Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

Ray poured her a cup of tea and Neta stirred powdered milk into it, staring at the swirls as she worked up the courage to ask more questions.

“What happens after the moon and this rogue dwarf planet collide? How safe will Earth be? How safe will the coasts be?” She asked, thinking of her daughter in California.

Ray shook his head. It was Graham who answered her. “We aren’t sure. We don’t have the programs and time we’d need to model it. The moon will be knocked out of orbit. Or at least into a new one. Or it might break apart. And yes, there will be a hell of a debris storm back on Earth. They have atmosphere to protect them, but this could get bad.”

“Bad?” Visions of Hollywood apocalypse movies churned through her brain and fear for her family wrapped freezing fingers around her ribcage.

“Well, it won’t be good. The tides and weather might go haywire, but the moon is going to save the Earth. At least in the short run.”

“True,” Kirill said as he ducked into the common room. “Without moon getting in way, everything would bchwhew .” He emphasized the exploding noise with a large gesture.

“I think we call it a ‘global extinction event,’” Graham said.

“So we’re lucky,” Neta said. She glanced around the room and saw the confused stares. “I mean, ‘We’ as in the human race.”

Ray nodded. “More or less. We should give our governments enough notice to move people out of low-laying areas and stuff like that. We’ve got a lot more man-power and computing power on Earth to deal with the fallout. I think we’ll come out okay.”

It went unsaid that all they could do was warn Earth and hope. That the four staying behind could do nothing at all.

The goodbyes were subdued. The four who were staying handed Anson their tablets containing their messages home and their data from the Array. There were no speeches. Tears were sniffled back or quickly wiped away. If anyone was panicking, they kept it deep inside.

Graham, Shannon, and Anson ascended the ladder for the last time, and Neta didn’t stay to watch them go. She returned to the common room and drank the gritty dregs of her cold tea.

“What now?” Ray asked when he came back in.

Neta shrugged. “How long?” She didn’t have to specify.

“Thirty-four hours-ish.”

“Ish? And they call you a scientist.” Neta smiled at him.

“I am going to bed,” Kirill announced from the doorway.

Neta agreed. It was too long to wait, staring at blank walls. She returned to her bunk and tried to sleep. She turned fitfully; the light gravity that usually let her sleep with a comfortable weightlessness she never felt on Earth was instead a constant reminder that she was here, not home. Her mind gave her disaster scenarios, visions of the Earth’s surface turning to giant, moon-barren craters and the seas churning and rising up, drowning her house. When she did sleep, she startled awake multiple times, thinking she’d heard Lucita calling for her.

Finally she gave up. Her little clock told her in bright green light that she had twenty hours left to live. Ish. Her mouth was thick with sleep-fuzz, and her nose caught the ghost of Paul’s citrus-laced aftershave as her brain struggled to shake off her dreams.

No one was in the common room. Neta made soup, forced herself to drink it, and then washed out her metal bowl. She rested her fingers in the dish, remembering her plans for when she returned home. The tepid water gave her an idea.

Neta pulled on her moon-walking suit for one final time. She climbed up the ladder but did not go outside. Pluto’s big brother would be visible to the naked eye now, from what Ray and the others had told her, but she didn’t want to look that closely at death, no matter how impressive it might seem. Besides, she wasn’t sure if it would bring debris with it, or if it would be safe to be out on the surface of the Daedalus crater.

Instead she went through to the big bay where they stored equipment for repairs and extra supplies for the Array—the items that didn’t need as much radiation shielding. They didn’t bother to keep this spares shed full of air. Neta searched the large NASA bins and found something that would work for her plan. She spent long sweaty minutes clearing out a barrel and hauling it to the ladder.

She dropped it down. On Earth, she wasn’t even sure she could have moved the plastic and steel barrel. Here, it was awkward, but not impossible.

Scraping and hauling it through the narrow hallway brought Kirill and Ray out of their room.

“What are you doing with that?” Ray asked. What little hair he had was mussed from sleeping; it looked as though he’d been as restless as she.

“Taking a bath,” Neta said. “It was something I planned to do first thing when I got home.”

Kirill laughed, and even Ray was able to crack a smile. They helped her get the barrel down to the women’s bathroom just past Neta and Shannon’s room. It didn’t quite fit in the tiny shower pan, so they left it just outside. Duct tape, some wires, a repurposed length of lab tubing, and a lot of swearing later, they had a way to fill the makeshift “tub.”

“I don’t know how clean this thing is,” Ray said.

“What’s it going to do, give me cancer?” Neta waved them both out of the bathroom. “Go away so I can bathe in peace.”

The water was stale, and calling it tepid would’ve been generous, but she climbed into the barrel and sank down, curling her tired body up until only her nose and eyes were above the surface.

She half-floated and finally let herself feel the panic, the grief, the crushing weight of knowing she was going to die. She hung inside the barrel, her body wedged down in the water, and let herself breathe through the complete helplessness.

The tears that had been burning inside her eyes and throat all day broke free and were lost into the bath, her cries muffled by the water, her face washed clean even as she wept. She wanted to scream, to tear at her hair, to beg God or the universe or anything for a way to change her fate. Finally, exhausted, she just let herself cry until no more tears would come.

The water was cold and her fingers stiff and pruned when she finally climbed out. She dressed in clean clothing, pulled on a light blue sweater, and combed out her hair. She pulled out her small cache of pictures that she’d brought from home and went through them one last time, her wrinkled fingers tracing the lines of faces she loved and would never see again.

When her clock told her there were only a couple hours remaining, she pulled out the final item. Her nana’s rosary, the turquoise and wood beads smooth and dark from years of praying. Neta couldn’t bring herself to say the words aloud, so she touched the beads one by one as she mouthed the prayers. It felt weird to seek God now, when she’d devoted her life so thoroughly to science, but she had never turned her back on Him, only on the Church that she’d felt had no place in her modern life.

Neta set aside the pictures and tucked the rosary into her pocket. It couldn’t hurt to pray now. She hoped the dying would be forgiven a little hypocrisy.

She found Kirill and Ray in the common room. They’d exchanged tea and coffee for vodka, judging from the empty bottles and the smell that greeted her as she sat at the table. The men were in the middle of a game of Gin Rummy.

“Where’s Jie?” she asked.

Kirill and Ray froze. Kirill raised his cup and drained the vodka from it. Ray fidgeted with the cards in his hand.

“In his bunk,” Ray said when Neta half-rose, intending to go look for Jie.

She sank back down. “Not joining us, is he?”

“He left early,” Kirill said.

“Pills,” Ray said. “Went to sleep and wanted to stay that way, I guess.”