Kate Day - In the Quick

In the dream I was back in my aunt’s basement, in front of the old boiler, a box of matches in my hand. Its drawer groaned when I opened it. I dropped lit matches inside and there was a hot metal smell and a bloom of charcoal smoke that singed my skin.

I woke with a start, a dark smell in my nose. I sat up and sniffed the air, and the sweat in the creases of my arms and legs went cold. I jumped from my bed and ran. A black cloud hovered at the end of the corridor, the color of charcoal, the color of char. It choked me; it scorched the hairs inside my nose, and I pulled my shirt over my face. The door to James’s room was open and smoke poured from it.

My throat closed. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; the air was made of fire. With my eyes squeezed shut I lunged through the door blindly, coughing, spluttering, calling his name. My hand closed around the fire extinguisher attached to the wall. I bit its cap, squeezed its lever and sprayed. I allowed my eyes to open a slit, saw nothing but white. Then, in the corner, red. Fire jumped up the wall; flames leapt at my arms. I batted them away and sprayed again.

In the middle of the bed a curled shape lay covered in white foam. James’s shape. A blackened electrical panel above his head. I shook him. He coughed. I shook him again and he opened his eyes. June.

He stood up and coughed and waved his hands through the haze. He pulled the sheets from his bed and threw them on the floor, stamped out cinders with his bare feet and winced.

The electrical panel on the wall was slightly ajar. I picked up a T-shirt from the floor and used it to open the panel all the way and smelled hot metal and melted plastic. Its insides were a mess of burnt wires.

This is weird, I said. Look at this—

I don’t need to look at it.

Wires have been cut. I blew air into the panel and bits of charred paper came flying out. Someone’s stuffed paper in here.

But he wasn’t listening.

Stay here, he said, and he limped to the door. The haze from the fire extinguisher still hung in the air and he moved through it as if it was a thick fog. At the airlock he turned back and pointed to the bed. Don’t move. He took a flashlight from the wall and left me alone, closing the airlock behind him.

When he came back he was pale. He stood in the doorway looking at the ruined room and at me. Foam clung to his hair and smoke darkened his skin. Are you all right? he asked.

I felt the cold singe of a burn on my forearm and I shivered. Yes.

He pulled a blanket from a cabinet and wrapped it around my shoulders. He drew the fabric tight below my chin. Our faces were close. The air was cloudy; white dust settled on our skin.

Are you going to tell me what’s going on? I asked in a whisper.

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move away. Heat came off his body in waves.

You saved my life, he said. Again.

I motioned to the melted electrical panel. Did you do that yourself?

He looked at the panel, and then back at me. I had the feeling, again, of being pinned in place.

You said you know the Inquiry crew are alive. How?

I took a step back. I have a recording.

I want to hear it.

Now?

Yes.

Then come with me. I got up and walked to my bunk, and he followed.

In my bunk the air was clear and cool but we brought the smell of smoke with us. I sat on one end of my bed, and he on the other. The blanket was still wrapped around my shoulders and the burn on my arm throbbed.

I set a digital recorder between us. On Earth I’d copied several months of feed from both Inquiry and the Sundew.

They keep the Inquiry feed open, I said. Even though nothing comes through. Or, they think nothing comes through. There are hundreds of channels—

I know all this, he said. There were smoke rings around his eyes.

I told him more about the liquid waste processor that the Sundew and Inquiry shared and about the interference I’d discovered on the Inquiry feed.

I pressed play on the recorder and white noise filled the room. Right there, I said, as the channel was broken by a low hum and seven snapping pops. That’s G1 and H2.

He frowned.

I named them at school. In between classes I used to listen to the static on the Inquiry feed, to record the different sounds I heard.

He smiled slightly.

NSP has always said the inconsistencies in the static are interference, I said. That they’re random. But G1 and H2 aren’t random. They come every three days.

I switched recordings. Now this is the urine processing unit being vented on the Sundew, I said, and pressed play.

When the rush of static and the snapping pops came, he blinked.

If they were dead—

—nothing would be being vented. He finished my sentence.

The patter of silt came from the porthole.

Now it’s your turn, I said, and pulled my blanket tighter around my shoulders, moving my burnt arm gingerly. Tell me about the fuel cells.

They shut down, he said. At around three hundred and seventy-five days. They start to sound funny a few days before. Then—like a switch has been flipped—they power down. When I try to start them back up, they only run on quarter power.

Why?

A combination of things. He rubbed the scars on his knuckles. But mostly—vibration, plus time.

But you accounted for those factors.

We did. Or, we were. But when Peter got sick— He was quiet for a minute and I felt the weight of his body at the other end of the bed, a solid mass. I told them we needed more time, he said. But NSP didn’t want to postpone the launch timeline.

What have you done since then?

Reduced the heat problem, some.

What about the vibration issue?

He shook his head.

But you’ve tried—

A strangled sound came from his throat. Tried and failed.

The wind shifted outside and silt hit the portholes in uneven waves.

I picked up the recorder and rewound the feed, played it again, turned it up loud.

Sometimes I imagine where they are in the ship, I said. What they’re doing. Eating, sleeping, doing a job.

I used to do that, he said. I pictured Anu working on the cell. I saw the four of them puzzling over it, talking back and forth. Then I stopped.

You were friends at school.

But we were pitted against each other. They said it wasn’t a competition but of course it was, between my team and Anu’s. They did things like schedule training tests on the same day—

Like the simulated water crash, I said. I watched with my uncle. Your crew did everything right.

I thought so too, but then I stuck around and watched Anu’s team.

I didn’t see their test—

It was a disaster. Or, it could have been a disaster. The drill supervisor dropped the helicopter into the water at a weird angle. They were upside down and struggling. Anu pushed herself out first, but when she surfaced her face was bloody. Everyone else was still submerged. Missy’s leg seemed to be snagged in the helicopter door, and Dimitri was swimming the wrong way, down instead of up. Lee was able to roll himself into a ball and float out of the helicopter, and he was trying to extricate Missy’s leg.

The trainer should have hauled the helicopter back up but the tow crank wasn’t working. Anu dived back in, grabbed Dimitri—he had hit his head—and pulled him up. Lee came up for air too, and then the two of them dived back in for Missy, who was still stuck. Together they tried to torque the door and release her leg, and at the same time Dimitri set to work on the broken tow crank. But all this was taking too long. Divers went in but Missy still wasn’t free. Finally Anu and Lee extracted her leg, and together they dragged her to the surface. She was still conscious, which was incredible.