Hugh Howey: Half Way Home

We all end up like Stevens , I thought to myself. I looked around the table and considered taking another sip of my water, but knew how indecisive that would seem.

“It depends on us,” I said. “It depends mostly on how well we work together. We have enough of a mix of people—both for skills and producing offspring—that I can see us making it.”

I tried to say it like I really believed it, but the truth was: only Colony knew. The most damning evidence was the half-melted remains of so many of our modules, some of them still smoking slightly. The AI wouldn’t have made that decision lightly. Deep down, I couldn’t help but feel we were just playing a game, hoping to survive long enough to discover why this planet had been found unviable.

“It’s the minerals,” Mica said from the end of the table, almost as if reading my mind.

I looked down the length of the table, past all the somber faces, at her. She held my gaze as the chatter among the diners resumed, everyone drowning each other out. Her eyes fell down to her hands.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, raising my voice to be heard.

She glanced up at me, then peered down into her bowl, which she gently cradled in both hands. “This metal is too soft,” she said, holding the bowl up for emphasis. “You don’t build stuff out of this unless there’s nothing else.”

We stared at each other while those between us continued to argue over our chances of survival.

“Two weeks, max,” I heard someone say.

Mica and I continued to stare at one another. Her face was expressionless, none of the worry and crinkled brow everyone else wore. She looked very matter-of-fact.

I fought to remember what her profession was; she had mentioned it earlier that morning.

“I give the rocket even worse odds,” someone said.

I saw Mica frown. Then I remembered: hadn’t she introduced herself as a geologist?

The rocket grew right on the landing pad, as if planted there by a seed. A giant cylinder of steel rose up amid a lattice of scaffolding. Tanks from the fuel depot had been converted into the body. They were split open, some of their plates had been removed, and then the rest was welded back into a tighter cylinder. Several of the other tanks had been converted to store the liquid oxygen and hydrogen that would propel the thing into orbit. These propellant tanks had been buried to help insulate them and were lined with refrigerant pipes.

Over the next week, I learned more engineering science over meals of green paste than I figured could be crammed into a month of training modules. Still, as I watched sparks fly from cutting torches, and the column grew ever higher, no part of me thought the thing would ever fly. How could it? It was being built by teenage refugees.

Besides, our enthusiasm for the project waned steadily after Stevens died. Hickson had taken over for enforcing the Colony’s will and did so in a manner that demanded more—and thus received less. Already, I could see people shirking duties to steal a nap or idle away their time. It was a psychological failing I knew well from my studies and was beginning to recognize in myself. One night, lying on the hood of the tractor that had become our official home, Kelvin, Tarsi, Oliver, and I talked about it.

“It’s the free rider problem,” I told Tarsi, who couldn’t understand how the efforts to survive could decline even as the need grew stronger.

“The what ?” Oliver asked.

“Free rider,” I said, turning to him. “It’s a problem in game theory, one of the last things I was learning for my profession.”

Kelvin laughed. “For all we know, you would’ve found out a year from now that some other theory proved that one all wrong.”

Tarsi slapped him playfully in my defense, since she and Oliver were between us. I dropped the matter, assuming nobody cared, and tried to enjoy the warmth of the overworked engine as it soaked into my back.

“Aren’t you going to finish?” Tarsi asked.

I cleared my throat. “Well, the problem arises when people figure out they can take a little more than they’re putting in and nobody will notice. It makes sense, actually, for each individual to think this, but when everybody does it, you get problems.”

“How do you stop it?” Tarsi asked.

“Hypnotherapy,” Kelvin said.

All of us laughed except for Oliver, who had turned to the side, expecting a real answer from me.

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I think one of the guys in my group has some economics training. He might know. All I know is resentment theory, which deals with people like us.”

“Those of us overworked and bitching?” Kelvin asked.

“Pretty much.”

Tarsi stood up and stretched, groaning with exhaustion. She had her bottoms on, but had been using her top as a pillow. I watched her body elongate as she reached to the sky and arched her back. I noticed the way her ribs had become more and more visible. We were all losing weight, but some of us had started with less.

“I’m going to use the bathroom and turn in,” she said. “Anyone else need to go?”

Oliver stood without a word and the two of them moved off together. One of the strange things I had noticed about Oliver over the past few days was how severe his swings in mood were. One minute, the worst events were causing him to assuage us, telling us it was the will of the gods and part of a plan greater than we could know. Other times—when tragedy was in the back of most of our minds—he became sullen and almost what I would diagnose as clinically depressed. I kept meaning to make time to speak with him, to see how he was doing, but the leisure time for even snippets of conversation seemed hard to come by.

After the two of them left, Kelvin slid over next to me. He interlocked his hands behind his head, leaving his elbows pointing up toward the canopy.

“What’s the story between you and Tarsi?” he asked.

“The story?”

“The deal. Are you guys—is there anything there?”

I propped myself up on my side and pulled his elbow down, unhinging it at his shoulder. The light from the cab spilled through the glass behind us, illuminating his face with a dull glow. The flat planes of his skull and his strong brow were highlighted by harsh shadows and low-slanting rays.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re the one that sleeps beside her every night.”

“I’m just asking because—well, I see how you guys are. I just wanted to know before anything happened and one of us had our feelings hurt. And look, I’m being practical as well. We’re a year out before our numbers start going up, you know what I mean?”

I flopped to my back, looking up through the canopy for a fleeting glimpse of a star. Somewhere, one of the local fruit whistled through the air and hit something metal with a loud crack. People had already begun calling them bombfruit for the sound they made as they plummeted from so great a height. As if any of us had ever heard a real bomb before.

“I don’t feel that way about her,” I finally said. And saying it, I realized I meant it. I didn’t feel that way about her. It felt like family, nothing more. Well, could anything be more than family? Maybe it felt like family, nothing less .

Now, Stevens… I think I had felt that way for him. I closed my eyes and tried to feel differently, certain some training module had been missed. Guys weren’t supposed to like other guys.

“Mica’s more your type, isn’t she?” Kelvin asked. He elbowed me in the ribs, chuckling.

“Yeah,” I lied. “She’s more my type.” I sat up, the heat from the engine compartment no longer soothing against my back. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, hurrying off to bed.