For days nearly every minute was filled with our work on the cell. Thinking and rethinking it. Endlessly taking it apart and putting it back together. Each morning when I woke I heard my uncle’s voice in my head—What does it do?—and I would transform the cell in my mind, through all its revisions and permutations, to where we were now. Then I would thrust my mind forward three, four, five, or more steps ahead. I ran through them fast and then slow, trying to gauge their difficulty, how long they would take—and when we’d get to the very last one.
Our jumble of ideas sharpened and made a definite shape—a shape that solved the fatal flaw of the original cell. The new prototype did more than accommodate vibration. It incorporated it into nearly every part of its design. But there was still a gap between the half-built cell and our perfect idea—we couldn’t agree whether the cell should be housed in closed or open stacks. It was the old dilemma, the same question James and Theresa had argued about on the pages of the fuel cell schematics. James wanted to use closed stacks, as my uncle had, to retain power. But I wasn’t convinced; an open and modular system meant the cells would be easier to fix if something went wrong.
Then one morning I woke up and heard my uncle’s voice again—What does it do?—and saw that the perfect idea I’d been carrying around in my mind wasn’t the end at all. Even the decision to use closed or open stacks wasn’t the end. Of course it wasn’t.
I turned over; James wasn’t in the bed.
I went looking for him and he was in the workshop, bent over a 3D printer. We haven’t thought far enough ahead, I said.
He didn’t look up.
We have to stop working in isolation. We need to talk to Amelia and Simon, and we need to unseal Endurance.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. We’re not ready.
We are.
He was quiet for a minute. I haven’t talked to Amelia in a long time.
So what?
And the last time I saw Simon he punched me in the face.
Simon?
A week before Inquiry’s launch.
I remembered James’s black eye when we stood together at the airfields at Inquiry’s takeoff. Why? I asked.
I wanted him to talk to Anu again about the cell. To give her specifics this time, to show her the calculations we had made about vibration and time. If anyone could convince NSP to delay the launch it was her. But Simon wouldn’t do it, and Amelia backed him up. I told them if something went wrong, it would be their fault. That’s when he hit me.
That was six years ago, I said.
Right.
I think you can forgive him.
He looked at me. I guess that’s true.
The fastest way to send them a message is at the satellite station, he said.
So let’s go.
He got up from the table slowly. The maintenance crew has one of the rovers. And I took the tires off the other. I’ll have to put them back on.
I occupied myself with 3D-printing some sturdier bolts for the cell’s exterior base. But when I started installing them I broke my needle driver. I put the pieces of the driver in my pocket and searched for another in the cabinets and drawers in the workshop. I looked in the equipment room and James’s bunk too but found nothing. There were tools in the room containing the failing cells, I remembered, and I went into the south corridor, warm and dim as usual, its walls close.
When I reached the door, the heat of the cells behind it, I heard a noise. It sounded like a word. James. It seemed to come not from the module containing the cells but from another door behind me. It was locked; I pressed my ear to it and heard the sound again. James.
I rattled the door but it didn’t budge. Hello? I called.
There was no reply. I shook the door again and then wedged the handle of my broken needle driver into the lock until it sprang open. Inside was another short corridor—it had a rubber floor and smelled of bleach—and a doorway draped with two sheets of clear plastic. A glow came behind them.
I drew back the plastic and it squeaked slightly under my fingers. Behind it, a bright room; a white sheet loosely gathered on top of a high bed. A hospital bed like the one my uncle had slept in on Earth. The bed appeared empty but when I stepped closer, tubes snaked out from under the sheet. A face appeared among the folds. My throat closed. A person. A person lay in the bed. A woman, her face so colorless she appeared transparent. An oxygen mask covered her nose and lips, and a machine whirred near her head.
I thought of the dummies we practiced on at Peter Reed, their hollow rubber bodies. They had more human bulk than this woman, more flesh. She looked like she’d never lived upright. Her limbs were flat and unmoving; her head swam in the sheet’s folds, as if unmoored from the rest of her body. My mind worked hard. She was real. Where had she come from? How long had she been in this room?
Then a sound, a rattling whisper. There was no mistaking it. James.
I leaned over her face. Her eyes were open and glossy. Her cheeks so pallid they were almost glassine. The machine at the top of the bed clicked, paused, and then began whirring again.
She didn’t move her head, just her eyes. They rolled sideways; they met mine.
I felt something, a flicker of recognition. I imagined her small eyes brighter, her cheeks fuller. Her eyebrows sharper. Theresa. Beautiful, commanding Theresa.
She slid her thin arms upward and I drew back. She pushed herself slightly upright. It was startling to watch her move. She gestured to a door across the room and briefly pulled the oxygen mask from her face. Help me to the bathroom, she said with her slight accent.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to hurt her.
I won’t break, she said, and there was a surprising edge to her voice.
I reached under her arms to help her sit, and I shuddered. Her skin was like paper, the bones underneath sharp as the prongs of a fork.
I know, she said.
I helped her down from the bed and she winced when her socked feet touched the floor. She swayed a little and I held on to her. Then we walked slowly to the bathroom, pulling her oxygen machine with us on its rolling stand.
I’m fine from here, she said.
Are you?
I said I’m fine. Her eyes were clearer now. She seemed to hold her thin body straighter too.
I waited outside the door. When she came out she was able to walk without swaying and moved her legs from the floor to the bed without my help. She laid her head down on the pillow and looked at me.
Theresa, I said.
Yes.
How long have you been here? I asked.
In this room? Her voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. Three months. Maybe more.
Do you know who I am? I asked.
I remember you June.
I sat down next to her.
You’re helping him, she said.
My mind moved slowly. With the fuel cell? Yes.
Good. She pressed her hands flat against the sheet. I can’t do it anymore.
The oxygen machine clicked and whirred. You’ve been here the whole time, I said.
Are you going to solve it?
We— We have a new prototype.
Solve it. As quick as you can. I want to go home. I want to smell air, put my toes in grass.
You want to leave—
Sometimes he says he’ll let me go. But then he changes his mind.
The room was too bright. The shapes of the bed, the table, the breathing machine—their edges too crisp, too clear. I got up. He isn’t keeping you here.
He thinks I’m going to get better. But I’m not going to.
The patter of the silt outside mixed with the whir of the oxygen machine.
I thought of the night of the fire. The charcoal color of the air, the acrid smell of smoke. I imagined her—Theresa—walking through the station, up the dark south corridor. All the way to James’s bunk. I pictured her stuffing paper into the electrical box on the wall, lighting a match, and watching the paper smoke and flare. It should have been hard to imagine this skin-and-bones woman doing all those things. But it wasn’t.
I sat back down.
He locks the door, I said.
Sometimes I get confused. She moved her hands around the sheet. But I’m not confused about going home.
But that night he forgot, I said.
She turned her head away from me.
He thinks he needs me to fix it, she said softly.
I leaned closer.
The cell, I said.
But it doesn’t matter whether we fix it or not.
You think they’re dead.
I truly hope they are, she said.
I left her and moved through the corridors in slow motion, my eyes unfocused, my hand trailing the wall. I tripped at the step-downs and bumped through airlocks. When I reached my bunk I sat on my bed and put my hands flat on my knees.
I tried to think but my brain was a dense mass; it wouldn’t move past the small bright room, past Theresa’s thin, ashen face. It seemed impossible she’d been inside that room this whole time. From the day I arrived at the Gateway, until now. She was in that room when James and I drove out to the solar field and sat in the galley eating breakfast and hauled water tanks. When we worked on the cell in the workshop—and when we lay together in his bed.
A wave of nausea moved through my body and I jumped up and ran to the toilets. My stomach heaved as I leaned over one of the bowls, but only spit came up. I sat down on the floor, rested my cheek against the cool stall door. The vents whirred over my head and a soft drip came from one of the faucets. I tried to put the two things together in my mind. James—my James. The way we were together. The way our minds worked the same and the way we could talk without talking. And Theresa—the brilliant, intimidating woman I knew when I was a girl—trapped alone in a room.
Footsteps came from the corridor outside. Then a sharp tap on the door. I pressed my cheek harder against the stall.
A louder tap, and then James’s voice: Are you in there?
I got up slowly; my stomach churned. I swallowed, left the stall, opened the door.
He was wearing his suit and had his helmet in his hands. I’m ready. Let’s go.
I pushed words out of my mouth. You lied to me.
About what—
Theresa is here. In this station.
His expression changed.
How could you not tell me that?
He drew himself up and I felt the pent-up energy inside him like a tight spring. She’s sick, he said.
What happened to her?
We were testing a new sealant for the cell and there was an explosion. I got burned. He gestured to his neck. But it was worse for her. Her mask got knocked off and the chemicals got into her lungs.
Why wasn’t she evacuated?
I’ve followed all of NSP’s medical protocols.
She says she wants to leave.
Sometimes she’s not herself. The chemicals affected her brain too—
She seemed pretty lucid to me.
One day she says she wants to leave and the next day she changes her mind—
She tried to burn you in your bed!
He opened his mouth, closed it. When he spoke it was in a strangled whisper. She won’t survive the trip home.
I made myself small in the doorway. I wanted to move away from his desperate face, but he drew closer, moved his hand to my wrist, encircled it with his strong fingers.
His suit was warm and rough against my cheek. You two were together, I said. Like us.
No, not like us. He held me tighter, his fingers pulling at the thin fabric of my shirt, his nose sharp and wet behind my ear. Not like us at all.