hooked his feet into a foot restraint and reeled his bag of gear in. The Mylar container had a slender profile, nearly as long as Leonard himself. He had the spare pole for the antenna, in order to give it some distance from the ship.
Rafael and I stopped next to Leonard. I unspooled my foot restraint’s tether and inserted the plug into one of the WIF mechanical receivers that peppered the Niña’s surface.
The collar on the foot restraint’s bayonet dropped down to lock it into place, revealing the black line for visual confirmation. I still did the twist and pull check to make sure that was mechanically stable. Bracing myself, I slid my toes under the foot restraint’s loop and rotated my heel inward so that I could slide the heel ridge into its restraining slot. Once both feet were restrained, I secured my bag to a handrail on the hull.
Rafael floated by me. His bag idled in the vacuum, turning a little. It was hard to see through his helmet, but I think he was looking at where Terrazas’s body had hit.
“You okay?”
“Absolutely.” Rafael began moving like an automaton brought to life. “Just reviewing the order of operations. Nothing I see here makes me think we need to change procedure. We’ll start by removing and securing the damaged section.”
I extracted the “garbage” bag from my gear. It was a clever design, with layers of bristle that met in the middle. The bristles were easy to push through, but would hold a drifting piece of debris inside. Useful for zero-g, when you needed to keep your hands clear. Snapping its retractable equipment tether to a handrail, I secured the garbage bag to a WIF where Rafael and Leonard could get to it easily.
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