Lily Brooks-Dalton - Good Morning, Midnight

She nodded impatiently. “I know,” she said, and waved him off. “Give me some room.”

AFTER A FEAST of baked char and canned peas and powdered mashed potatoes with plenty of powdered garlic mixed in, Iris and Augie sat outside their tent and watched the ripples on the lake, curling across the surface like ribbons of light. When Augustine woke in his Adirondack chair later, it was impossible to tell how long he’d been out—the water continued to ripple, the sun still blazed down on his bare feet. Across the lake he saw a small herd of musk oxen drinking at the shore. He tugged the broad-brimmed hat he’d found in the cook tent down over his eyes and squinted across the water. There were eight of them, and almost hidden in the great shaggy layers of their half-shed winter coats was a ninth, a tiny calf pressed against the side of its mother as she drank from the lake. He turned to Iris, but her chair was empty and she was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she was asleep. Augie struggled to his feet, pulling himself up by the rough plywood arms of the chair, and went down to the edge of the water.

The musk oxen continued to bury their noses in the shallows. He watched the little calf become impatient, braying and scuffing its hoof on the soft earth, nudging its head against the hindquarters of its thirsty mother.

“Umingmak,” he murmured under his breath. It was the Inuit word for musk oxen; he couldn’t say where he’d learned it or how he’d remembered it. The bearded ones.

He raised his hands to his face and felt the clumps of wiry hair on his chin and neck, the long tufts on his head—still thick after all these years. He smiled, and felt the corners of his mouth with his fingertips, just to be sure he was doing it right.

THE WORK WAS a relief. Sully didn’t want to take a break and lose the single-minded concentration that was keeping her thoughts corralled, but she was so exhausted that her concentration was slipping anyway. Thebes had been working alongside her in the comm. pod for much of the morning. They hadn’t spoken about the spacewalk—they hadn’t spoken about anything except the task at hand. Sully was grateful for the silence. Getting the new comm. system online was all she could manage. She feared that the slightest empathetic gesture would undo her and she’d wind up back in her bunk, the curtain drawn, staring at her hands but seeing Devi, hidden beneath the bulk of her white suit, becoming smaller, smaller, and vanishing. Thebes was the one to suggest they break for lunch.

She watched him slip down the entry node ahead of her. For the first time she noticed that even in zero G the shape had gone out of his shoulders. Thebes seemed half-empty, like a tube of toothpaste that’s almost used up, and she realized she hadn’t given any thought to the rest of the crew. It wasn’t just her tragedy, it was theirs too. All of them had watched Devi float away: Sully might have been there in person, but the rest of them had seen it all through the helmet cams. The same moment was stuck on replay in everyone’s head, not just in hers. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t alone. She went down the entry node after Thebes and landed on Little Earth, feeling the weight of her body return to her.

The rest of the crew—Thebes and Harper, Tal and Ivanov—were sitting around the table waiting for her. She saw tears sliding down Ivanov’s cheeks and realized she was crying too—silently releasing the water that had been building behind her eyes since she woke up that morning. She licked a salty tear from her lip and sat down with them. They passed around the last tinfoil dish of shepherd’s pie, one of the premade meals they’d been saving for a special occasion. They ate in silence, passed the dish again, ate some more. When it was empty and the trays had been scraped clean, Ivanov took Tal’s and Harper’s hands, and the others followed his example. They bowed their heads together, chins tucked into their chests.

“ Aether has lost her youngest daughter. Protect her,” Ivanov said.

They stayed like that for a long time, and when their necks began to tire, Thebes raised his head and added, “She was loved.” It wasn’t much, but it was true, and it helped. Their time aboard Aether had been long and difficult and beautiful, but through it all, Devi had been well loved by everyone at that table. Sully looked at her crewmates and it dawned on her that they were her family—that they had been all along.

THAT AFTERNOON, THEY received the first signal since the main comm. dish had broken away from the ship a week earlier. Sully spun the volume knob so that she and Thebes could revel in the static telemetry of their probe on Europa, alive to them once again, whispering through the speakers. Sully went around to all her machines, checking that they were receiving properly and saving everything to the hard drive. The spacewalks had accomplished their directive—at least the loss had been worth something instead of nothing. Sully thought of Devi fighting to stay conscious. Telling her it was too late. She could feel her clumsy grip on the mast, could see the mirrored glint of her friend’s visor. She felt again the helplessness as she clung to the antenna and watched Devi expire: unable to move, unable to fix the horrifying problem happening right in front of her, inches away. And she wondered, not for the first time, how Devi hadn’t noticed sooner—whether she’d seen the oxygen levels in her suit falling, sensed the problem, but not said anything. Sully would never know.

She turned back to the fuzziness coming out of the speakers and the wavering signal. There was still work to be done and she threw herself into it headfirst, moving from machine to machine, testing the gain, tinkering with the squelch settings. The signals grew slightly clearer, the feedback slightly softer. By the time the day was done, she and Thebes had calibrated the new comm. system as best they could. The reception was as good as it would ever be. If there was anyone out there trying to call them home, they would hear it.

Sully stayed to listen after Thebes left. She felt… connected wasn’t the right word, because there was nothing out there to link to, but she felt less alone. She’d done her part, she’d extended the electromagnetic red carpet. If no one took advantage, if their welcome was left hanging, unmet even after all this time and work and sacrifice, then it wouldn’t be her fault. She would have done her best. They would have done their best. She was moving beyond the turbulence of loss and isolation, into a quieter space—a space where Mission Control’s signal was already speeding toward them, where she was ready and willing to see what came next.

It was late by the time Sully returned to Little Earth. She found Tal in his usual place, his thumbs poised over a gaming controller, but with one notable difference: Ivanov sat beside him, with another controller in hand. She’d never seen them play together. Ivanov’s blond hair was combed back from his forehead, his ruddy cheeks glowing with competition, the usual stoniness in his features softened to a more manageable stiffness. Tal looked wild with excitement, his brown eyes wide, his teeth bared at the screen, the thick black beard that had taken over his face even bushier than usual, as if even his hair follicles were responding to the acute novelty of having a real live opponent, one he wanted very much to beat. The two men didn’t look up at her, immersed in the challenges of their avatars. Sully moved along the curve of the centrifuge toward the long kitchen table. Harper and Thebes sat across from each other playing five-card draw, betting nuts and bolts from Thebes’s toolbox. Sully sat down next to Thebes and watched.