In the Red

by Christopher Swiedler

  “Sorry, can you repeat that last part?” Michael asked.

  Randall grunted. “I said that once you get your waypoints, you have thirty minutes to find the markers and make it back to the airlock. Make sure you bring all three flags with you.”

  It was the navigation part of the test. Michael tried to reconstruct what he’d missed. Apparently they were supposed to work out a route without their nav computers? That meant they would have to plot their position using stars and navigate with dead reckoning. Michael wondered how the kids would manage all of that. He’d practiced celestial navigation with his dad, but the best plot he’d ever done was almost a kilometer wide—and that had been from a park on the north side of the colony, underneath the dome.

  Randall pulled Michael aside. “This is the last bit. You can ride back with me in the rover if you want.”

  “You mean I passed?” Michael said eagerly.

  Randall snorted. “The basic certification? You passed that half an hour ago. I would have sent you back in, but I wanted to see how you did with the advanced test.”

  So Randall hadn’t just been including him out of politeness—he’d actually been judging Michael along with the older kids. Michael tried to wrap his head around this new bit of information.

  “Your other option is to finish the navigation course. If you do that, then I can give you your advanced certification,” Randall said.

  The words “advanced certification” echoed in Michael’s ears. His parents would have been surprised enough if he came home having passed the basic test. How would they react when he told them he’d gotten his advanced certification years early? Even Peter hadn’t done that.

  “Sure,” Michael said. “I can do it.”

  “All right, then,” Randall said. “Good luck.”

  Randall transferred a series of coordinates to everyone’s wrist screens. The courses all led back to the airlock where they’d started. Michael’s route would be marked by blue flags.

  It had been years since Michael had tried to take a star sight. But he’d read and reread the official Rescue Service guide on celestial navigation, and he knew the theory backward and forward. Confidently, he began to plot his current position. First he sat down on a rock and turned on his helmet filter to block out the light from the sun. The sky darkened and a half dozen stars appeared. Using his helmet’s heads-up display, he marked the positions of Sirius, Vega, and Canopus. By taking those measurements and applying a fair bit of math, he could calculate a set of circular areas on the map on his wrist screen. If he did everything correctly, his position would be someplace inside the area where the circular plots overlapped.

  But he’d barely begun the process for the first star when Marika jumped up and ran off to the west. Michael stared after her. How had she finished so quickly? He thought he was pretty good at math, but still, it took time to work out an accurate plot. Was there some trick to it that he’d never learned?

  A few minutes later, Kyle ran off, followed by Vivien. Michael double-checked his calculations. He needed to be certain that he had this right, or he’d be wandering around the surface for hours.

  “See you later,” Beecher said, and sprinted away.

  “Michael?” Randall asked.

  “Almost done,” Michael said. He finished his plot and compared it with the waypoints Randall had given him. His stomach churned. The area he’d calculated as his current position was so large that it was almost useless. According to his plot, the first waypoint might be four meters away, or it might be four hundred. How was he going to use this to follow the route Randall had given him?

  He only had twenty minutes left. There wasn’t time to try to get a more accurate position. He worked out the best course he could and jogged off to the southwest.

  After a few hundred meters, the ground dipped into a low basin that seemed to swallow up everything. The clouds had disappeared and the dusty yellow sky was flat and featureless. The only sounds were the crunch of his boots in the sand and the faint hiss of his air filter.

  When he’d gone half a kilometer, he stopped and looked back. He should have found the marker by now. Clearly, he’d gone in the wrong direction. How did Randall to expect them to find such exact locations using only star fixes? It was like telling someone to find a particular tree by telling them which forest it was in.

  He took another star sight and recalculated his position. From his best guess, the first flag was a half kilometer north of where he was. He set off again, running as fast as he could.

  He tried to stay calm, but in the back of his mind he could feel a tiny kernel of panic beginning to grow. He shouldn’t have tried to finish the advanced test—he should have just ridden back to the colony with Randall. Michael pushed the thought away and concentrated on his breathing. In and out, in and out. Steady. Smooth. He was only a short distance from the colony, and he was perfectly safe. He wasn’t going to fail this test because of a stupid panic attack. He wasn’t going to fail just because his brain couldn’t tell the difference between real danger and fake danger.

  When he figured he’d gone another half kilometer, he stopped and recalculated. It was probably to the east, now. Or it could be south, or north, or west. It was hopeless. He kicked a boulder so hard his toe hurt, and then he stood there, his breath hissing through his nostrils.

  Are you finished? he asked himself. Or are you just going to stand here kicking rocks?

  He clenched his jaw. There had to be a way to find his position without using his computer. He climbed up onto the boulder and looked around. No flags in sight, blue or otherwise—just a picturesque view of the buildings and towers of Heimdall, a few kilometers away.

  Michael sucked in his breath. That was the answer! He activated the zoom on his helmet. The colony seemed to leap toward him, and he scanned back and forth until he found the airlock. His helmet rangefinder read 3,708 meters. He checked the compass: 211 degrees, south-southwest.

  With those measurements, all he needed was a little trigonometry to work out his position. The distance to the airlock gave him the hypotenuse of a right triangle, and its direction on the compass gave him one of the angles. He typed quickly on his wrist screen, and in a few moments he knew his current position down to the meter. Which meant the first waypoint must be . . .

  He turned to the east. Sixty meters that way.

  He sprinted forward, staring intently at the ground ahead of him. Something caught his eye: a little blue flag. He’d found the first waypoint.

  Michael stuffed the flag in his belt. Now that he knew his location, finding the other waypoints would be easy. The only question was how long it would take him to get the rest of the flags and make it back to the colony. He checked his screen. Only five minutes left.

  He ran north, taking long, fast strides. He picked up the second flag and rechecked his position. Only one waypoint left. The air in his suit was thick and heavy, and his eyes had a hard time focusing on the map on his screen. Cold sweat dripped down the back of his neck.

  Not now! He couldn’t have a panic attack now. Three hundred meters northwest for the third waypoint. He vaulted over rocks and gullies, his boots barely touching the ground. He reached down and grabbed the third flag at a dead run and turned toward the colony.

  His lungs pumped in and out, trying to pull as much oxygen from the air as they could. Flecks of saliva spattered over the inside of his helmet. In the distance he could see people gathered outside the airlock, but his mind was so flooded with panic that he’d forgotten about Randall and the test and the other kids entirely. Everything faded away until all that was left was an overwhelming desire to get inside where it was safe, where he could breathe. Nothing else mattered.

  His foot caught on a rock and he crashed to the ground. He tried to push himself to his feet, but his legs refused to cooperate. A gigantic hand was squeezing his chest, and his breath came in short, heaving gasps.

  “Michael?” Randall asked over the radio. “Are you okay?”
>
  No, Michael tried to say, I’m not okay, but his stomach lurched and vomit sprayed over the inside of his helmet. A dull roar echoed in his ears like the sound of a million voices laughing at him. The sound grew louder and louder until it swept over him like a flood, and then everything went black.

  3

  MICHAEL SAT ON the edge of the hospital bed with his arms folded across his lap and stared at the white tile floor. His throat was raw and his mouth still tasted like puke, but he hardly noticed.

  He’d failed. He’d completely and utterly failed. Instead of proving that he was better, that he could actually take care of himself out on the surface, he’d done exactly the opposite. He had shown everyone that they were right—that the only place he belonged was inside the colony.

  Michael could feel his mom watching him from the chair in the corner of the exam room. Her gray-blue eyes were tired and her cheeks were pale. She was still wearing a peach-colored blouse with a security badge from her job in the colony’s health department, a few floors above in the building they were in now. The only time she’d spoken since she’d arrived was when she’d asked Michael if he was okay. Since it was clear from her tone that in this case “okay” meant “not on the verge of death,” he’d just nodded, and that had ended the conversation.

  “So this has happened before,” the doctor said, scanning through Michael’s medical history on a handheld screen.

  “Yes,” Michael said in a monotone.

  “Anxiety is like a safety mechanism in your brain,” the doctor said. “In the right amounts, it’s beneficial. If people weren’t anxious about heights, we’d have to treat a lot more broken necks.”

  She paused, clearly waiting for him to smile at her joke, but Michael just stared at the floor and kept his face expressionless.

  “Sometimes, those safety mechanisms malfunction. They provoke your body into a panic response even when there’s not a real threat. The problem in your case is that when you’re out on the surface, the panic itself is a threat. Colloquially, this is called suit anxiety, though really it’s a kind of panic disorder.”

  Michael pursed his lips. He hated the term “disorder” even more than “condition.” It made him sound so weak and helpless.

  The doctor flipped to a new page on her screen. “I see he’s been going through cognitive behavioral therapy with Dr. Chapman.”

  “Yes,” his mom said.

  “Well, physically, there’s nothing wrong with him,” she said, putting a slight emphasis on physically that made Michael clench his teeth. “There’s no reason to keep him here any longer. However, I strongly recommend that he stay inside the colony from now on. He was lucky today that there were people around to get him back through the airlock. The next time, things could be a lot worse.”

  “I understand,” Michael’s mom said, in a tone that implied she would be doing a lot more than just keeping him inside. “Thank you.”

  She stood up and shook the doctor’s hand. Michael followed her out into the hallway and down toward the hospital toward the hospital’s main doors. The atrium was empty, and the clacking of her shoes on the polished granite floor echoed all around them. Outside, the sky was dark and the air was chilly. The buildings around the hospital plaza, lit from below by spotlights, seemed to peer down at them. They crossed the plaza and climbed into one of the tram cars lined up on the curb. Michael settled into his seat and steeled himself for the volley of anger that he was sure his mother was about to hurl at him.

  But after she told the car the address for their house, his mother just leaned her head against the window and stared out at the passing streets. He watched her nervously. Not only was she not shouting at him, she wasn’t saying anything at all. Was she just biding her time, or was she so upset that she couldn’t even speak?

  The tram car rolled quickly down the city streets toward the northern residential section. Soon they were gliding past cylindrical single-family houses and small commercial shops. Thin trees, the largest no more than a few meters tall, ran along the sidewalk. A few kids playing in the street moved aside so the tram car could pass.

  The car rolled to a stop in front of their house and the doors slid open. The flowers that surrounded their front porch shone yellow and pink in the light from the streetlamps. Michael followed his mom up the steps and into the house. She hung her shoulder bag on a hook in the hallway and then went silently into the kitchen. Peter looked up from the couch in the common room with an expression that said, I wouldn’t want to be you and then turned back to the soccer match on the wall screen.

  Michael’s dad was standing by the kitchen table holding a mug of tea in both hands. Steam from the tea drifted up around his head and disappeared in the antique glass light fixture that hung overhead. His yellow jumpsuit was dusty and wrinkled. Michael’s mom pulled a chair out from the table and looked at him expectantly. He sat down and folded his arms across his lap.

  “I just want to know one thing,” his mom said to him. “Did you even think about how dangerous that was?”

  “It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Michael muttered.

  “Do you know what bodies look like when they come back inside? Frozen solid and shriveled up?”

  Of course he knew—the last time they’d had this argument, she’d shown him pictures. “I don’t hear you telling Peter to stay inside.”

  “Hey,” his brother called from the living room. “Leave me out of this, okay?”

  “Peter is older. Peter has had more training.” She didn’t even bother to add the most important point: Peter didn’t have a condition.

  “She’s right, Michael,” his dad said. “You could have gotten yourself seriously hurt.”

  “But I didn’t,” Michael insisted.

  “That’s not the point!” his mom said. “We talked about this, over and over. We agreed that you weren’t ready.”

  “You agreed.”

  His mom’s face tightened, but she didn’t take the bait. Instead she got a glass out from the cabinet and jammed it underneath the water dispenser until it was full.

  “Randall said he’d give me my basic certification,” Michael said to his father. “I would have passed the advanced test, even, if I hadn’t spent so much time taking star sights.”

  “Star sights?” his dad said, surprised. “Why didn’t you just use your nav computer?”

  “Because it wasn’t allowed,” Michael said. Suddenly his mouth went dry. Randall had said that, hadn’t he?

  “Of course it was. How could anyone navigate a course like that without a nav system?”

  Michael sagged back in his seat. Now it made sense why everyone had found their flags before him: they’d all used their wrist screens. He’d completely misunderstood the test. It would have taken him just a few minutes to get all the flags if he’d known he could use his computer. He would have been back at the colony before anyone else. He wouldn’t have had a panic attack. He would have passed the advanced test easily.

  “If you didn’t use your computer, then how did you find the flags at all?” his dad asked.

  Michael explained how he’d measured the angle and distance to the airlock to find his starting point and get to the first flag. He shrugged. “After that it was just dead reckoning.”

  His dad was silent for several seconds. Finally he nodded. “That’s certainly a . . . unique approach.”

  Unique? Michael looked at his father in confusion. Was unique good or bad?

  “The test isn’t the point,” his mom said. “I don’t care if the Rescue Service pins a stupid medal on your chest. Until your doctor says you’re okay, you’re staying inside the colony.”

  “That’s not what Dad told me,” Michael blurted out angrily. As soon as he said it, he clenched his mouth shut. Stupid, he told himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “What?” his mom said, surprised.

  His dad cocked his head to one side. “Michael, what are you talking about?”

  “You promised me at the
beginning of the school year that if I got my certification, I could come visit you at the station this summer.” The words jumbled together, but he pressed on, knowing that he had to get it all out now. “I did it, Dad. I almost passed the advanced test, even. . . .”

  He trailed off, trying to read his dad’s expression. He remembered, didn’t he? He had to remember.

  They’d been walking home from school after the science fair when his dad had started talking about how someday soon everything would go back to normal. He’d said that when Michael got his certification, he could come out to the station for a whole week over the summer holidays. He’d gone on and on about how they could go for hikes around the glacier and watch the auroras at night.

  “I did say that,” his dad said, and then paused. Michael’s heart thumped so loudly that he was sure they could all hear it. “But what I meant was that we’ll do all of that someday. When your doctor says you’re ready.”

  Michael felt dizzy, as if the entire world had suddenly been turned upside down. Someday? When was someday? His doctor had already said that he might never completely stop having panic attacks. What if she never thought he was ready?

  “But you told me,” Michael said, in a voice that was almost a whisper. “You told me.”

  “I know,” his dad said. “But you have to understand . . .”

  He didn’t go on, but he didn’t need to, because now Michael did understand. His dad had told him all of those things to make him feel like his suit anxiety was something temporary, like pneumonia or a broken leg. But it wasn’t—it was a part of him. He wasn’t ever going to be able to go out on the surface like a normal person, and his dad knew it. All the things that he’d said before were just lies.

  Because what kind of a promise was it if you knew that you would never have to keep it?

  “Dr. Chapman says she’s very impressed with how far you’ve come,” his mom said, in a suddenly gentler tone. “We just have to keep at it.”

  Michael looked away. Through the window he could see the lights of the colony center glittering against the night sky. He was twelve years old. He wasn’t going to cry.