Kate Day - In the Quick

Where are you going? I asked.

You don’t need to come with us, she said.

Building 4, Nico said, and put his hood up and kicked a piece of melting snow.

I followed them through a creaking metal door. No one was inside. It was just a big room that smelled like old paint and was filled with computers that made a low hum.

Carla walked to the front of the room and sat down.

It felt colder in here than it did outside.

You know what’s going to happen now, Nico said.

What?

Carla’s going to wait for her sister Amelia to call, and she won’t. Or if she does, she’ll talk for two minutes and hang up.

I looked at Carla sitting in front of a computer’s blank gray screen.

Maybe she’s busy. She has an important job—

She doesn’t care about Carla. He walked partway to the front of the room and stood there watching.

Does anyone come in here? I asked.

Not really. There’s better equipment in Materials lab. But this is the only place they’ve got an NSP relay.

Does that mean we can listen to Inquiry ?

He looked at me. There’s nothing to hear.

I sat down at a computer and turned it on. I know. But still—

Well, move over.

He sat down and began typing, and his breath made clouds in front of the screen. After a minute, the sound of static. He turned it up loud.

This is the main communications feed, he said. But there are hundreds of channels I think.

A long list filled the screen. I could figure out the labels of some—sm, galley, grow mod, stowage. They linked to different parts of the explorer or to specific systems or equipment. Nico clicked through a few of the channels and they were the same. Nothing but static.

At the front of the room Carla was still waiting. She didn’t have her notebook or anything. Her hands were in her lap.

Can we look at the communications log? I asked Nico.

He shrugged and rubbed his hands together. I guess. He pressed a couple of keys and the screen changed. How far back do you want to go?

A couple of weeks before it went dark I guess.

He pulled up the log and we started reading.

It wasn’t a back-and-forth conversation but rather a series of questions and reports because there was almost an hour and a half delay between Earth and Inquiry ’s location.

Up until the week before all communications ceased, there were just checks of vital systems in the morning and a systems update in the afternoon. No changes, no developments. In the evening, a list of duties completed that day, all typical. Until a report of an unusual sound coming from a bank of fuel cells at the starboard side of the explorer. The crew’s investigation of the sound was inconclusive. A few days later, another communication; this time it was the cells in the Systems module. They were making the same sound. A humming that was out of the ordinary but didn’t seem to indicate any specific problem.

Then a much more serious report: the explorer had lost propulsion control. This communication was followed by eight days of the crew scrambling to understand what was going on. The log showed over a hundred systems checks on the power supply, and three failed attempts to mitigate the problem.

At eight in the morning on the ninth day mission control sent a message about a scheduled test of the water reclaimers, followed by…nothing. After an hour and a half control asked for a status update and still got no reply. Two hours later, the same. We scrolled down the page. In between control’s increasingly insistent questions there was only white space. No words, no signals, no proof of human beings on the other end of the line.

It’s weird to read a one-way conversation, I said.

It is. Nico’s voice was sad. I’d never heard him sound like that.

I have these cards with their faces on them, he said. The Inquiry crew. Do you have those?

I shook my head.

Everyone wanted to be them, he said. Now everyone’s glad they’re not.

I thought of Anu floating in the blue water of the NSP neutral buoyancy tank, the white tail of her tether twirling behind her.

They’re going to go get them, I said. James and Theresa and Simon and Amelia—

Maybe, Nico said.

A woman’s clear voice came from the front of the room and Nico got up and went to sit next to Carla. I stood up too. I hadn’t seen Amelia in at least a year but her voice was the same, strong and slightly impatient. She was strapped into a jump seat, and behind her was a jumble of buttons and controls. Her hair was shorter and she seemed larger, but maybe that was the way her body filled up the screen.

Hey, Carla said at the front of the room. Can you see me?

Yeah I see you Carly. What’s new? Wait, hold on a second—

Amelia unstrapped herself and turned the screen, showing a narrow compartment beyond. She floated back into view and started doing something. She was changing her clothes, pulling off her shirt and pants.

Amelia, Carla said. It’s not just me. Nico’s here.

Hi Nico. Amelia was wearing nothing but underwear and a tank top now. She started pumping water onto a washcloth, and beads of liquid sprang into the air, drifted up and sideways.

Where are you? Carla asked.

In orbit.

In orbit where?

Amelia ignored this question. The droplets of water circled her head like a halo. How’s school?

Lion got hurt. Carla’s voice wavered.

Hurt how?

He was doing a dive and his tank wasn’t right. They say he can’t come back to class for a week—

If they’re not sending him home he’ll be okay.

We all use those tanks Amelia—

If inhaling some nitrogen is the worst thing that happens to you in training you’ll be lucky. A kid in my year died.

Carla didn’t say anything. All the beads of water had drifted away now.

What else is going on?

There’s another team in Materials lab. They’re working on some kind of adhesive tape. I’m worried they’re going to beat us.

So don’t let them.

The picture distorted for a second and then went back to normal.

Lion won’t be able to help for a while and we’re stuck on the wrist—

Amelia scrubbed her face with the washcloth, and her body drifted in the air. I recognized the water pump behind her. My uncle had brought one home once and we’d taken it apart.

Is that a BREE pump? I asked.

Who’s that?

Carla sighed. June.

Amelia’s face broke into a smile. June Reed. You’ve gotten bigger. Not by much though.

I moved closer to the computer, leaned across Carla so I could see. That’s the third-generation pump, right?

What do you know about it?

I know that if you don’t change the filter every seven days, instead of every ten like the manual tells you to, it spits water.

Amelia laughed. Hey, that’s true. She clipped her washcloth to the wall and pulled a shirt over her head. Then she floated out of the frame.

Amelia, I said quickly. Can you tell us about the rescue mission? About Endurance ?

Her voice came from off-screen. Carly, I told you not to talk about that.

Carla glared at me. She shifted her chair so it blocked me from the screen. Amelia, she said. The wrist—

Amelia reappeared and loosely strapped herself into her seat. She still wasn’t wearing any pants.

All right, tell me the problem—

A beeping alarm sounded. Someone in a blue uniform blocked the screen. A man’s voice said something I couldn’t make out.

Sorry Carly. I’ve got to go.

You just got on—

Next time, okay? Listen, you might not hear from me for a while.

Why?

I’ll call again. Amelia unstrapped herself from her chair, started floating away.

When?

We heard her voice and the man’s voice, but all we saw was her empty chair, the restraints waving in the air.