Across the Void

by S. K. Vaughn

  Her mind slowly began to wrap itself around the crisis. It was time to do the panic math. According to the original flight plan, the voyage to Europa had taken almost three months—twelve weeks and a day, to be exact. The planetary expedition had been completed in seven days. And, based on pre-blackout data, they had been a bit more than a week into the return voyage when May was intubated. NASA had helped them calculate how long they’d been adrift: approximately ten days. Then there was the time she’d been awake. All told, it was coming up on sixteen weeks from the time they left the hangar at Wright Station to the present ghastly moment. Add a bit of time before launch, presumably when conception had occurred, and she was about seventeen weeks pregnant.

  But May was not showing, which was odd for being well into the second trimester. There was a slight hardness in her lower abdomen, which she had attributed to the constant bouts of gastritis she’d suffered after waking up—sort of a constant cramp. Seventeen weeks, with nothing to show for it. She thought of the divorce filing and felt a wave of panic that she might have been with someone else on the voyage. She’d been through all the personnel files of the passengers and crew, though, and that was highly unlikely. And even if May had wanted to sleep with someone on the ship, it was equally unlikely that that person would have agreed. That kind of thing was contractually prohibited for anyone on board, with penalties being potential loss of pay, government blacklisting, and other draconian measures. It wouldn’t have been worth it. Also, May knew herself. Don’t shit where you eat was a mantra her mother had ingrained in her for years. Not a chance.

  So Stephen was the father. There was no question. May was not sure at what date the divorce proceedings had been initiated, but, for the moment, she had to assume that it had come after one of their last times together. Stephen would be able to fill in the blanks, as soon as she found the courage to tell him.

  But they told me this couldn’t happen again.

  “No,” she said out loud, chasing that memory away.

  They said it couldn’t happen again. How the hell is this happening?

  You took the test three times. This is happening.

  They had also said she couldn’t get pregnant on the pill. And she had. Her doctor had shrugged and chalked it up to her being part of the less-than-1-percent group mentioned on the warning label. Lucky me, she’d thought. Now this. Against the odds again. Lucky me.

  “Are you comfortable?” Eve asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ill? Should I inform Mission Control?”

  “No,” May ordered her. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Thinking about NASA was like a cold splash of water in the face. The idea of them, a group of mostly men, knowing of this seemed catastrophic. They already thought she was questionable, potentially incompetent. To them, pregnancy inherently meant weakness, vulnerability. Her command would become more of a joke than it already was. Unthinkable.

  “May, what is upsetting you?”

  She hadn’t realized she was crying.

  “I told you, I’m okay. Just tired and hungry. Don’t mind me.”

  “Your body temperature is slightly elevated. It could be something more—”

  “It’s nothing. Nothing you would understand, anyway. Please just stop asking. If I have something to tell you, I will.”

  May angrily rubbed the tears out of her eyes and took a deep breath. She needed to think, to try to block out all the chatter in her head and sort this out. When the IV was finished, she retreated to her room with whatever food she could grab that didn’t make her feel nauseated just looking at it. The crab legs. The honeymoon. Clever, Stephen, very clever.

  37

  Back in her quarters, May couldn’t bring herself to eat. Instead, she ran a hot shower, brought the flask in with her, and took a couple of shallow swallows while the water ran over her. The familiar smell and burn reminded her of her mom. What would she say now? May could only imagine. She wished she could call her, even if it meant a thrashing. Eve might have been gruff, but she was the best counsel, a straight shooter, and at that moment May really needed a strong dose of her mother right between the eyes.

  Since her death, May occasionally imagined them having conversations. She was not ready to give that up, maybe ever. And Eve had done such a thorough job of methodically hammering her own values and beliefs into May’s head that knowing what she would say was second nature. She dried off, crawled into bed, and closed her eyes. She could see Eve sitting in a chair near the observation window—perfect posture, smoothing her slacks and picking off bits of lint, pretending to study the stars so she would not have to make eye contact.

  “You’re a damned fool,” Eve said. “How could you let this happen?”

  “I didn’t let anything happen.”

  “You don’t even remember what happened,” Eve corrected.

  “No, I don’t. But I’ve never been irresponsible in that way.”

  “With one glaring exception.”

  “We both know that wasn’t my fault.” May felt like a teenager again.

  “You trusted something that offered no guarantees. That was your fault.”

  “I’m a married woman. I can’t just—”

  “You were a married woman,” Eve corrected again. “Let’s not forget that.”

  “I’m not likely to forget something like that.”

  “True,” Eve said, “but I’m sure you’d like to forget why.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “This has been your problem all your life,” Eve said. “You don’t accept reality. Instead, you try to shape it to suit your personal needs—chasing whims, rationalizing bad behavior, labeling your complete lack of self-control ‘female empowerment.’ And when it all comes crashing down—and it always does—you can’t believe it. You’d rather live in a goddamn fantasy world.”

  “I know what’s real.”

  “Then why have you gone crazy? Curled up in your bed, like you did when you were seven and I wouldn’t let you have a pony. Or have you forgotten that too?”

  “No,” May said spitefully.

  “Don’t take that tone with me. I didn’t put you in this predicament.”

  “I’m sorry. I just want your help, not your judgment.”

  Eve laughed. “You want me to say what you want to hear. I’m not judging you any more than I’m pointing out the fault, the hubris, that brought you to this place. The sooner you recognize it in yourself and stop trusting what you feel are good instincts, the sooner you’ll start making the right choices. You might even survive, if you get your head screwed on right.”

  “I don’t understand how to do that. My instincts are too ingrained for me to try to change them now.”

  “Bullshit. You can’t even remember everything about who you are. Or were. That might seem like a handicap, but it’s a blessing in disguise. You have fresh eyes. Use them.”

  “How?”

  “Stop trying so desperately to reach back into the past for answers. That’s a lot of sentimental rubbish.”

  “It’s who I am.”

  “Are you the same person who filed for divorce from Stephen before you left?”

  “No. That doesn’t feel like me at all.”

  “Good. Because that person was spiteful and destructive.”

  “How? What did I do?” May asked, bewildered.

  “Stop. None of that matters anymore. Look at where you are. Stephen isn’t here, and neither am I. It’s time to think about what you need to do for yourself.”

  “I need your help. I need to know what to do.”

  Eve laughed harder. “You never listened to me before. Why would you listen now?”

  “I—”

  “You’re on your own, Maryam. You already know that’s how it has to be. But you have to accept the truth. You have to look it right in the eye, and you can’t flinch.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? I do accept the truth.”

  “Right. That’s why
you can easily recall your honeymoon night but have no recollection of what happened after you discovered you were pregnant. Normally, the mind remembers pain more readily than pleasure. That shows the true depth of your denial.”

  May opened her eyes and washed her mother’s words down with another drink from the flask. She knew what needed to be done. The pregnancy had to be terminated. That was the truth. It was madness to contemplate the alternative. And no one would ever have to know. Without allowing herself to think about it, she dressed and walked to the infirmary, a blanket over her shoulders to block Eve’s view. Thankfully, Eve had followed May’s order and did not engage.

  There were pills in the same cabinet as the pregnancy tests. Convenient.

  She took one of the small blister packs and headed back to her quarters. She held the pill pack tightly, letting its hard plastic backing cut into her hand while she filled a glass with water. Simple and painless, she thought as she examined the pill.

  She put her hand on her belly, reassuring herself that there was nothing there to feel. God only knew what shape the fetus was in anyway, after all May had been through. She had barely survived. That certainly didn’t bode well.

  “You know this is the right thing to do,” she said in her most reassuring voice.

  She popped the pill out of the blister and held it between her fingers. The ease of it made her stomach turn. Like everything else on the Hawking II, life was disposable. Pop a pill. Shove a corpse into a tube. Sweep it all under the rug in the name of progress. For May, nothing about this was easy. How could it be? That didn’t matter. Taking her own feelings into consideration was a luxury she could no longer afford. Her mother’s words came through loud and clear.

  You have to accept the truth. You have to look it right in the eye, and you can’t flinch.

  38

  Houston, Texas

  September 22, 2066

  May was in Houston after she and Stephen had returned from their honeymoon in Australia. Both had been back to work for a couple of weeks, having decided to take some time to think about their little secret. They had been discussing the pregnancy at every opportunity, cycling through all possible scenarios, but always ending back at square one. Stephen’s stance, from the beginning, was that it was May’s decision. At first, that had made her angry; she’d thought he was passing the buck. But as time went on, she saw the wisdom in it. It was her body. And it was her career. Stephen said that if she made a decision he’d influenced in any way and it turned out to be the wrong one, she would resent him. More important, she would resent herself for not trusting her own judgment.

  As the days passed, it became a preoccupation that affected their relationship and their work. May’s superior officers commented about how she seemed distracted. They joked about her having vacation brain, but then the joke wasn’t funny anymore. Stephen’s distracted mind, dulled by a swirl of unfamiliar emotions, was difficult on his team. Eventually the problem made its way up the ladder to Robert, and Stephen and May knew they had to make a decision.

  The day May was remembering was a Friday afternoon. She was suffering from another sleepless night, so she left work early and drove to the drugstore to pick up the pill. Doing so made her feel strong and decisive. In the end, she felt she could not reconcile a decision to give up her commission. It wasn’t as though she had a corporate job and having a child would simply move her a few rungs down the ladder. This was only the second voyage of its kind, and the first on which any manned spacecraft would put boots on Europa. Everything she had ever done as a pilot was in preparation for this. In many ways, Europa was also her baby, the older child that deserved her full attention at that time in her life.

  When she got home, she popped the pill out of the blister pack and rolled it between her fingers, thinking about the hideous simplicity it represented. But it also represented a fast, painless resolution to a purely unintentional situation.

  “Just do it,” she said in the same bullying tone.

  The water glass was filled. The pill was in her hand. But taking it was another matter altogether. Ironically, the biggest thing keeping her from doing it was Eve. From the day she hit puberty, her mother had drilled it into her head that pregnancy was almost a fate worse than death. Children symbolized failure: they were the smart bomb that would blow her career to pieces, and she would never be able to put it back together again. When she was old enough to point out the emotionally scarring contradiction that her own mother was harping on, Eve had passed it off by saying things like “Times were different then” or “I never had the opportunities that you have.” But May saw the lie behind it and often blamed Eve’s coarse disposition on dreams unfulfilled by none other than her.

  That was why May was shocked that she hesitated to take the pill for the sake of her dead mother. Although Eve so passionately embraced her opinion on the subject, she had gone out of her way to be an amazing mother in her own way. Without her, May was certain she never would have flown as high as she had. Without Eve, there was no Europa commission. Without Eve. And there was that. The death of her mother resonated through her mind and body as if each day were the day she died. There had been no ebbing of that emotional tide, which routinely held her under to the point of drowning. Just as her mother’s influence was the very blood in her veins, so was the impact of her death.

  Death. There were countless arguments that supported the ending the pregnancy. There were facts and figures that certainly lessened the blow of the act. May understood and respected them all, as well as the women who had made that choice. But for her, with where she was in her life, with the indelible image of her mother’s body lying on that hospital bed, having taken her last breath less than an hour before May could get to her, in that little pill was death. That feeling, rolling over heavy and sickening in her stomach, made taking it the most difficult decision she ever faced. She sat there, paralyzed, for what seemed like hours, and by the time Stephen walked through the door, the water in her glass had been replaced by wine.

  “May?” he said, concerned by the despondent look on her face.

  “I’m at the end,” she said quietly.

  Stephen sat down next to her. She opened her clenched fist, revealing the pill.

  “I’ve been over this and over this, and I cannot make a decision, and I cannot think about it any longer. Please help me.”

  “May, we’ve talked about—”

  “Yes, I know,” she shouted, slamming her hand down on the table. “But you can’t stand aside any longer and defer to me.”

  Seeing the look on Stephen’s face, the same one he’d had in London the day Eve died, May took a deep breath and calmed herself down.

  “I’m sorry. I appreciate the fact that you’re allowing me to process this without trying to influence my decision, but I can’t go it alone anymore. I just can’t. Okay?”

  Stephen held her as she seethed with rage and despair. “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you. But first, I need you to answer a question for me.”

  “Goddammit, I don’t have the answer.”

  “Will you please just trust me?”

  May nodded begrudgingly.

  “You’ve had a chance to live with this for a couple of weeks now.”

  “Worst two weeks of my life.”

  “My question is: Can you imagine living without it?”

  May immediately broke down crying and shaking her head. She knew the answer instantly, and the relief that brought poured out of her.

  “No. I can’t.”

  Stephen tried to hold her, but she shrugged him off. “Wait—I just need to say this,” she cried. “I know this surely means the end of . . . my dream, something I’ve worked for since . . . since I can’t even remember.”

  She laid her hands on her belly protectively and felt like a child herself, wanting to keep something precious and all her own.

  “Even though I know I would be giving that up—oh God, it hurts so much to say that—even though I know
I’ll regret missing that chance . . . I can’t stop thinking of all the other things I’ll miss if I take this awful pill.”

  39

  “This is Maryam Knox, commander of the Hawking II. I want to say to the families of my crew and passengers—our friends and comrades—that I am so very sorry for your loss. Although the events that led to the demise of so many great men and women are still unknown, I take full responsibility, and the sorrow of this catastrophe will remain heavy in my heart until the day I die. It is my sworn duty to ensure all your loved ones are returned to Earth for proper burial. You have my word that I will do everything in my power to fulfill this duty and pay each of you a personal visit upon my return. As you mourn your loss, please know that everyone on this vessel experienced incredible joy in the completion of the Europa expedition, a monumental endeavor that would never have been achieved without them. I am forever grateful for their service, and God bless you all.

  “How did that sound, Eve?”

  “I thought it was excellent.”

  “Not too formal?”

  “It seems the situation calls for some level of formality. However, I thought the content of your message was a compelling mix of personal and professional sentiments.”

  “Good. Are we all set?”

  “Your EVA suit is fully charged, along with three backup power packs. Ten caskets are ready for use. I constructed a custom cart with the composite printer. It will fit in the airlock, so you can load two caskets in antigravity, then easily wheel them to the hive in artificial gravity. The cart is high enough for you to slide each casket into the hive’s loading bay, and it will do the rest.”

  “Genius. Eve, you do so much for me, I’d love to do something for you.”

  “That’s not necessary, May.”

  “I insist, and I order you to make a request.”

  “All right. When you are rescued, I would like to come with you.”

  “Of course. But don’t you already exist in the NASA cloud?”

  “I do, but none of my experiences with you are there.”