In the Quick

by Kate Hope Day

  I felt a cold sweat on my palms and heard a low buzzing in my ears. All around us, kids were talking loudly.

  Lion leaned forward on the bench. June? he said. June are you all right?

  I nodded. My head felt oddly separate from my torso. Heavy and unwieldy. Like it was full of sand.

  The rest of the day the hallways were oddly subdued. Our teachers gave us work to do at our desks instead of at the whiteboard. Kids showed up at class late or not at all. When I arrived at Materials lab no one from my group was there. I sat with a girl from the adhesive tape group and two boys who had been working on a flotation device. The girl read a book and the two boys played a computer game, and after a while I got out my math book and did equations.

  The next day was strange too. Everyone seemed sad or annoyed, even the teachers and the women who served us our food. A few girls from my dormitory went home. Carla showed up late to Materials lab, and then she and Nico left early. The short time we were all at the table wasn’t the same. Carla, Lion, and Nico didn’t talk like they used to. Lion didn’t draw and Carla didn’t boss us around. Nico didn’t argue like he did before.

  * * *

  —

  The next day in the yard I saw Carla walking with Netty and Brianne. They passed by the cafeteria and moved into the field.

  I caught up to them. The temperature had dropped again and my boots crunched through ice-covered snow. Aren’t you supposed to be in physics? I asked Carla.

  She shrugged and didn’t look me in the eye. Netty and Brianne walked ahead.

  We’re going to watch the test launches, Carla said.

  The other girls reached a wire fence and climbed over it. Carla hurried after them, and when she got to the fence she started to climb it too.

  Can I come? I called after her.

  The girls were already several paces away on the other side.

  Can you get over the fence? Carla looked doubtful.

  I wasn’t sure either. But I got over it easily. I hopped down.

  We walked for a long time across a field deep with uneven drifts of snow. Our feet punched through to knee height in some places and hit the ground hard in others. The sun came out from behind the clouds for a minute and I blinked. Netty and Brianne were laughing about a boy I didn’t know, and Carla laughed too.

  The sound of the rockets got louder as we walked and soon the air seemed to vibrate with noise. It wasn’t one sound now but a group of different sounds crashing against one another all at once.

  We reached another fence. On the other side was more snowy field, but beyond that I could see a group of gray structures. I knew them well—one of them was my uncle’s old building. But the other girls stopped once we were over the fence. Netty pulled a blanket from her backpack and spread it on the snow. The sound was tremendous, as if the air itself were being cracked open, over and over. We sat down and looked up, our fingers in our ears. The rockets were so close it felt as if they might fall out of the sky and onto our heads. It was impossible to talk; we screamed a few things at one another and then gave up and just watched.

  Then all at once, the sky emptied. A single rocket burned through the sky, its crackling roar fading like a lone firecracker. It was five o’clock, when the launches stopped for an hour. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed.

  We’re late for Materials, I said to Carla.

  Netty and Brianne got up from the blanket and started wandering toward the buildings in the distance.

  Lion will be wondering where we are, I said. And Nico.

  Carla got up from the blanket slowly. She watched the other girls move farther away. All right, let’s go, she said.

  We walked back. The sky was big and blank above us. The crunch of our boots in the snow was loud.

  I asked Carla about physics and about Candidate Group. Didn’t she want to move up anymore?

  She walked stiffly, hugging her arms to her chest, and told me she’d failed her last physics test. I’m not going to be a Candidate, she said. I don’t think I want to be.

  But the hand, I said. We could still win—

  We won’t.

  I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I couldn’t think what. They’re going to change their minds about the Inquiry rescue mission, I said after a minute. When they find proof the crew are still alive.

  You don’t understand. Her voice was sharp but her eyes were wet. I’m glad the mission was called off.

  Why?

  Because I don’t want Amelia to die June.

  Ahead of us ice-coated snow reflected the blue-gray sky. Beyond that was the dark outline of our school buildings.

  I’m not going to be a Candidate either, I said.

  Maybe not this year. Only because you’re younger than everyone else. But you will next year.

  We reached the dormitory and went inside. We took off our coats and gloves, rubbed our hands together.

  I don’t want to be a Candidate if you aren’t, I said.

  That’s stupid.

  It’s how I feel.

  Carla lay down on her bed and put her headphones on. It’s a stupid way to feel.

  21

  That night I went to the faculty building, my pockets full of tools, and in the silent and dark hallway I picked the lock of James and Theresa’s office door and retrieved my hand prototype. The next night I went to the Materials lab and made more durable metal beads with one of the 3D printers.

  I sorted through the parts bins for hours until I found some scraps of a thin Kevlar fabric, and the night after that I painstakingly sewed them in the same manner as the silicone glove. Now my hand could survive in space. I had the right materials; I had the ability to expand the volume of my hand with the pump and the metal beads. But the pneumatic hand couldn’t make a fist. It couldn’t turn its wrist.

  I tried different things but none of them worked. I thought and drew and spent half of every night alone in the chilly Materials lab. Until it was the night before our team was going to be judged. I stood in front of the empty table, its metal surface cool against my palms, and asked myself what my uncle would say as the wind gusted against the room’s walls.

  My prototype was too soft. A hand is soft, and hard.

  I got number five out of the locker and set it on the table.

  Number five was too hard.

  I put my prototype next to it. I knew what I needed to do, but was it right?

  I thought of Lion’s slower gait around the track since his accident at the dive pool. Nico goofing off in Materials lab instead of working. Carla’s wet eyes as we walked back from the airfields. I took a breath and began to dismantle number five, not the way I’d seen Carla and Nico do it, but all the way. I had to break the wrist where three pieces had been soldered together; I cut open the newly reshaped thumb. When I was done all that was left were the thin metal rods that powered the hand, and the silicone and wire joints that connected the rods. Then I set to work, combining my prototype with the stripped-down number five. I had already combined them in my mind, and it went fast. Then I put a ball into the hand’s palm to see if I was right.

  * * *

  —

  When I arrived at Materials lab the next morning, Carla, Lion, and Nico were all standing around the table. They had the hand—my hand—in front of them.

  Where is number five? Carla asked.

  That is number five.

  Nico shook his head. Oh man.

  What did you do? Lion asked.

  Rain fell outside and it tapped against the windows.

  I fixed it, I said. I didn’t think it was going to work, but then it did.

  Carla picked up the pump and put it back down. Work how?

  I’ll show you.

  I plugged it in and as the hand grasped the ball Carla’s face changed. Her brow smo
othed.

  Why didn’t you tell us? Lion asked. We could have helped you.

  I tried. But I couldn’t explain it even to myself. I just had to do it.

  She didn’t need our help, Carla said evenly. She was better off on her own.

  Now we can all be Candidates, I said. I looked at each of them and waited for them to smile.

  My sister’s like that, Carla said. She says other people’s ideas crowd her own.

  Did you hear what I said Carla? Now we can all move up—

  A teacher approached our table. Theresa’s substitute.

  What’s this? He was surprised. You’ve made a big change.

  The rain grew louder outside. No one said anything.

  He asked Carla to demonstrate the hand.

  Carla hesitated, but Lion nodded, and she did.

  The teacher asked several questions, about the material inside the glove and about the pump.

  Whose idea was it to use the beads?

  June’s, Carla said.

  Really? The teacher looked at me for the first time. It’s very inventive. He asked us to show him the glove, and Carla did.

  Who designed this? the teacher asked.

  June, Carla said.

  Who sewed all these compartments into the inside?

  June, Lion said.

  What did the rest of you do?

  It’s got the internal structure and wiring of one of our prototypes, Lion said. Number five.

  I see. He picked the hand up and moved its fingers and thumb. And who combined the two models?

  We all did, I said quickly. As a team.

  Lion looked at the table, and Carla’s cheeks turned pink. The rain had stopped but the wind rattled the walls.

  The teacher wrote on his pad for a minute.

  Thank you. I’m impressed, he said. You’ll know the results in a week. Then he turned from the table to move to another group.

  But Carla called out after him, It’s not true. June did that too.

  II

  22

  The day of my first launch was a month after I turned eighteen, in early spring. It was cold and damp, and melting snow covered the ground. When I got to the launch pad I was given my papers and told to wait. I was assigned to be an engineer on the Sundew, a cargo station orbiting Earth that distributed supplies to the moon, Mars, and the Pink Planet. As good a post as I could hope for. NSP maintained several cargo stations in orbit, as well as small satellite and research outposts on the moon, Mars, and the Pink Planet, but that was it. The Explorer program had never been revived.

  The rest of my crew were already in orbit. Three times I’d requested a post with the only woman station commander in orbit, Carla’s sister and my uncle’s former student, Amelia Silva. And three times I’d been slated to serve at another post. Then at the last minute my assignment was changed, and not only Amelia’s name but also Simon’s was listed at the top of my paperwork.

  I suited up for the trip to the Sundew in a mobile office. Up until that moment I felt fine. Candidate Group had made me stronger. The physical training hardened my body, built me up in some places, and whittled me down in others. My arm and leg muscles grew round; I lost the soft spots on my stomach and thighs. I knew how to do things now—run a mile in seven minutes, do five pull-ups without stopping, hold my breath under water longer than anyone else in my year—and I could count on my body to do them. I also knew things, lots of things. About advanced astrophysics, space materials science, robotics. I’d been trained in survival skills and basic emergency medicine. I knew how to tread water for hours, set a broken bone, stitch up a wound.

  But when I saw my suit on the wall—small and shrunken looking on its hook—I hung back. In my uncle’s books astronauts wore suits that glowed white against the flat black of open space; they were the brightest things on the page. In the videos I’d watched of astronauts floating in zero gravity, they took up the whole screen, and their arms and legs drifted like leaves on the surface of water. This was what I’d been waiting for my whole life, but now that it was here, I wasn’t thinking of the astronauts themselves, strong and full of all the things they knew. I was thinking of the deep and endless expanse they floated in. My hands shook as I took the suit from the wall. I steadied myself, stepped backward into the suit, pulled the neck ring down over my head, and worked my hands through the arms. Then I straightened my ponytail and put my helmet on. I didn’t need to be wearing my helmet, not yet, but I wanted to check the pop and suck of its seal.

  It was just me, the pilot, and his second-in-command, and we walked, bowlegged and slow, the few yards to an open cage elevator. There was a partitioned area for relatives and friends to say goodbye to crew members who were going into orbit for months at a time. I barely glanced at it. But Lion was there; he was waving at me. He stood wearing a puffy blue coat (he was a trainer in the NSP neutral buoyancy tanks now). I hadn’t seen him in months. I swallowed hard and waved back.

  When I moved up to Candidate Group I didn’t see Carla and Lion and Nico as much. We would talk when we ran into one another in the yard or at the dive pool. For a while Lion and I lifted weights on Saturday mornings. But we didn’t have classes together, or Materials lab, and it wasn’t the same.

  The elevator went up. I held my helmet in my hands and the wind whipped and pulled at my hair. Lion was still standing in the same spot. He put his hood up against the wind. He smiled and kept waving. The elevator rose higher and soon I couldn’t see his face anymore, just the spot of blue that was his coat.

  At the top the wind was terrific and I held on to the platform as it buffeted my body. The pilot secured the Velcro on my suit, tightening it at my back, elbows, ankles, and wrists, and we crossed a swing arm toward the open hatch of the capsule. The pilot and second-in-command entered first and I followed. Dark and cramped and crammed with supplies, there was only enough space for the three of us to wedge ourselves into our molded plastic seats. I had an advantage being so small, but even still it was a tight squeeze in my suit. I strapped myself in and felt the walls above my head and against my left elbow; I could move only my right arm freely.

  The hatch door closed. Minus fifty-four minutes was announced. I grabbed at my checklist but couldn’t reach it. I strained against my chest belt and was just able to pull the checklist free. The pilot and his second went through their own lists and called things out to each other in a mix of English and Japanese. The compartment began to warm and I started to sweat. Oxygen was flowing but it didn’t feel like it. The air was hot and still. I tried to concentrate on my tasks, but I was intensely aware of the walls pressing against my arms and legs, the lack of air. My eyes strayed to the low ceiling, to the sealed hatch door.

  When the high-pitched whine of the fuel and oxidizer turbo pumps filled the small space I felt relief. Ten minutes to launch. I completed the tasks on my list, put on my helmet, locked it, and checked its seal. At two minutes to launch the whine grew. Even with my helmet to dampen the sound. I felt it vibrating through my chest, my jaw.

  One minute to launch. Then, ignition. The capsule began to shake; my breath grew hot inside my helmet. Then a thundering came from below, a pent-up roar. The rocket swayed to the left, to the right, as if it would tip over. But it was all right. I’d read about it. My breath got hotter and hotter. We were tipping more and more.

  Then—a lift, the loss of supports. A two-second delay—and a terrible spring into the air, like a crouching animal unchained. My body slammed against my seat, my visor fogged, and we were airborne. The second-stage rockets fired, and I was lifted up, my stomach and breasts straining against my harness as we separated from the rocket.

  And then—a sudden quiet. The compartment cooled. My body was light. Out the porthole was an expanse of deep velvety black. The rocket’s white body slowly fell away, and it was the most singular thing I’d ever seen. We bega
n our first orbit and the pilot deployed the solar arrays and antennae. Things floated through the compartment—dust, slips of fabric, a few bolts. I watched their uneven trajectories, the unexpected arcs they made. My head felt full, my eyeballs huge. But my limbs were like air, like dust.

  The pilot floated by. He’d taken off his helmet and he gestured for me to do the same. His face was red—zero gravity had pushed all the blood into his head. He started calling out systems checks to mission control. I took off my helmet and the air was cold on my face. I unstrapped myself, held on to my seat with my hands, and hovered just above it. Then I let go and propelled myself like a fish across the compartment.

  The Earth’s curved edge was hard and deep blue through the porthole. I remembered my uncle’s globe, a plaster sphere painted blue and brown and written all over with small script, held by an arc of metal engraved with the sun and moon and planets. One time he set the globe on the floor and spun it, and we climbed on top of his desk to watch. Its oceans and continents blurred, turning from hard to soft before our eyes.

  This is what it’s like when you’re in orbit, my uncle said. All the world moves fast underneath you, and you feel like you’re a thousand feet tall.

  Standing there with him, imagining myself in the kind of spacesuit I now wore, I did feel a thousand feet tall. But this wasn’t like that at all. There was nothing soft about the ball of blue and white in the porthole, no matter how quickly its stretches of land and sea raced past. I felt the planet’s size and force. It seemed to press against the darkness around it, against the porthole itself. Like it would keep pressing until it pushed the capsule out of orbit and sent us flying through open space.

  I turned away from the porthole and my hands floated, my body drifted. The entry hatch was near my feet now, the seats at my head. I was upside down but felt I was right side up. My eyes swam around the room. I couldn’t seem to find a place for them to rest. Nausea moved over me, a hot and cold wave.