In the Quick

by Kate Hope Day

  That night we all slept for as long as we wanted, and by late morning everyone ended up in the galley hovering around the food compartments. We should eat something real, Rachel said. Eggs maybe. With what? Mushrooms and hot sauce? In a tortilla? She began rummaging through the dry goods compartment.

  We hovered while Rachel assembled the food. You couldn’t really call it cooking; it was more like compiling different things from different drawers. But it was good, what she put together. The eggs were crumbly but actually tasted eggy. The hot sauce burned pleasantly on my tongue.

  We should eat the apples too, Rachel said when everyone was done. Before they go bad—

  Real apples? I asked.

  Our lockers came in the last packet, Amelia said. Rachel’s dad sent apples.

  Rachel floated out of the galley and came back with her locker, and mine and Simon’s too.

  She tossed us each an apple; it was smooth and warm in my hand. I bit into it and it was wet and tart and firm. I ate it quickly, taking one bite after the other without stopping, until all that was left was the thinnest core. Rachel threw another in my direction and I reached in the air and caught it. I ate that one fast too, and so did everyone else, and the small room filled with the crunching of our teeth.

  I wiped my mouth. My locker hovered near the ceiling. I’d packed it so long ago. Or, it felt that way. But it had been no more than a week. I tried to remember if I’d put anything in there I could share—

  I undid the latch and the lid popped open and items began to float out. A pocket atlas, a container of iced tea mix, my favorite Candidate Group sweatshirt—red with white lettering across its front. Books and papers of my uncle’s I’d been carrying around since I left home. As I pushed the atlas and tea back in, New History of Energy bumped out, and sheets of paper with faded blue schematics dislodged from their folder. They separated and dispersed in the air. I pulled my sweatshirt from underneath the spray of papers and pushed everything else back inside.

  But Amelia grabbed one sheet, held it up to the light, and frowned. It was a fuel cell schematic covered in writing—my uncle’s, Simon’s, James’s, Theresa’s, and her own. Reflected light from outside the porthole shined through the paper and made the writing appear darker than it really was.

  Why do you have these? Her voice was strange.

  I felt silly; I had only a five-kilogram allowance for personal items and I’d used it to carry my uncle’s old things.

  I like having something of his with me, I said.

  She slid the paper into the box.

  I should have brought food or extra tools, I said. I shut the lid and slid the latch closed. Something useful.

  It’s your locker. She looked at Simon; he was pushing apples from Rachel’s locker into one of the refrigerator bins. You can bring what you want.

  28

  Everything has a different weight and shape in space. Objects don’t behave the way you expect them to: an enormous container of supplies that appears impossible to haul is in fact easy, but a small sack of hardware is unwieldy, potentially dangerous. Things move in unpredictable ways, change shape, even disappear. Food floats away or disintegrates before you can eat it; tools you gripped tightly in your hand just seconds ago seem to vanish into thin air.

  My body itself was different on the Sundew, the contours of my face almost unrecognizable in the mirror. My cheeks were wider, my eyes rounder. My shoulders took up more room than they did on Earth, my legs less. I didn’t move the same. Like everyone else on the station I developed my own unique way of getting from module to module, half swim, half climb. I didn’t even sound the same. When someone asked me a question and I answered, my voice—lower and raspier than on Earth—seemed to belong to someone else.

  It wasn’t just tangible things that were different, things I could point to and say, That’s not the same as on Earth. Time and physical space were different. The span of a minute, an hour, a day. The directions, up and down, left and right. The perceived dimensions of something as large as a module or as small as a bolt. My senses were different. Sight, smell, taste, touch, sound. They could distort and change shape; they could be one thing at one moment and quite another thing the next.

  I had to reorient myself to my surroundings constantly, be alert at all times. Even when I was tired, hungry, or hurting. Even when I slept.

  I learned to distrust my sense of sight, to discount my sense of taste and smell (they were so dulled by the effects of zero gravity on my sinuses they were nearly useless). I relied more on my fingers, on my ears; instead of turning on lights when I needed to go to the toilet in the night I just felt my way there, listening instead of looking for anything amiss as I moved through silent and shadowy modules and locks.

  I started to listen to the equipment and systems I was charged with maintaining and fixing. I got the idea from Simon who I found in Storage and Systems one morning, his ear pressed against the oxygenator. He was wearing a jumpsuit unbuttoned to his waist, a clean white T-shirt underneath. Rachel had just used the clippers on his hair and his scalp was pink.

  I asked him what he was doing and he frowned and held up a hand. Hold on—

  When he was done I pressed him to explain.

  Every system has two sounds, he said. One when it’s working properly, one when it’s not. If you get to know them, you can stop a problem before it happens.

  How do you know which is good and which is bad?

  He drummed his thumb on the side of the oxygenator. Listen every day and you’ll learn.

  At first I didn’t hear anything but a hum. Then I drew my limbs into my body and pressed my ear closer, the metal of the panel cold against my ear, and was able to differentiate three different noises: a dragging hum, a whoosh of air, and—every few seconds—a faint tick, tick.

  I started listening to the electronics assembly, the heat rejection radiator, the space-to-ground antenna system. The water reclaimer and the thermal control system. At any odd moment, when I didn’t have anything else to do, I pressed my ear to things—panels, vents, equipment. I floated from one machine to the next.

  It got to the point where my dreams weren’t about people anymore, or places, or things. They didn’t have pictures in them at all—only the sounds of the station. Hums and drips and scrapes; gentle scuffles and creaking rasps; jangling squeaks. Long stints of vibrating static. Rhythmic stretches of thumps.

  One morning I woke with a full bladder and the swishing pops of the galley water pump in my ears. I wiggled out of my sleeping bag and swam to the toilet. It hadn’t been cleaned in a while and it smelled bad. I sat down gingerly, pressed the suction button, and felt the toilet pull hard on my bottom. My body tightened. I took a breath and relaxed my thighs, bladder, stomach. Finally I was able to go, and the urine was whisked out of my body in an instant.

  A red light warned me the waste tanks were full and I groaned. The urine processing unit had broken three days ago and there hadn’t been time to fix it. I’d have to manually empty the tank before I could go back to bed. I got the tools I needed from Storage and Systems and powered everything down. Then I hovered over the unit to detach the electrical connectors, tape them temporarily to the wall with duct tape, and remove the tank, all while trying to avoid breathing through my nose. I started the pump and figured since I’d already taken the unit apart I might as well try to fix it.

  I began to undo all the bolts on the broken part—a big metal drum that distilled water from urine through evaporation—and Amelia’s voice came from behind me. You’re up early. She floated into the module. She was eating a shriveled apple.

  I hope you don’t have to go, I said.

  I can wait.

  How long have you been up?

  Awhile. I had to check the gyroscopes.

  I looked at her. She was pale and thinner than she’d been when I first arrived; the skin under her
eyes was dark purple in the dim light.

  I don’t need a lot of sleep, she said, as if she could read my mind.

  She finished the apple, pulled her body closer, and grabbed the wrench I’d velcroed to my jumpsuit.

  Did Simon show you how to do this?

  No.

  You didn’t learn how to do it at Peter Reed—

  I figured it out just now.

  I didn’t learn a whole lot that was useful there either, she said.

  Together we disconnected and capped all the fluid lines, including the one that filtered into the brine reservoir, pulled out the broken assembly unit, and began installing the new one. It was hot in the small compartment with the two of us wedged inside and I started to sweat, but we worked efficiently and fast.

  I learned a lot from your sister, I said.

  Carla? You weren’t in the same group.

  We were my first year. Our beds were next to each other.

  We reconnected the fluid lines, careful not to mix up gray water and brine.

  I haven’t seen her in a long time, I said. How is she?

  She works at one of the private labs. She’s got a boyfriend, or she did the last time we talked.

  You must be glad to see her in between rotations.

  There was an empty pause. The vent overhead whirred.

  I’m better with machines than people, she said.

  The metal wrench was cold against my palm. Me too.

  She stretched her body in the air. You’re like your uncle. She looked at my face and seemed to appraise it. My nose, my chin. A lot like him.

  I felt warmth and a sense of solidness despite my floating limbs.

  He understood me, Amelia said. Maybe better than anyone.

  I nodded.

  She folded her body in the air. Everything went to shit when he died. She shut the urine processor’s cabinet, bolted it closed, and powered it up. You go first, she said.

  I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and pressed my ear to the tank. One second—

  But she was already pressing the button to vent the brine reservoir. I heard a rush of air, then seven high pops, and something about it tugged at my memory. I knew it. I knew that sound—

  29

  I hit the vent button over and over. Every time: a rush of air and seven pops.

  Why are you doing that? Amelia asked. The processor’s good to go—

  I just— I put my tools away quickly. I need to check something. I left her and pulled myself into the next module. I bumped into things; I caught my elbow on an open panel, knocked my head as I swung my body through the airlock between the SM and the galley.

  When I reached the sleeping module I grabbed my locker, crawled into my bunk, and pulled the partition closed. My breath was warm and loud in the tiny space as I rummaged through the locker. I had it somewhere, the static log I’d begun five years ago after Inquiry went dark. I knew I did because I’d nearly thrown it out when I was cleaning out my dorm room after Candidate Group graduation. I’d found it at the bottom of an old duffel bag and laughed when I pulled it out.

  I did have it, a dented green notebook with my name written inside the cover. I turned on the tiny reading light attached to the side of my bunk compartment, opened the book, and began to read. I scanned every page, squinting at my twelve-year-old handwriting in the lamp’s small spotlight, until I found my notes on G1 and H2. They included the dates I heard the static, the channel’s letter and number designation, AUX27, and the interval between the sounds, between seventy and seventy-four hours.

  I stayed in my bunk and thought for a long time. No one talked about Inquiry anymore. During my training the Explorer program was rarely mentioned, and when it was it was handled in a clinical way. No one talked about the crew. No one said their names.

  But since I’d arrived at the Sundew I’d thought about them a lot. They were with me as I floated through the station’s modules and airlocks, hauled crates and sacks from one hold to another, and ate breakfast with Amelia or Simon in the galley. When I strapped myself into a jump seat, the restraints tight against my chest, I pictured Anu secured in an identical seat. When I squeezed behind a panel with a tool in my hand, I wondered how many times she’d done the same on Inquiry.

  It was a wild thought that they could still be alive, five years later. I pressed the notebook to my chest and swam to the SM.

  * * *

  —

  Simon was there, strapped into a seat, doing a systems check. One of the gyroscopes is trying to die, he said. For real this time.

  I hung in the air in front of him. I need to listen to something.

  What?

  The Inquiry feed.

  He looked at me steadily and I remembered the day he sat next to me on the bus to Peter Reed, the picture of Anu he’d tucked inside his book. Why?

  I’m just…curious about something.

  Okay. He pressed buttons, and the screen lit up with the familiar communications log, the one-way conversation between mission control and the Inquiry explorer. Only now it was a no-way conversation because control had stopped sending status checks two years ago.

  I belted myself into the seat next to him, opened my log, and pointed at the list of channels. That one. AUX27. Start it from a week ago, I said.

  But he was unstrapping himself from his seat. I’ll leave you to it.

  Stay. I started pressing buttons and turned the channel up loud.

  His face was grim. I don’t want to.

  But he didn’t leave—he hung on to the back of his seat, his feet waving in the air behind him.

  The channel was a long unbroken fizz. I waited and nothing happened. I checked its designation again. AUX27. I skipped ahead several hours. And then a full day. Still nothing. No hums, no pops.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. That was it then. I turned the channel down.

  What were you listening for? Simon asked.

  It was stupid. I thought—

  A low hum filled the room, broken by seven snapping pops. G1 and H2, just the same as I remembered them. Just the same as the sound I’d heard inside our own urine processing tank.

  I pulled myself to the screen, skipped ahead three days. Again, a low hum and seven snapping pops.

  Tell me what that is, Simon said.

  It’s going to sound crazy.

  Say it. He held the back of his seat with two hands.

  Proof the Inquiry crew are still alive.

  His mouth was a thin line. It seemed for a minute he might turn and swim out of the module. But he didn’t; he pulled himself into his seat, strapped himself in. Start from the beginning, he said.

  The Sundew and Inquiry are the same age, I said. They have a lot of the same equipment.

  Right.

  They have the same urine processor. Same manufacturer, same model, installed within months of each other. Its brine reservoir has to be vented manually.

  I played back G1 and H2. The vent makes a distinctive sound. Exactly like this—

  NSP has been listening to the feed all along, he interrupted. There’s nothing there.

  There’s static.

  Interference that could be a million different things.

  This channel— I pointed at AUX27. It runs through an antenna on the underside of the explorer. I looked it up. It was installed for a waveform communication experiment, and is right next to the urine processor’s vent.

  If they were alive NSP would know it. They would have figured it out.

  It’s not impossible they missed this.

  Or they do know it, he said slowly. And haven’t said anything because there’s nothing they can do about it.

  A fan near my right ear began to whir; cold air filled the module. Don’t say that.

  They want to forget t
hem June.

  Something in the fan began to flap—a cargo tag stuck in its filter—and I unstrapped myself and swam to pull it out.

  Simon’s hands floated. I told Anu she shouldn’t go, he said. I said the explorer wasn’t ready. The fuel cell needed more testing, a longer study. She said that if NSP did all those tests she might be too old to go by the time they were done.

  She was probably right.

  I said there was more to life than one mission. There was me. Her friends. Her family—

  You couldn’t convince her, I said.

  She convinced me. There are risks in every mission. If something does go wrong, who should NSP trust to make it right? Who would I trust? Anu.

  That’s true.

  But that stupid speech I gave got in her head, he said. The day of the launch I stood at the bottom of the elevator and waited to wave goodbye. When Anu walked toward us in her jumpsuit she looked so capable and strong. But when she got closer I saw doubt in her expression. Maybe fear.

  I folded the cargo tag in my hands. What would she say if she were here right now?

  She’d say— Oh I don’t know. She’d say we have to replicate it, Simon said. The static. But we don’t have an antenna anywhere near that vent.

  You and Amelia could install one during your spacewalk. It would take ten minutes. Fifteen tops.

  He didn’t say anything. He unstrapped himself from his seat. Amelia won’t do it, he said.

  Why?

  She wants to forget too.

  * * *

  —

  I waited until the next day when Amelia was in the gym, strapped into the stationary bike and pedaling hard. I hung on to a handrail and told her what I’d discovered and what I thought it meant. I spoke over the circular whine of the bike.

  As I talked she didn’t react. Her feet didn’t slow; she stared straight ahead out the porthole, sweat darkening her T-shirt.