Dax’s mouth is moving, but the radio link is inactive. Anna can’t hear the words. They’re spinning out of control, away from the station, and it’s all happening in complete silence. There should be noise, shouts, raw anger. Instead, there’s nothing.
Dax puts a hand on her faceplate, as if he can grab it in his fingers and tear it off her head. She reaches up to push him off, but he’s too strong, elbowing her arm out of the way. The fear is back, digging its claws into her shoulders. Nausea comes with it, accented by the end-over-end spin.
Her thrust meter has started to blink red. She’s got a little under a third left, but if she doesn’t get free soon, she might not have enough to make it home.
The Earth and the station spin around them, as if she and Dax are the centre of the universe. With a terrified cry, Anna tries to push him away, planting a gloved hand directly on his chest. But it’s like her dream–the movement feels slow and soft, and she’s barely able to get enough force into her arms.
Dax doesn’t seem to be aware of what he’s doing. His face is barely human now, his helmet misting up with his breath. He’s still shouting, and she can’t hear a thing. She raises her knees, trying to get between them.
The spin intensifies, each movement adding to their momentum. And–oh gods–Dax has activated his suit’s plasma cutter. It’s sparking from his wrist, firing in short bursts, blinding her. Any second now, he’s going to slice a hole right through her suit.
The sight shocks her into action. Anna pulls her leg up and kicks it out towards Dax’s mid-section.
It’s just enough. They fly apart, and the plasma cutter misses her by six inches. She grabs the joystick, firing her thrusters to get even further away from him. She burns through almost half her remaining fuel before she manages to raise her finger off the thruster control.
Outer Earth is behind her. With a little luck, she can coast right towards it on her current momentum. She’ll do it backwards, keeping an eye on Dax. If he tries to make another run at her, she’ll be ready.
Dax has managed to stabilise himself, but, as she watches, the exhaust from his thruster ports changes. It’s thinner now, less substantial, as if…
She switches her radio back on. Dax’s voice comes through immediately. “—anybody hear me? I’ve got no fuel!”
“Negative.” It’s one of the others–Anna can just see them in her peripheral vision, still drifting along the curve of the station. “We’re too far away.”
“No!” Dax shouts, and this time fear creeps into his voice. “You can’t leave me here.”
Anna keys her transmit button. “Dax.”
He reaches his hands out towards her, as if beseeching her. “Anna. Help me!” He’s gripping his own joystick, squeezing the controls, but his thruster fuel is completely exhausted.
She should turn and leave. He doesn’t deserve to live.
But he doesn’t deserve to die either. Not like this. Not even after he nearly killed them both.
The others are too far away. There’s nobody else but her.
Anna closes her eyes, then thumbs her own thruster control. The meter is blinking faster now, down to its last eighth. She uses the thrust in short bursts, aware that she’s going to have to time this very carefully.
“Thank gods,” says Dax, whimpering. “Thank gods.”
Anna is fifty feet away. “Burn off your plasma cutter,” she says.
“What?”
“Do it. Or I turn around and go home.”
“It’s already gone. It uses the same fuel as the thrusters do…”
“Show me.”
“OK.” He thumbs his wrist control pad. The cutter flame briefly springs to life, then shrinks and dies, the very last of his fuel burning off.
Anna corrects her course slightly, prompting her meter to blink even faster. If she hits Dax too hard, she’ll send them both into a spin. They’ll have to use another thruster boost to correct their course, and she doesn’t have any fuel to spare.
She’s coming in from above him. “Grab my legs,” she says.
She slows herself down as she reaches him, and he manages to get his fingers around her ankles. They start spinning, but it’s a gentle spin, and Anna knows she can compensate for it.
Dax is sobbing now. Anna suppresses the urge to shout at him, concentrating on her movement, using incremental thruster bursts to turn them around. A warning flashes up in her helmet. THRUST FUEL CRITICAL.
No shit, she thinks. With a push on the stick, she sends them moving back towards the station.
They’re two hundred feet away. Anna can’t see the others, but she can see the escape pod airlocks, like little black pockmarks in the station’s surface.
They need to head for the airlocks, but when Anna tries to correct for it, her thrust meter vanishes completely. Another set of words appears on her heads-up.
THRUST DEPLETED.
Anna keys her transmit button, doing everything she can to fight the panic rippling through her. “We’re out.”
Dax gives a long, horrified moan. Anna can’t take her eyes off Outer Earth. On their current course, they’re not going to get anywhere near the hull. They’ll sweep right over the curve of the station, and then past it, out into space.
“Anna!” It’s Arroway, loud and clear over the suit radio. “I can—”
And then her radio dies again.
Anna can hear nothing but her breathing and heartbeat–both too fast, both impossibly loud inside the helmet. Another meter has started flashing–her O2. She’s burning through it too fast, just like the thruster fuel.
No. Please, no.
She’s trying to look around, but all she can see is the station hull, stretching below her. A hundred feet away, but it may as well be a million.
And then another space-suited figure collides with them, roaring in from below, grabbing her around the waist. The figure’s thrusters are firing, quick bursts, left and right, stabilising them.
There’s a burst of static, and then Arroway says, “Got you!”