Kate Day - In the Quick

Gateway, satellite station.

That’s it?

Agricultural outpost’s shut down.

The headlights reached the shape—it was a disintegrating lander, its portholes like dark eyes in its dented white sides. More shapes appeared. Two wind-battered rovers, their legs splayed like injured spiders. A rocket engine half-buried in the silt, its insides exposed.

What happened to all the testing facilities, the labs?

Gone. Shut down.

Why are you still here?

Because I don’t want to study anything or test anything.

We accelerated over the crest of a ridge and I held on tightly as the rover skidded forward. For a split second we were airborne and then hit the ground with a crushing thunk that made my back molars ring with pain. I blinked, moved my body in my suit. He kept driving.

Then what’s all the stuff on the table in the workshop? I asked.

He didn’t answer. We were climbing an even steeper hill now and the rover’s tires bumped and slipped over the uneven ground. When we got to the top the wind was one long roar. It seemed we would tip over; the rover started beeping. I held on.

I tried again. Amelia said you’ve been working on the fuel cell. She said you were close to a solution.

He shifted his body opposite to the wind, and his elbow bumped my side. Not anymore.

Because Theresa left?

He looked at me. No.

Why did she leave?

He veered around a wedge of rock. Ahead there were more shapes: a huddle of wind-battered satellites, the metal spine of a probe. A faint rosy glow came from the horizon and they glinted in the light.

She hates this place.

So you’ve been working alone—

This is what I’ve been doing. He gestured ahead to an expanse of glass that mirrored the brightening sky. Clearing silt from panels, hauling water tanks, flushing water pumps. That’s all.

The rover lunged and skated toward the field and when we bumped to a halt he put his helmet on and locked it in place. I did the same. He opened his door and stepped onto the pink rocks, but when I followed I stumbled. The ground was soft in some places and hard in others, and my boots sank immediately into the hollows. I squinted at the ground, my breath loud inside my helmet, held my gloved hands out in front of me, and tried to stay upright.

Up ahead he had already gone into a small outbuilding and pulled out two brooms. He handed one to me and then walked to the nearest solar panel and began to brush pink silt from its tilted surface.

It was something to see it up close, the solar field I’d heard so much about as a child. But I was confused. Why do we have to do this? I asked. With some effort I swung my broom onto a panel. What’s wrong with the cleaning mechanism?

Broken, and they don’t make the parts for it anymore. His voice came through inside my helmet.

The sun was brilliant now and turned the cleared panels into mirrors. I tried to keep pace with James and began to sweat, felt my underclothes cling to my skin inside my suit. He moved on to the next panel, and I did too. We kept working, moving from panel to panel, row to row. He gained on me and was soon several panels ahead.

Found the row that’s out, he called.

I kept going and finished three more panels. My arms ached and my eyes stung with sweat.

The wind picked up again. Grains of silt hit my helmet like a hundred tiny pinpricks. I watched with a feeling of desperation as the panels we’d just cleared were slowly being covered again.

This is pointless in this wind, I said.

It’ll stop, he said.

The ground thickened and swelled. Silt covered the tops of my boots. I set my broom down and walked to the next row, bending my body into the wind as the dust tapped furiously against my visor.

What are you doing? I called.

Whole row’s out because of one panel. We’ll take it back with us.

Wait, I said. Let me help you.

There was a pause and a crackle inside my helmet. Then, God damn it! And a groan.

I wove through the panels, around their sharp corners, my boots clumsy on the uneven ground. The thickening clouds of pink dust made it impossible to see more than a few inches in front of me. Then, the glint of his visor—maybe.

I kept moving and finally my foot hit something. It was him, on the ground, nearly buried in silt. His leg was pinned beneath a panel, he was trying to push it off but couldn’t get enough leverage. I got down on the ground next to him.

Why didn’t you wait?

You think you know what you’re doing, but you don’t. He shifted his body on the ground and winced.

Well now you’ll have to let me help you, I said.

He leaned on his elbows. I guess so.

The panel was like a slab of concrete and after straining against it for several minutes, I could move it only a fraction of an inch. I sat back on my heels and the wind buffeted my helmet. Are you hurt?

It was hard to see his face clearly through the swirling silt. I bent my head closer and our visors touched. Sweat had pressed his dark curls flat at his temples; his mouth was a thin pink line.

I’ll live.

I got up and slowly found my way to the rover, found a cable in the back, and tied it to the hitch. Then I returned to James and looped the cable around the panel.

Ready? I asked.

The angle’s wrong, he said.

The angle’s fine.

I got in the rover and took a minute to figure out the controls. Then I inched forward, its tires crunching slowly over the silty ground, until I heard a deep groan.

Outside I bent into the wind. A big gust of silt nearly tipped me backward, and then—all at once the wind stopped. The swirling silt fell to the ground. The sky was almost instantly, eerily clear.

Told you it would stop, he said. The ground sparkled in the sunlight.

I unhooked the cable from the panel and returned it to the rover. Then I crawled under the malfunctioning solar panel, unscrewed its back cover, and powered it down. In my mind I saw my uncle’s drawings of the solar field. His detailed pictures of each panel, stacks of circuits and twists of wires inside. I pulled out two connections and reconfigured them.

What are you doing? Don’t mess with that. He held his injured leg in both hands.

I turned the panel back on. The other panels in the row clicked twice and then hummed.

At the sound he turned his head. What did you do?

I bypassed the panel and fixed the row.

I half walked, half dragged him to the rover, his arm a bulky weight around my shoulder. The landscape had transformed. Now that the wind wasn’t blowing, everything was so still. So uniformly rose colored. Our labored breaths were loud in the quiet.

Hold up, he said. He turned and we nearly fell. Can’t leave it like that. He gestured to the panel that had pinned his foot. It was on top of a cable.

I walked back and tugged at the cable but it didn’t budge. I squatted and leaned back. It still didn’t move.

Is this something important?

Yes.

I sighed and pulled harder, and without warning it suddenly gave way, its metal connector hitting my head hard—so hard it knocked my helmet off. I closed my mouth, shut my eyes, and scrambled for my helmet with my bulky gloves. Salt stung the inside of my nose, the creases of my eyelids. Help me, I croaked. I crawled my hands through the loose silt and I found the smooth dome of the helmet and tried to put it on. But my hands slipped around the seal.

Calm down. I heard him crawling toward me, dragging his leg behind him. The air’s not going to kill you. Not that fast—

I cracked open my eyes. My throat was on fire; tears ran down my face.

Then the sensation changed. My lips went numb and my cheeks tingled. My vision wavered and the light shifted and turned strange. My hands fell away from my helmet. I watched James crawl along the ground, a refracted pink glow surrounding him. I watched him without emotion. My head felt hard and dense, a solid object. But my hands and feet tingled, and my aching molars were light as air.