We finally reached the airlock leading to the cargo bay and I helped Theresa into a suit, a painfully slow process. I pulled her fingers from the suit’s armholes as she pushed them through, and I thought of Simon, who had done the same for me with my wet suit before my first dive at Peter Reed. Theresa was breathing hard by the time we were done, but her helmet was on now, and oxygen was flowing. She smiled weakly through her visor.
Once Theresa was folded into the driver’s seat of a rover and covered with a foil blanket I punched the destination into the navigation.
She held on to the steering wheel. Her face had receded inside her helmet but her voice was clear. Thank you June.
My finger hovered over the button to open the cargo door and my heart quickened at the thought of James hearing it. I pressed it and the rover pulled forward with a low whine into the chalky night.
I went to my room but didn’t sleep. I stayed in my clothes and counted down the minutes until the capsule’s scheduled departure just after dawn, watched the dull pink glow of morning creep across my floor. Then James’s footsteps sounded outside. He was moving up and down the corridors, in and out of airlocks calling, Theresa!
His anxious voice drew closer and strangled the sound of her name.
And then, at my door: June! Theresa’s gone!
I didn’t answer. He banged on the door. Wake up. Wake up God damn it.
He moved away, toward the north corridor and the cargo bay. My breath was fast. He would find the empty spot. Little piles of silt where the rover used to be.
Soon he was back, his voice a growl outside the door.
My body vibrated; my teeth chattered. I unlocked the door and he pushed his way inside.
Where is she?
She’s already gone. I stepped back and braced myself, and his body seemed to change shape, to bend, to distort. But he didn’t yell. His voice was low and tight. What did you do?
I’d seen him angry, many times, and had laughed at it. Laughed at his hot temper, his easy irritation with equipment, weather, me. But I couldn’t laugh at this.
I backed farther away. He stepped closer.
I did what she wanted, I said. I did what was right.
He kept coming. I turned and tripped. He caught me, pulled me to him; he tucked his head and wrapped his arms tightly around my chest.
You’ve killed her, he said in my ear. He squeezed me and my breath strained against his chest. Do you know that? He squeezed harder.
I couldn’t get enough air. I tried to pull away but his arms were a tightening vise. Stop it, I choked. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
He let go, and I collapsed onto my bed, coughing.
That’s what she’ll say. His hair was wild; he moved like his body was broken. That’s what she’ll say in the end.
* * *
—
I stayed in my bunk; I sat on my mattress and took big breaths. My lungs inflated and deflated, and I pictured Theresa in the capsule, strapped into a jump seat. Her thin face was tired but happy. Then I heard a horrible noise. It sounded like pieces of metal hitting the walls, the floor. James was breaking something. What?
I ran out of my bunk, my hands pushing against the walls, my feet clumsy. I moved in and out of light and dark, hot and cold. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t— But he had. He stood in the workshop in the midst of a pile of glittering debris. Metal panels, wiring, connectors, bolts, screws. Our cell. It was a pile of pieces again, only this time even they were broken—cables torn, soldered connections split, circuit boards cracked.
He stood with his legs wide and panted with the effort of smashing it all. It was ugly. He was ugly. I thought I knew him—that I understood him—but I didn’t. I thought we were the same, but we weren’t.
I walked away from him; in my bunk I put some clothes in a bag and went to the cargo bay. My hands shook as I pulled on my suit, but I got it on, went through the airlock, and climbed into the remaining rover. The bay door opened into the pink glow of early dawn.
IV
44
I drove straight ahead until I couldn’t see the lights of the Gateway behind me. My body vibrated but I kept my hands on the steering wheel and my eyes straight ahead. The visibility was poor. The sun was rising but it was barely a smudge of yellow on the horizon. Mountains of silt stretched out before me, uneven, undulating.
I had admired the Pink Planet my whole life. Read about it, talked about it, dreamed about it. It was June’s moon. I thought if I belonged anywhere, it was here. The terrain rumbled through my body as I drove up and down the silty crags, one after the other, and around rusted-out landers and satellites and probes. The rover slid into a valley, its wheels spinning as they hit the ground, and silt-covered shapes rose up all around me. Some were discernible—the flat broken wing of a shuttle, the popped dome of an abandoned mobile habitation unit. Others weren’t, and specters seemed to rise from their shapes. The steep-angled roof of my aunt’s house. Inquiry’s tall, pointed rocket. My uncle’s high hospital bed. The sharp slope of James’s bare shoulder.
I blinked tears as I swerved away from the shapes, kept driving, on and on, until my body felt shattered. I hadn’t set my position before I left the station and now numbers on the navigation controls jumped haphazardly around the screen.
67889.0009 00032.0000 7860.0023
21450.0001 12569.5900
00007.0000 45000.9865
10050.0090 90401.0526
I had thought I was headed toward the satellite station—it was due north from the Gateway. Now I wasn’t so sure. A series of plateau-like ridges blocked out the sun ahead. I braked, tried to get my bearings, turned. I drove for a while, second-guessed myself, and turned again. I felt a flutter of panic. I’d been driving for a long time, too long. The rovers didn’t keep more than a few hours of charge at a time. Ten minutes later lights flashed on the dashboard, and the rover rolled to a stop.
I found the controls for the solar charger and deployed the panels, but nothing happened. I pressed the button again and there was a grinding sound, and then silence. A fiery heat rose in my body; I grabbed the steering wheel, laid my burning forehead against it, and screamed.
The interior of the rover cooled. My breath fogged the windows and obscured the ridges of silt surrounding me. I pulled my helmet on, and my gloves, grabbed a tool kit, and depressurized the rover. Outside, the pink haze had thinned. I climbed on top of the rover and stood; I could see for a long way and there was nothing. No structure, no solar field, no beacon or cable relay. My breath was loud and singular inside my helmet. I was entirely alone.
* * *
—
It took me more than six hours to fix the solar deploy mechanism. It was an almost impossible job to do alone, and the sun was intense. Tools kept slipping out of my gloves. By the time I was finished only an hour of sunlight remained in the day. I got only a partial charge on the rover, three, four hours max—which meant I wouldn’t have heat for at least four hours of the night.
I got back in and shut everything down but life support. I forced myself to think, to make a plan. I had a single bottle of water, no food. I had a compass, but I wasn’t certain of my location relative to the Gateway or satellite station, and regardless they were too far to walk to in my suit. My communications system was out of range.
I was going to have to wait until the sun rose again. On a piece of paper I did the math, trying the numbers three different ways. If I cycled the rover on every fifty minutes, I could stave off hypothermia until dawn. The first heat cycle would be in forty-five minutes, and I set my watch in case I fell asleep.
The sun slid lower on the horizon until it was just a thin slice of rosy yellow and the temperature inside the rover dropped. My fingers turned cold and my breath made clouds. I watched the minutes count down. Finally it was time and I turned on the heat, felt the blast of warmth
like pinpricks on my face, neck, fingers. I rubbed my hands together over and over. Too soon it was time to cycle off. I set my watch again. There were still six and a half hours till dawn.
My body quickly cooled. I felt the freezing air seep gradually into my skin, muscles, bones. My neck and wrists and elbows turned stiff; my toes seemed to shrink inside my boots. Tremors moved through my body in waves. It was fully dark now. Outside was an empty expanse of black that seemed to stretch forever. Inside I had only my headlamp’s single spot of light. My sense of the rover, its titanium shell, pressure coated windshield, metal alloy tires—the shape and weight of all those parts—fell away, and there seemed to be nothing between me and the deep darkness surrounding me.
I went through three more cycles, my limbs becoming more rigid and my mind more sluggish with each one. I couldn’t hold on to thoughts, and the color of things changed. My suit turned gray, the rover’s dashboard white. The windows blue. The third cycle of heat seemed to have no effect at all. My body was a block of ice, my mind a flat, cold blank. I slowly crawled into the back of the rover, over the battery pack, which still held some warmth, and I pressed my body against it. The temperature dropped further. Memories skittered through my brain, of frozen trees outside the window at my aunt’s house. Icy sheets on my bed in the girls’ dormitory at Peter Reed. Crystalized condensate on an equipment panel on the Sundew. Then the memories began to shift and blur.
I tried to focus on one image at a time. The book I used to read in the window seat at my aunt’s house, New History of Energy. Carla’s hand reaching out in the darkness between our two beds at Peter Reed. But the pictures got mixed up and fused together strangely. Carla’s face appeared on the cover of the book. My dormitory bed floated in the darkness outside the porthole on the Sundew.
I pressed my body closer to the battery pack, and it was warm. Warmer than it had been, which made no sense. I felt fear, but I couldn’t think. The battery grew warmer still, until I was hot. So hot I had to unzip my suit. I had to. My skin felt like it would burn off and I wanted to pull off my gloves, my boots. But I didn’t. My brain wasn’t working, wasn’t processing, but I didn’t do it because the heat wasn’t real.
An overwhelming heaviness stole over my body, starting with my fingers and toes, and moving inward. My eyelids lowered, and I snapped them open. The next cycle was soon. I had to stay awake. But my eyelids were like lead. They lowered. They lowered. They lowered again.
45
I became aware of light on my shoulders. I tried to raise my head but it was an incredible immobile weight.
Then the light went away. And came back. I blinked. Someone stood in the window.
James.
But it wasn’t James. It was a man wearing a patched suit and a helmet with a discolored visor. He tapped on the window and motioned for me to put my helmet on. I couldn’t move my head. My face was numb; my cheek felt like it had adhered to my arm.
He tapped again. You have to move, he said, his voice muffled behind the glass. He tapped over and over.
I raised my head an inch and the sunlight was cruel. My head throbbed; a wave of nausea moved through my body. I forced myself to move my arms, and then my legs. Vomit stole up my throat and I swallowed it. I dragged my body sideways, felt for my helmet. I lifted my head more, two inches, enough to get my helmet on and lock it.
I stared out the window dumbly.
The man—who was it?—gestured to my chest. I looked down; my suit was unzipped, the strip of exposed skin red and raw. I fumbled to secure the zipper, my fingers numb and my grasp clumsy. After a few tries I managed it, and he opened the door and pulled me out. My limbs buckled, and he held me up.
Silt popped loudly on my helmet; sunlight bored into my eye sockets. I tried to see past the milky haze that obscured his visor but could make out only the shape of his head, the curve of his ears.
He helped me around the rover and into the passenger seat. He got in too, repressurized the rover, and helped me take off my helmet. Silt fell to the floor. I shook off my gloves; my fingertips were red and fat, the nails a sickening gray. He held out a bottle of water but when I raised my hands they began to pulse with pain. He brought the bottle to my mouth.
I gulped the water. Slowly, he said and his voice was soft and precise. It was my uncle’s voice. He pulled the bottle away.
I leaned back in my seat and the rover began to move smoothly over the ground. It felt as if we were gliding. There were no jolts or bumps, only gentle dips and sways. Light flickered across the windshield. A structure appeared in the distance, domed white modules against the pink sky. We slid toward it.
I ran my scratchy tongue over the roof of my mouth. I wanted to say something.
The man’s suit was faded blue and covered with a fine dusting of silt. You’re not real, I said.
His hazy visor reflected my face.
I squeezed my stinging eyes shut. I wish you were real but you’re not.
* * *
—
When I opened my eyes the rover was still and the light was different. The sun was low in the sky. Shallow pink hills surrounded me. Directly in front of the rover was a module with a round top and an airlock in its side.
I looked at my red fingers in my lap.
I looked at the steering wheel and touched it. I was in the driver’s seat. I turned my head sharply and there was no one in the rover but me.
I pulled myself out and stumbled to the domed module. The airlock opened. My body wanted to drop to the floor but I stayed standing; my eyes wanted to close but I kept them open. On the other side of the airlock was a dark corridor followed by a series of modules. I pushed through a plastic-draped door and found a greenhouse full of withered plants. Soybeans, I thought. The next room was full of dried-up wheat. I was in the agricultural outpost that had been recently shut down. I kept going and opened doors until I found the equipment room. I needed to find the oxygenator, and when I did, I sat down on the floor and moved by rote.
When I was done I crawled to a life support monitor, pressed buttons, and took off my helmet. The air was warm and still and full of a sweet, fetid smell. Down the corridor I found a module with beds in it. The one closest to the door had a blue blanket and a single flat pillow. I pushed off my boots and wriggled out of my suit. It seemed to take forever, but when I finally got myself out I sank onto the bed. The pillowcase was smooth against my raw cheek, the mattress soft under my hips, my elbows, my heels. I reached my throbbing fingers out so nothing touched them but air.
* * *
—
I dreamed I was with James in his bunk, the air warm and close, his skin damp against my own. His face loomed, his hair a dark tangle. He made a sound near my ear, low, insistent. His arms wrapped around me—
I woke covered in sweat. I blinked; I threw my covers off, got out of bed. My cot was a damp rumple of gray sheets and blue blanket. I pulled the covers to the top of the bed, smoothed them down, tucked them tightly around the edge of the mattress. Then I shook out the pillow and laid it flat.
I went to the equipment room, my socked feet sore on the rubber floor, my fingertips smarting, and ran a systems check. All the status bars lit up green. Then I checked the water reclaimers, made a tour of all the modules and airlocks. I found toilets, a shower room, and a laundry. Inside the food lockers were enough supplies to last for months.
I picked up a bag of dried fruit and then a packet of instant potatoes and asked myself if I was afraid to be here alone. If something went wrong there would only be me. But I wasn’t. I asked myself if I wanted James to come looking for me, and I didn’t. The supply capsule Theresa had taken was already gone, and another wasn’t due for several weeks. For that span of time there was nothing to do but wait. When I thought of waiting in this place alone—without anyone to answer to, without having to explain—I felt intense relief.
A
t the end of the corridor was a narrow plastic module with sinks and shower stalls. I went inside and the soft sound of silt, tppp tpppp tpppp tppped, came from the ceiling. It was cold; condensation on the sinks had a sheen of ice. But when I turned the knob in one of the shower stalls lukewarm water came out.
I found a stack of thin towels and undressed quickly, stepped into the water, and yelped when it hit my chest. There was a container of soap in the shower and I washed, the sensation of my frostbitten fingers against my skin tender and strange. I dried myself, cautiously patting the skin on my hands, chest, and face.
I didn’t want to put my clothes back on—they were stiff with dried sweat—so I just pulled on my underwear and wandered. In the kitchen I filled a mug of water and drank it. In the laundry room I found a pair of sweats—they were a men’s large but soft inside—and I put them on. In another room, a T-shirt with a European football insignia on it. It smelled clean and I put it on too.
In one of the greenhouse modules I opened the motorized shades—the room was made almost entirely of transparent glass. I’d seen the Pink Planet only through tiny portholes, the silt-dirtied windshield of a rover, and the tinted visor of my helmet. The color of its surface wasn’t uniform like I’d thought—the silt was full of different hues. Rose and peach and coral and fuchsia.
I went to the kitchen. I found plenty of food but no ready-made meals like at the Gateway. I found oats, heated some water, and reconstituted some milk. When the oatmeal was done I added a spoonful of sugar, and then since the container was huge, I added two more. I poured some of the milk into the oatmeal and some into a glass. My mind was a blank as I spooned the sweet liquid into my mouth. I didn’t think or make a plan. I just moved my spoon and tipped my glass to my lips until the food and milk were gone.
In the Quick Page 19