Every morning was the same. Me eating cereal, him leaning in the doorway. He was in the galley when I got there, no matter how early I rose. I would pour myself cereal and we would talk about the work there was to do that day. The maintenance crew had arrived—a group of four men who spoke to one another in Russian and split their time between the satellite station and the Gateway. They took care of the solar fields and power and life support at both locations. But the Gateway had hundreds of systems and rooms upon rooms of equipment. Most of it was unused or off-line but still routinely checked, as if a full crew might arrive at any moment and the Gateway would again become a fully operational research and control station. Keeping up with all those checklists was up to James and me.
We worked long days, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours, almost always together because of James’s injured foot. Then one morning he wasn’t in the galley. I ate my breakfast alone, and aside from the buzz of the yellow overhead light, the only sound was the scrape of my spoon against the bottom of my bowl. It was odd to sit there without his frowning face in the doorway. The airlock was open to the dim corridor outside, to the lumbering expanse of connecting corridors and modules. A labyrinth of dark and empty space.
We had planned to spend the morning checking all the fire alarms and extinguishers. I waited a few minutes longer in the galley and then got a ladder and started the job alone. It was tedious: I set up the ladder, climbed it, tested the first alarm, and then climbed back down. There were over a hundred alarms and at least twenty-five extinguishers (these were installed in the walls of all the bunks and at intervals in the corridors). Each alarm needed to be partially dismantled and cleaned of dust and then manually set off. After each shrill beep I thought James would appear, but he didn’t.
My neck was stiff and my ears rang. I took a break and hauled water tanks. After that I was tired and irritated and walked the corridors in search of him. The maintenance crew were gone for forty-eight hours replacing cables near the satellite station, and there was a lot more to do that day. It was taking too long working alone.
James wasn’t in the galley or laundry or any of the equipment rooms. His bunk was empty and lit only by the blue runner lights. Everything was in shadow, his rumpled unmade bed, a mess of papers and mugs on the floor. The air smelled of sleep and stale coffee and laundry detergent—and something else, something unidentifiable. A sharp and sweet and slightly feral smell.
In the east corridor his suit was hanging on its hook, and through the porthole the rovers were parked in their usual spots in the cargo bay. He was here, somewhere. Maybe he didn’t want to be found. I stopped looking and walked to my room through the dark and narrow south corridor. The air there was close and humid. As I turned a corner a flash of light appeared about thirty feet away, and I called out. But no one answered, and the light disappeared.
I reached a dead end, and in front of me was the cabinet I’d noticed days before. I tried the latch and this time it opened. It wasn’t a cabinet at all, as I’d thought, but a door to another room. Or rather, a short corridor. I stepped inside. A vibrating thrum filled the narrow space. There were three doors, two to the left and one to the right. All the doors were shut.
Behind the first was a dark empty module. The noise was louder at the second. Its latch was hot, and I pulled my sweatshirt over my hand and opened it. The room was so full of whirring equipment I couldn’t step inside. It wasn’t one machine, but rather many machines stacked together. I knew them immediately—they were my uncle’s fuel cells. Rectangular, about the size of a bread box, and enclosed in thick metal casing.
They were stacked back to back and top to bottom, just as I’d seen them in my uncle’s schematics, but there was something wrong with them. They gave off heat like a furnace. They shuddered and groaned. They weren’t supposed to sound like that; they were meant to hum softly. These cells sounded like they were dying.
What are you doing in here? James’s voice came from behind me. He grabbed my wrist. He steered me away from the hot room, out the cabinet door, and into the main corridor.
I shook him off. What’s wrong with those cells? I asked even as the notes from my uncle’s schematics rose up in my mind. Five voices arguing about time and vibration and what they might do to the cells. How the cells might fare over weeks, months, years.
I’ll tell you. His eyes were oddly unfocused, as if he’d just woken up, and his speech was slightly slurred. Later.
When?
He leaned on his good foot. In the morning.
I don’t want to wait until morning.
Just say yes June. He moved closer to me. Okay?
In my bunk my mind worked at what I’d seen. The heat, the noise. I pictured those cells stacked four to a row inside the walls of Inquiry. Connectors snaking to every system on the explorer: its engines, communications systems, life support, grow modules…
I wanted to get up, go back to that room with my tools, and look more thoroughly at the cells. Listen more carefully to their vibrating noise. I wanted to disconnect a stack and take it apart. But I didn’t. I stayed put. I sat on my bed and the minutes ticked by. It was dark now; my arms ached from hauling water tanks that morning and my eyes grew heavy. Finally I laid my head on the pillow and fell into a dream.
In the dream I was back in my aunt’s basement, in front of the old boiler, a box of matches in my hand. Its drawer groaned when I opened it. I dropped lit matches inside and there was a hot metal smell and a bloom of charcoal smoke that singed my skin.
I woke with a start, a dark smell in my nose. I sat up and sniffed the air, and the sweat in the creases of my arms and legs went cold. I jumped from my bed and ran. A black cloud hovered at the end of the corridor, the color of charcoal, the color of char. It choked me; it scorched the hairs inside my nose, and I pulled my shirt over my face. The door to James’s room was open and smoke poured from it.
My throat closed. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; the air was made of fire. With my eyes squeezed shut I lunged through the door blindly, coughing, spluttering, calling his name. My hand closed around the fire extinguisher attached to the wall. I bit its cap, squeezed its lever and sprayed. I allowed my eyes to open a slit, saw nothing but white. Then, in the corner, red. Fire jumped up the wall; flames leapt at my arms. I batted them away and sprayed again.
In the middle of the bed a curled shape lay covered in white foam. James’s shape. A blackened electrical panel above his head. I shook him. He coughed. I shook him again and he opened his eyes. June.
He stood up and coughed and waved his hands through the haze. He pulled the sheets from his bed and threw them on the floor, stamped out cinders with his bare feet and winced.
The electrical panel on the wall was slightly ajar. I picked up a T-shirt from the floor and used it to open the panel all the way and smelled hot metal and melted plastic. Its insides were a mess of burnt wires.
This is weird, I said. Look at this—
I don’t need to look at it.
Wires have been cut. I blew air into the panel and bits of charred paper came flying out. Someone’s stuffed paper in here.
But he wasn’t listening.
Stay here, he said, and he limped to the door. The haze from the fire extinguisher still hung in the air and he moved through it as if it was a thick fog. At the airlock he turned back and pointed to the bed. Don’t move. He took a flashlight from the wall and left me alone, closing the airlock behind him.
When he came back he was pale. He stood in the doorway looking at the ruined room and at me. Foam clung to his hair and smoke darkened his skin. Are you all right? he asked.
I felt the cold singe of a burn on my forearm and I shivered. Yes.
He pulled a blanket from a cabinet and wrapped it around my shoulders. He drew the fabric tight below my chin. Our faces were close. The air was cloudy; white dust settled on our skin.
Are you going to tell me what’s going on? I asked in a whisper.
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move away. Heat came off his body in waves.
You saved my life, he said. Again.
I motioned to the melted electrical panel. Did you do that yourself?
He looked at the panel, and then back at me. I had the feeling, again, of being pinned in place.
You said you know the Inquiry crew are alive. How?
I took a step back. I have a recording.
I want to hear it.
Now?
Yes.
Then come with me. I got up and walked to my bunk, and he followed.