When I was a little girl I had night terrors, or that’s what my uncle and aunt called them. I’d wake in the night standing in the front yard. The icy air prickling my bare arms, and my uncle’s warm hands on my shoulders. It was the only way he could wake me up—to take me out in the cold. I remember the feeling of the sharp gravel against my soft bare feet and the flat black of the night sky above my head.
In the morning my aunt would tell me about the screams that woke them and what I looked like when they went into my room. Red faced and sweaty, my hair a dark nest on top of my head. But I had no memory of those things. I remembered only the cold air against my skin and my uncle’s soft and precise voice in my ear. He said my name, June, June, June, until I came to.
Then he took me back upstairs and sat with me. I remember how quiet it was, my aunt and cousin asleep in their own rooms, the curtains in my bedroom drawn. I lay in my bed, and he sat in a chair next to it. Sometimes he read to me or we drew together. But mostly he just talked, about what he was working on, his students, or the astronauts who trained in the buildings next to his lab.
He talked a lot about the Pink Planet. My moon. He described its surface, rocky and rose tinged, and the silt that blew through the air. From memory he drew the structures NSP had built there. He had developed the solar grid that powered its three outposts, so he knew all the minute details. The first two buildings were tiny, a satellite station with an adjacent landing site, and a remote agricultural outpost. The third was the Gateway, a sprawling complex intended to be the home base of the Explorer program, starting with the second mission, because of the favorable launch windows created by the Pink Planet’s orbit. Each structure had started as a single mobile habitation unit and had been expanded over time, but the Gateway was by far the largest, with living quarters and labs and control rooms and launch pads growing like limbs from its first and central module.
I remember falling asleep to the soft scratch of his pen, with pictures of pink rocks and white modules and shining panels shuttling through my mind.
When my lander touched down on the Pink Planet with a grinding thnnnk, it was night. The landing site was a semicircle of light swimming in an expanse of black, and it felt as if I could be anywhere: the top of a mountain, the middle of the ocean. The moon. Mars. I extricated myself from my jump seat, my limbs stiff with sitting in one position for so long. My right eye twitched and a dull ache vibrated at the base of my jaw. I rubbed my face three times and put my helmet on, secured it, and grabbed my locker.
I stepped onto the surface. I was glad to move. The trip to the Pink Planet had meant too much sitting, too much doing nothing. I turned slowly in place, tried to discern shapes in the darkness. Topography. Anything. There was nothing but an unfamiliar rushing wind. I took a step and my boots sank into the silty soil. And another unsteady step. I reached down and ran my glove through the silt and waited for something. I think I hoped the feeling of sitting with my uncle in the night would come back. The sound of his voice telling me about this place, the feeling of him sitting close.
But my old bedroom at my aunt and uncle’s house, with its paintings on the walls and bookcase in the corner and bright rug on the floor, had never felt more far away. I was standing on the moon that I’d heard and read and thought so much about as a child, that had always felt like mine, and nothing about it was familiar.
I followed the lights, reached an airlock, and went inside. This was the smallest site on the Pink Planet, the satellite station; it housed a staff of scientists and satellite specialists, as well as rotating maintenance crews. There were ten people inside the five domed modules, but two of them were headed back to Earth. NSP had just shut down the planet’s agricultural outpost and they were the last to leave. I was headed to the only other site in operation—the operations station to the north called the Gateway.
I drank water and took a pain pill. I forced myself to choke down an oatmeal bar. Then I helped unload the supplies that had been delivered with me. By the time someone could drive me to the Gateway my eyes were scratchy with exhaustion.
Pink silt swirled in the rover’s headlights as it approached the complex, a jumble of gray modules in an expanse of uneven ground. A door opened in one of the modules, and my driver slowly pulled the rover into a dark cargo bay. I put my helmet on and climbed out.
Bits of rose-colored dust blew against my legs and tapped on my helmet as the rover pulled away. The door closed behind it and the dust fell to the ground. I turned on my headlamp and shadows rose up. Except for two parked rovers on one side and a heap of disassembled parts at the back, the bay was nearly empty. It reminded me of the cargo holds on the Sundew before a shipment arrived, when they were vast and echoing.
Ahead of me was an airlock and I stepped inside. A small circle of white light appeared in its porthole. It got larger—someone with a flashlight approached along a corridor. The light grew nearer and then stopped. I waved through the window. Behind the flashlight was a dark shape.
Finally I heard the click of the locking mechanism and the air pressurized around me. When the door opened the light was in my eyes; I raised my hand in front of my face. Then the flashlight lowered and revealed a young man in a dirty gray jumpsuit. A lean body and an angular face, keen eyes. Hair that curled over his ears. James.
Memories rose up in my mind of James and my uncle, their heads bent together over a table littered with metal shapes. James in a blue Candidate’s uniform running on the track at Peter Reed. In the office he shared with Theresa, his hair wild and his eyes tired, my pneumatic hand drawings spread out before him on his desk.
I took off my helmet and the air was salty, and also sweet.
It’s June, I said.
He ran a hand over a dark patch of stubble on his cheek.
Peter Reed’s niece, I said.
Right.
Where is everyone? I squinted down the dark corridor. Sleeping?
Last maintenance crew left and the next hasn’t arrived yet.
You’re here by yourself?
A beeping sound came from above us. For a couple of days, he said, speaking over the sound.
What about Theresa—
A wailing alarm joined the beeping; behind us the airlock slid shut with a thunk.
Damn it. He started to stalk away.
I followed him. What is it?
We’re on low power. It keeps tripping the life support alarm.
Why?
The system thinks we’re running out of oxygen—
No why are you on low power?
Busted solar panels.
I can help fix them.
He turned around and didn’t say anything. He just looked at me from behind his flashlight, and I had a strange sensation that the light was holding me, pinning me in place.
He lowered the flashlight finally. No need. He gestured down an open airlock. Bunks are that way. Then he turned to walk in the other direction and the light went with him.
Soon the corridor was completely dark. On the wall was a switch; it worked. A dim trail of blue lights appeared along the floor.
His voice came from far off: If you want to eat or drink—or breathe—in the morning, I’d shut that off.
I need a light—
Behind you.
I ran my hand along the wall again and found a flashlight, turned it on, and walked in its small circle of light, looking into empty rooms and dark airlocks. The Gateway was sprawling and irregularly laid out. Some sections appeared brand-new. The plastic walls of the modules were bright white, the corridors wider and cooler. My footsteps echoed slightly there. Other parts were clearly older, built in an earlier era. Those corridors were dark and narrow and smelled like old air filters. Their tan walls muffled sound. Rooms were connected at odd angles; there were step-ups and step-downs in unexpected places, and I stumbled several times.
I tried to recall my uncle’s drawings to get my bearings but I saw no correlation between the shapes I had in my mind and the snaking corridors in front of me. At a dead end I backtracked and opened airlocks. Behind one was another corridor, even darker than the one I’d been in. The portholes were smaller and thicker here, and the air was hot and close. I bumped along until I found a room with beds inside.
It was empty of anything except four beds, four storage cabinets, and a sink with a mirror above it. I dropped my bag on the floor and slowly pulled my arms out of my suit with a feeling of relief. My limbs ached from its weight, and my elbows and knees were slow to bend. I leaned onto the bed to extricate my legs. The pain in my molars had settled into a diffuse ache at the back of my jaw.
The mattress on the bed was wider than any I’d slept in for a long time. I wanted to lie down but worried if I did I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. I grabbed a fresh T-shirt, pushed my locker under the bed, and went back into the corridor. With my flashlight I found what appeared to be a central module, with a small galley and a laundry. The portholes were larger here and the sky a dark blank outside. It was oddly quiet. The Sundew was always full of sound, whirring and blowing and beeping. The vents here were nearly silent. Cool, moist air drifted from them without a sound.
In the corridor next to the galley I opened doors. All the modules behind them were empty, except for one, a workshop that contained a large table and shelves full of tools. Strewn across the table were pieces of something—
The suck and hiss of an airlock came from down the corridor, and I moved quickly in the direction of the sound, back toward the cargo bay where I’d started, at least I thought so. James stood at the end of the corridor. He was climbing into a suit, slimmer and more compact than the one I’d worn here and the ones I was used to on the Sundew.
Where are you going? I asked.
South solar field.
There were more suits hanging on the wall. One was smaller than the others and I grabbed it from its hook. I’ll come.
I’m fine on my own. Stay here.
I’d rather work.
He held his helmet against his broad chest and looked at me, and again I had the strange feeling of being pinned in place.
I’ll be handier than you think, I said.
He pulled on his gloves, secured them at his wrists. I see you haven’t changed.
So you do remember me.
I remember a scrawny girl who used to sit reading books she didn’t understand in Peter’s lab.
I remember a man with short hair and clean clothes.
He smiled slightly and put on his helmet. I did the same. He opened the airlock and I followed.
I understood those books, I said, my voice tinny inside my helmet.