Hugh Howey: Company

Damn.

When I see that number, I don’t think of how many beacons there are out there. I don’t do the dollar math and think of the poor taxpayers. I don’t get all cosmic and think of how big this galaxy is and how much we’re spreading out into it. No, I think of how many people are out there, living alone like me.

Too many.

Approaching within a klick of the beacon, which is still flashing its SOS, I can’t see anything obviously wrong with it. There’s no atmosphere jetting from an impact hit. No orange glow across any of the portholes from a fire inside. In fact, the beacon is obscenely pristine. There’s not a char mark on her. Just unblemished, beautiful steel painted NASA white with neat rows of rivets and gleaming solar panels that probably run at 100% efficiency compared to my beacon’s 48%.

But my beacon isn’t the one with the distress signal. Closing to within a hundred meters, I grab the stick and turn the lifeboat sideways while still carrying all that forward momentum. It’s a crazy maneuver in a bucket like this. No idea if the side thrusters can even halt my current velocity. I put them on full and eyeball the distance to the lock collar, guiding the approach until I bang into the beacon and hook the magnet with a three out of ten on the pilot-o-meter.

Cricket growls at me like she thinks I’m being generous.

Throwing off my restraints, I leave my seat and hurry to the airlock. As I key open the lifeboat’s inner airlock door, I see the red light flashing above the control panel. There’s no atmosphere handshake from the other side. Something is very wrong with this beacon. Closing my helmet, I shut the lifeboat’s airlock behind me, keeping Cricket at bay, and then key in the universal override code. I’ve got a bad feeling as the door to this beacon opens. And even through my helmet and the thick airlock doors, I can hear Cricket howling with fury on the other side—pissed that I’m leaving her, perhaps. Or just knowing that I’m a fool to go.

The lock module is empty. Bare. The hatch to the other lifeboat is open, so I check inside. If there was a loss of atmo, this is where any survivors would go. But this beacon has a lifeless feel. Sterile. Like a vacuum. Any hope of finding someone over here vanishes. The neighbor’s Maserati just has its hazards going off. I glance at my O2 levels in the suit and head for the ladder, knowing NASA would at least want me to turn off the emergency signal and investigate. One flight up is the life support and mechanical module. My boots clang on the rungs, the sound muffled by my helmet.

The mechanical module might as well have shrink-wrap on it. Everything gleams. There are no loose wires dangling from all the add-ons and repairs cobbled together over the years. No oil streaks running down the pumps from worn-out seals. No blistered and peeling paint. No rust or signs of age. She’s like a shaved-head recruit standing there, holding her neatly folded fatigues, not a scar on her smooth flesh. Gazing at the room around me, all I can think of is the grief to come. All I can see are the bolts whizzing like bullets in the cosmos around us. All I want to do is throw myself over her grav generator and shield it with my body, keeping everything safe, not letting a damn thing touch her—

There’s a bang somewhere above me. Distant. Muffled. Like the debris heard me and reached out and slapped this nubile recruit. Like our drill sergeant caught me smiling at her. I grab the ladder leading up to the living quarters and clomp up the rungs. More newness here. I touch the sleep sack. Wish I could pop my helmet open and see what they smell like out of the factory, before dozens of people have slept in them.

Another bang, nearer now. This one startles me, because even through the suit, I can feel that the bang is inside the beacon, not against the hull. That’s when I notice the duffel bag in the galley. Personal effects. Through the porthole, I can see the dash, dash, dash of an open-mouth O as the light outside continues to flash in alarm.

I grab the next ladder and climb up into the command module. I’m not alone. Two legs jut out from under the command dash, sheathed in white NASA sweatpants. Two bare feet. Ten toes splayed upward. Unmoving. Like a body pulled halfway out of a morgue drawer. The upper half of the person is concealed. I think of what it would be like to die like this, asphyxiating, choking on empty, burning lungs. I’ve thought about that a lot.

I approach the body. This one’s not your fault , I tell myself. I couldn’t have gotten here any quicker. I need to pull the body out to inspect it and determine the cause of death. Reaching down, I grab one of the ankles, and the body spasms. Kicks. There’s a shout and a bang. More kicking at me, legs scrambling like they’re riding a bicycle, and then hands gripping the edge of the dash, a face appearing, loose strands of hair over wide eyes and an angry mouth. The muffled sound of someone shouting at me: “What the fuck?!”

We stare at one another. It’s a woman. Her lips are moving. She has no helmet on, which makes mine feel silly. I reach to open the visor, and there’s only a slight twinge of fear that maybe she’s an apparition, and maybe I’m not in a beacon at all but out in the cold vacuum of space, and I kinda hope that this is true—

But I breathe atmo when I pop the visor. And I hear the end of her last sentence:

“—the hell’d you come from?”

She waits for an answer. This is an easy one. I got this one.

“Beacon 23,” I say.

We stare some more. This is awkward.

“I’m— I saw the distress. Are you— Is everything okay?”

“I was just fine until you scared the ever-living shit out of me.” The woman brushes some of the loose hair off her face. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Some distant part of me knows that this is because I’ve been alone for a long time, and because the last person I loved recently died in my arms, and because I’m just glad this person isn’t dead, but there’s another part of me that thinks she really might be that gorgeous.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on, those idiots in Texas’ve built near on two thousand of these buckets, and they still can’t send them out without all these glitches. Can’t one of these things boot up and work the first time? Is that too much to ask? It must be too much to ask. Hand me that spanner.”

There’s an open toolkit on the deck, just under the dash. I hand her the spanner, and she ducks back out of sight. My walksuit feels bulky. I shrug under the weight of it all. I feel like taking off my helmet.

“So they sent you out here to operate this thing, and it doesn’t even work?” I ask.

“They never work,” she tells me. “Not at first.” Her voice is a bit muffled by the cavity she’s working in, and a bit by my helmet. “And I’m not an operator.” She peers out at me from the gloom. “Do I look like an operator to you?”

She looks like a normal person to me. Does that mean “no”? Does that mean I don’t look normal? I guess I don’t. I decide to leave my helmet on. I’ve got a week’s worth of growth on my chin, and my hair is a shaggy mop that wouldn’t pass muster in the army or at NASA.

“I guess not,” I say.

“I’m a tuner,” she says. “I get these things working so your lot can survive in them. But right now, I’m trying to get all the sensors that’re telling this bucket everything’s wrong to understand that everything’s not wrong. She’s all haywire.”

“A tuner,” I say. It’s the first I’ve heard of them. Sounds like something a piano needs, not a trillion-dollar piece of astral navigation machinery.