Lily Brooks-Dalton - Good Morning, Midnight

“I’m winning,” he said into the mesh sleeve of her jumpsuit, and they sat in silence as the victory music looped over and over, shrill trumpets over a steady, hollow beat.

AS THE LAST few weeks of training in Houston had trickled away and the launch neared, the crew’s excitement began to build, their camaraderie to intensify. After a long Friday full of Jovian lunar landing simulations, they all went out for drinks at a local bar. Thebes flipped through the jukebox songs with a fistful of quarters while Devi drank cranberry juice through a straw beside him and contemplated the machine itself. At the bar, Tal, Ivanov, and Harper lined up shots of tequila, Tal insisting that they drink one for every Galilean moon—four apiece. Sully was late arriving and she scanned the scene from the doorway. The bartender was doling out wedges of lime as Thebes’s first selection from the jukebox began to play. Harper called her over and ordered her a shot.

“You’re playing catch-up,” he said, and slid the glass in front of her. “This one’s for Callisto.” She tossed it back and waved away the lime he offered her.

Tal grinned wickedly. “Excellent,” he said. “Another!”

Ivanov pounded the bar with his shot glass. “Hear, hear,” he said, his face a luminous shade of rose. Tal was buoyant, bouncing on his bar stool as he counted down a Galilean moon for every shot the astronauts downed.

“Ganymede!” he shouted.

Sully slammed another glass back down on the table. “That sweet, sweet magnetosphere,” she shouted back. Ivanov nodded, solemn, but excited in his own way. They all were.

Over at the jukebox, Thebes and Devi took up the cry of “Ganymede,” to the confusion of the other patrons. It was still early then, the bar relatively quiet, but the next time Sully took stock of their surroundings a few hours later she realized the room was full and she was drunk. Devi and Harper were dancing near the jukebox. Devi bounced her knees and swirled her arms around her head while Harper did some version of the twist, mixed with an occasional raise-the-roof gesture. Tal, Sully, Ivanov, and Thebes were crowded around the bar. Tal snorted a mouthful of beer out of his nose, laughing at one of his own jokes, and Ivanov swayed next to Sully, his forearm resting on her shoulder.

“Who’s Yuri?” Ivanov was asking, looking perplexed. Sully and Thebes glanced at each other, not sure whether to laugh or to change the subject. They had heard Tal speak of Yuri before, but never in Ivanov’s presence.

“You know—that bug living up your ass,” Tal said, laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. “Yuri Gagarin. How’s he doing?”

Ivanov swayed, his arm still on Sully for balance, a pensive frown etched in his face. There was a long pause. “He’s good,” Ivanov finally said, his voice booming and jovial, “but he’d be better if he didn’t have to look at your ugly face every day.”

Harper tapped Sully on the shoulder and she turned to see his face, shiny with sweat. Devi was a few feet behind him, beckoning to her. “Dance with us?” he said. “It’s our song.”

She nodded. He meant all of theirs, but for a minute, as Sully slid off her bar stool and moved toward the crush of bodies, jerking and swaying and twirling in time with “Space Oddity,” she thought he meant just the two of them. Our song. David Bowie’s voice filled the bar and Harper led her onto the dance floor, toward Devi, who was still waving. He reached back to make sure she was following and took her hand, pulling her forward, into the center of the crowd.

TWO WEEKS AFTER Ivanov and Tal’s fight, while they were still passing through the asteroid belt, Sully awoke to hear Devi whispering to her in the darkness.

“Are you awake?” she asked, from the other side of the privacy curtain.

Sully rubbed the sleep from her eyes and pulled back the curtain, motioning for Devi to climb in. They lay there in the dark, side by side, letting each other’s body heat soothe their frayed nerves, which sparked like live wires as soon as the lights went out and there was nothing left to do but obsess over an unknown future or dwell in the past. Devi was close enough that Sully could feel the quiver of a suppressed sob. She ached to reach out, to wrap her crewmate in her arms and tell her that everything would be all right—but she couldn’t lie, and she wasn’t sure how to connect with a woman so disconnected. Devi had grown quieter and quieter as the weeks passed. These days, she said barely anything. Sully lay still and let her foot collapse sideways to gently brush against Devi’s. Sully had almost fallen asleep again when Devi began to talk.

“I keep having this dream,” she murmured. “It starts with the colors and smells of my mother’s kitchen in Kolkata, just blurriness and spices. Then my brothers come into focus, sitting across from me, jabbing each other with their elbows, scooping up rice and dal with their fingers…and I see my parents at the head of the table, sipping chai, smiling, watching all three of us. It’s always the same, over and over. We are just sitting and eating and it seems to last for hours. But then eventually it fades away. Suddenly I know that they are gone, that I am alone. And I wake up.” Devi heaved a long, slow sigh. “It starts out so beautifully,” she whispered, “but then I am awake and I’m here and I know I’ll never see them again. How can a dream hurt so much?”

Eventually the two women drifted off to sleep, and in the night they overlapped, knotting their limbs together as if it might make them stronger. When Sully woke she saw tears running down Devi’s face in silence, pooling against the side of her nose, wetting the pillow. Sully thought of what it felt like to have Lucy climb into her bed after a nightmare. The small, warm body, encased in flannel pajamas, the hot, wet face, the shuddering of her breath inside her lungs. Sully tried to remember what she used to say to Lucy, how she used to comfort her—but she couldn’t. It had always been Jack who took her back to her own bed. Sully moved closer to Devi, and she wept, too.

SULLY HAD LOVED Devi almost immediately when they met in Houston.

Devi was a quiet woman; her small stature and large, dark eyes made her seem innocent, young, even confused—at odds with the deeply analytical mind moving beneath the surface. At the beginning of their underwater training in Houston, Sully came upon Devi standing below one of the overhead cranes used to haul the astronauts in and out of the pool, staring up at the hoist with a pensive look. Tal and Thebes were finishing up an extravehicular activity simulation, an EVA, below the surface while the two women waited their turn to be hoisted into the water. Finally Devi let out an amused laugh and looked away from the crane, back to the pool.

“Fantastic,” Devi murmured.

“What is?” Sully asked.

“My father has the same machine in his warehouse,” she said. “The same exact one. I will have to tell him, he’ll be very proud for choosing it.”

The surface of the pool rippled and a cluster of bubbles frothed near their feet. Below the water, an enormous mock-up of the Aether craft shimmered, illuminated by floodlights. Reflections of the flags that crowded the walls of the facility lined the edge of the water, lapping at the edge of the pool in gentle waves, the vivid colors of the different nations swirling together and then separating, over and over. Sully peered into the depths of the pool and saw one of the astronauts beginning to rise. Two divers hooked the astronaut’s bulky white suit to the hoist and the crane’s gears above their heads began to whir. Devi looked up at the crane once more, but Sully kept her eyes on the rising astronaut.