June, stop moving, Simon called. I heard his crowbar. The crate moved away from me, and then back. All the air seemed to rush out of my lungs as it pinned me flat. I reached to protect my head.
Through a crack I could see Simon struggling. His crowbar crunched between the crate and the hold door. A space opened up by my head and I took a breath. But the crate was only halfway out. It tipped toward my legs and pinned me by my calves.
Simon’s face was pink. Our eyes met. The crate squeezed my legs hard. I got you, he said. He torqued the crowbar sideways and yelled, Now!
The pressure on my legs loosened; I scrambled my body backward through the gap.
* * *
—
Things went more smoothly once we got that first crate out. Amelia had a manifest that said what parts of the shipment needed to be opened and their contents organized by final destination: the moon, Mars, or the Pink Planet; which should be moved as is; and which few were for us, containing food and other supplies to maintain the Sundew itself. Each crate, box, and container was marked with a zone (one through four) and a location (deck, starboard, port, and overhead).
Amelia and Simon and Rachel used crowbars to wrench the crates open. Bolts flew through the air and they didn’t bother to catch them. They had a sort of shorthand that involved yelling Left! Right! Got it! and Hell no! at one another over the tops of crates and boxes. They worked fast and I tried to help despite my aching calves.
Mostly I seemed to get in the way until I figured out I should stay in the hold and direct where they placed the cargo. They were strapping it into any open spot in each zone without being strategic. But doing it that way created awkward configurations that would make it harder when we had to reload the cargo in a few days. So instead of getting in between them as they yanked off the lids of crates and broke down boxes, I floated up and through the middle of the hold to look into the gaps in each stowage zone.
At first when I started calling out directions—Flip that crate! Rotate that container! Turn those bins!—Amelia argued with me. But she quickly saw I was right. We were done faster than anyone expected, with fifteen minutes to spare.
26
In the sleeping module the bunks were arranged in a cloverleaf, with one each on the deck, port, starboard, and overhead. When I got there Rachel and Simon were already in bed, their eyes closed. Simon’s long legs were tucked to his chest and his buzzed head turned to the wall. Rachel’s sleeping bag was pulled to her chin but her hair floated free. I pulled myself into my bunk, which was long and narrow, with just enough room for me to stretch out, and zipped my sleeping bag around me. Rachel and Simon were very close. I could reach out and touch either of them without any effort at all.
I heard them breathing. I smelled toothpaste and dirty socks. I wanted to close my eyes, but they felt huge. My body hummed. The backs of my calves ached. My scalp itched where my helmet had pressed against my head, and when I reached to touch my face it was full of fluid and squishy under my fingers. I shifted left and then right in my sleeping bag. My thoughts roamed through the empty station, into all its modules and compartments and holds. Images shuttled through my mind—of water droplets spinning through the air, of massive crates creaking against their restraints.
Sleep didn’t come. And didn’t come. The thought that it might never come again entered my mind and my throat tightened. I felt a twist of panic low in my stomach. I shifted to my side, my back. I thought of my first night at Peter Reed, how impossible it felt to sleep in that big room full of other girls. How it seemed like I’d stay awake forever under my icy sheets listening to everyone around me breathe and cough and sneeze.
Amelia came into the module and I watched her through half-closed eyes. I heard the rrrrp of her sleeping bag, a cough, and then silence. I closed my eyes. I would be all right; I wouldn’t be awake forever. Sleep would come.
And then—a low, guttural snore. And another. And another.
I pulled my sleeping bag to my chin, and then over my ears; I pressed my face to its slippery fabric and squeezed my eyes shut. Amelia’s snores seemed to lengthen and amplify, to fill every inch of the small room.
I unzipped my bag and swam out of the sleeping module and the twist in my stomach loosened. I pulled myself into the next module and the sound of the snores faded and the twist disappeared.
I floated to Storage and Systems and checked the water reclaimer. It was running fine. On the intercom was the empty SM, its panel of monitors blank. I pressed a button and the image changed to the sleeping module I’d just left. Simon was still turned toward the wall. His long legs were tucked into his body making him appear small. Amelia and Rachel faced each other, and one of Rachel’s arms was loose. It reached toward Amelia, as if they’d been holding hands and had just let go. I pressed the button again and looked into each empty module, into each of the three holds, including Cargo 2, the one we’d just loaded, which was full of dark and irregular shapes.
I pressed some more buttons and an exterior image of the station appeared: the dark shine of a solar array turned away from the sun, the long pole of a robotic arm tethered tightly to the starboard of the station. A series of vents on the station’s underside, and below them, a dark expanse broken only by the tiny pinpricks of stars.
It seemed impossible that such a sprawling jumble of modules and airlocks and equipment and arrays could be so silent and still. But it was.
I kept clicking and was surprised to find I could access satellite feeds from other stations in orbit, as well as the outposts on the moon, Mars, and the Pink Planet. I skipped past all of them but the last, and a hazy pink grid filled the screen—a view of the solar fields on the Pink Planet. The visibility was poor, and the image seemed to change in waves. I pulled myself closer to the screen and remembered my uncle’s soft, precise voice telling me about the power grid he helped develop and the challenge of generating solar power on a moon where frequent windstorms clouded the air with silt.
I watched the undulating image for several minutes, and finally began to feel sleepy. I quit the satellite feeds and returned to the interior view of the Sundew. The Service Module was still empty. Simon and Amelia and Rachel were exactly as they were except now Amelia was turned toward the wall.
I paused at Cargo 2. My eyes were heavier now. They began to close. Then a flicker of movement came from deep in the hold, a shadow that flitted past the runner lights. I kept watching and it came again.
I grabbed a flashlight and floated to Cargo 2, opened the airlock.
The hold was dark and dense with cargo and colder than it had been. I hovered just inside and moved my beam across boxes and crates and bags, and shadows sprang up and shifted. I floated through the rows and pointed my light into the spaces between the tethered shapes, catching the scents of glue and motor oil and pepper (a sack of spices had split when we were unloading). I saw nothing.
Then there was a sound, a scrabbling, living sound. I rose above a sack of linens bigger than me, twisted my body around a crate marked no crowbar in three languages, swam deeper into the hold. Bits of reflective tape flashed when my light hit them; containers and bundles shifted and creaked as I swam past. I listened hard, heard a scrabble and a squeak, and turned my flashlight in time to catch a glimpse of a rat as it floated between two crates, its tail hovering and its hair standing on end.
I shivered; there was a strange feeling at the base of my neck. A tingling ache. The shadow of a wide crate seemed to loom, to move toward me of its own volition, and I pedaled my feet. I didn’t feel right. Something wasn’t right. The tingling ache began to crawl up the back of my skull. I turned back to the airlock and something flashed from behind a large sack. I swam toward it. It was the loss-of-pressure alarm, but it wasn’t sounding. Why wasn’t it sounding? I rolled my body in the air and the pain in my head roared. I felt along the wall for the emergency pull. It wasn’t there—
; My fingers found it and I tugged and the air filled with sound. A bleating alarm, a staticky voice warning me of something; I couldn’t make out what. I rolled again and pushed off a crate toward the open airlock, the flashing light beating time out of the corner of my eye. The lock was two meters away. One. It slid shut with a swift thnnk.
I hung suspended in the air and stared at it dumbly.
I pressed the button to open the lock and nothing happened. I pressed it again. The lock didn’t budge. Through the porthole the corridor was empty. The alarm wailed on and on but no one was coming. The shadows around me changed; they distorted and bent. They doubled and joined. They became large and rose up like spirits.
They weren’t coming. Why weren’t they coming?
Amelia’s oval face appeared in the porthole in the airlock door. June. What the hell.
I blinked. The air was colder. Pain gripped my head and squeezed and squeezed. My rapid breath made clouds in the air.
Amelia’s face was replaced by Simon’s. Behind him Rachel was talking. We’ve got a seal leak but no alarm—
June. Simon talked to me through the porthole. His voice was loud and deliberate over the alarm. I need you to do something for me. I want you to take low, slow breaths. Just like in the dive pool, remember? Low and slow.
I nodded but my lungs kept pumping.
June. Low and slow.
I swallowed. I forced my throat to release its grip on my breath, forced my chest to relax. I remembered my first dive at Peter Reed, the feeling of my teeth against my rubbery mouthpiece. It had felt impossible to ignore the impulse to blow air out fast and draw it in even faster. To ignore the quick beat of my pulse in my throat. But I did it. I did it then and I could do it now. I made my breaths low, and the clouds they made slowed. I focused on the clouds; I counted them and let each one dissipate before I made the next.
Simon’s face was gone but I heard Rachel’s voice. She was talking about a manual override. Amelia said, We need two suits.
I counted breaths. Counted clouds. Low and slow.
Rachel’s face was in the porthole now. We’re going to open the door. But there’s a pressure difference. Things are going to shift. I want you to crouch down between two of the biggest, most secure crates—on the starboard side. And I want you to protect your head.
My vision blurred, and a peculiar fizzing sensation bloomed on my tongue. The pain in my head had become a single needle point behind my right eye. Okay.
Repeat back to me.
I’m going to— I squeezed my right eye shut and ignored a shadow that seemed to creep, and then recede, along the wall. I’m going to crouch somewhere secure. I’m going to protect my head.
In five, Rachel said.
I scanned the area where I was floating and chose my spot.
In four.
I tucked my head to my chest, put my arms over my head, and squeezed my eyes shut.
In three.
In two.
In one—
There was a slow suck and a terrific howl of air. A jetlike thrust against my chest. My shoulders smacked the wall behind me and my head bounced. My eyes jolted open and the air was full of things. Beans, salt, feathers. Flashing bits of metal. A twist of clear tubing, a spray of bolts.
White arms grabbed me. Amelia and Rachel in their suits, their faces pink and flat behind their visors. My limbs unfolded and I shut my eyes and oh! They were full of glass and I swallowed a scream.
Then we were inside the lock. The exterior and interior doors shut, and the alarm ceased. I held on to a handrail. My body was strange, my lungs rigid, my face like a stone. As if all my soft parts had turned hard. I held my eyes open—if I blinked it was much, much worse.
My eyes, I said. There’s something in them. Rachel was pulling off her suit; she floated near my face. Okay. I see.
Amelia took off her suit too.
There’s something in them, I said again and my chest shook and my eyes ran.
One thing at a time, Rachel said, and the two of them pulled off my track pants, my socks. Amelia cut off my overshirt. Their hands were warm and firm as they brushed bits of debris from my face and hair. They steered me to the galley, where they wiped more debris from my body with a sponge and I shivered.
Amelia opened a table and laid my body flat. Simon’s face appeared over my own, his long eyelashes dark against his face. He secured my arms and legs to the table with Velcro straps. He moved quickly but was careful not to jostle my head. We’re good, he said.
I lay flat on the table in my tank top and underwear, my eyes stinging and tearing. A long moment passed while they opened drawers and retrieved things. Eyewash and tweezers and gauze. I blinked once and yelped, and then Simon pressed his fingers above and below my eyelids to hold them open. Rachel washed the cuts on my face with antiseptic and then readied the eyewash and leaned in close. My eyes teared and I tried to blink but Simon’s fingers were steady.
She’s got at least one shard in her right eye, Rachel said. I think two in the left.
My body tensed as she lowered the tweezers. I squirmed. I had been cold but now I felt sweat on my forehead under Simon’s thumb.
Still, Rachel said. I need you to be still.
She took aim and again I wriggled.
Don’t look at the tweezers, Rachel said. Look at Amelia. Talk to Amelia.
I did what she said. I looked at Amelia’s oval face and long ears. Her cheeks were red and her hair wet at the temples.
Say something Amelia, Rachel said.
What were you doing in that hold? Amelia asked.
Not about that, Rachel said.
You said talk.
Rachel lowered the tweezers and I felt her breath on my cheek and the pressure of Simon’s fingers on my skin. I kept my eyes on Amelia’s face.
Got it. Rachel held something tiny and glinting in the light and then carefully stuck it to a loop of surgical tape on the medical tray. Then she lowered the tweezers again and hummed between her teeth. She held up another shard. Two down, one to go.
She squinted into my right eye. Wider, she said. Simon pulled my eyelid taut and tears wet my cheek.
I watched Amelia.
The tweezers grew large again.
Done, Rachel said.
Simon irrigated my eye and droplets danced around us. He released his fingers. Rachel handed me some gauze and I blinked and dabbed at my cheeks. I coughed. I shut my eyes and felt them all watching.
Damn, I said.
Does it hurt? Simon asked.
I coughed again and opened my eyes halfway. Not really. I feel okay.
Simon unstrapped me from the table and I floated.
So why were you in that hold? he asked.
I saw something. A rat.
Amelia laughed, and Simon did too.
I guess we should be thankful for that rat, Rachel said.
I listed to one side. Outside the porthole was a dark blank. Exhaustion stole over my body and I moved my limbs to try to wake them up. I said I would help investigate the leak but Amelia shook her head and said, Straight to bed.
My eyes were already closing as I floated to the sleeping module. I felt my way into my bunk and hugged my sleeping bag to my chest. My tongue was tender; I ran it over the roof of my mouth once, twice, and then I fell immediately into a doze.
When I woke my crewmates were in their bunks, their eyes closed. Simon was on his back, his eyelashes long and dark, his forehead smooth, and Rachel was turned toward the wall, her sleeping bag tucked around her chin. Amelia floated just above her bunk, her mouth open. Her eyelids trembled and her feet waved gently in the air.
The sound of everyone’s breathing filled up the small space. Up, down, sideways. Simon’s breathing was soft and rhythmic. Rachel’s was a nasal sigh. Amelia’s was a loud inhal
e followed by an airy exhale. The noises kept me awake but this time I didn’t mind. I listened to them for a long time until eventually sleep came again.
27
In the morning two packets arrived within hours of each other. Simon was still testing the seal in Cargo 2 so we had to fill every other space. The airlocks, Storage and Systems, even the galley. The interior of the station transformed. We could barely move through the tight spaces, and for two days it felt like we were moles crawling through a narrow burrow. I’d push my way into the opening of a tunnel into darkness only to bump heads with Simon or Amelia or Rachel in the middle, laugh, and have to slowly crawl out feetfirst.
I ate nothing but nut bars and squeezable milk packets for a full forty-eight hours. My arms ached from pushing crates and sacks through the station and pulling them out again. But I didn’t care. My head was clear, my body light. My nausea had dissipated; my eyes were sore but as soon as I was out of my bunk and working it was easy to ignore the discomfort. The tasks I was assigned were challenging, and it felt good to do them well.
Then there was a sudden lull in our schedule—an unexpected twenty-four hours when we had nothing to do. We’d moved the last packet out. We’d cleaned and done systems checks, and Simon had fixed the seal leak in Cargo 2 to his satisfaction. Both holds were empty and ready, and the next packet wasn’t due for a full day.
We could move freely through the station again and the space felt vast. We swam through the modules with our arms out, did somersaults in the air, and whooped. After a while we all drifted in different directions. Amelia and Rachel played a game with a ball and a storage bin only they seemed to fully understand. Simon ran on the treadmill in our tiny gym.
I floated through the station and looked out portholes that had been obstructed by cargo. I hovered outside the largest porthole—in the SM, port side—and watched the Earth’s expanse of ocean and clouds move past like a massive ball rolling in slow motion. My stomach didn’t lurch anymore looking at it. I didn’t feel out of control. It felt less like I was teetering on a precipice and more like I was standing, firm footed and secure, at the edge of an ocean cliff.
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