Every day I listened closely to the news reports about Inquiry; every morning I set my tray down on a chilly table in the cafeteria and felt certain today would be the day NSP would announce the rescue mission. But I was always wrong.
I kept returning to Building 4. I’d open up the Inquiry communications feed and click through all the recognizable channels, the sm or galley or stowage, and then through some with more inscrutable labels, listed as simply ext or int or aux followed by a number. Occasionally there was a distinct crackle or blip on the line, but when I asked Nico about it he said it was just meaningless interference, caused by any number of things between Earth and NSP’s deep-space satellites—a passing station, a random piece of space junk, a natural satellite.
I think I listened to every single channel for at least a few seconds. Each of them was different, and it was sort of fascinating, the contrasts in sound and volume. Some rushed like ocean water; another crunched like car tires on gravel. One sounded exactly like the steady patter of rain.
On the weekends I’d listen to the feed for hours, and certain channels became like old friends, their sounds familiar and comforting. I thought about how each was supposed to connect Earth and Inquiry, and a picture formed in my mind of threads that stretched deep into space, like a spacesuit’s tether cord but millions of miles long.
Sometimes I listened so long I thought I heard patterns in the feed’s seemingly random crackles. But when I told Nico about it, he said I was crazy.
You think you’re going to hear something NSP hasn’t? He laughed. Dream on.
But I kept listening and started plotting the crackles in a notebook of graph paper. Date, time, length. Pages and pages I filled in. But my system didn’t take into account intensity, or sound quality of any kind. I began listening carefully to discern differences in the noises, and after a while I came up with a code for recording each crackle and blip. A letter to denote sound quality, a number to denote length.
On some channels a sound appeared once and then never again. But on others there were little blips I got to know. A high whine, a quick tick, a bubbling hum. A3, E2, F5. On one of the auxiliary channels I regularly heard G1 and H2, which were maybe not two sounds but one because they always came together: a hum of low static and then seven snapping pops.
I kept asking Nico to come and listen, and he finally agreed. Once we were in front of the computer I pulled up the AUX27 channel and played back G1 and H2.
What do you think is causing those sounds? I asked.
It could be a million different things—
They come together every three days, I told him. Approximately every seventy-two hours, give or take a few hours.
His mouth turned up on one side, a slightly crooked smile. I’d only ever seen him smile that way at Carla. Whatever you think you’re doing, mission control has already done it, he said. And they found nothing or it would be on the news.
Nico, wait, I said. Can I ask you something?
I’ve listened to enough static for one day, he said.
The wind rattled the walls of the building. It’s about the hand.
What about it—
It’s not good enough, is it? Number five.
The thumb helped, he said.
A little.
Yeah. He shrugged. Only a little.
What can we do?
Not much unless you’ve got a better idea. He grabbed his bag. Then he paused. Do you?
I thought of the blown-up and shrunk-down hand that hung in my mind in Materials lab, and the hand prototype I’d left on James’s desk. But I shook my head no. Nico got up and told me he’d see me at dinner, and I stayed and listened to the hums and crackles of the AUX27 channel for a long time.