One morning—or afternoon; they’d begun sleeping whenever they felt tired—Katherine woke to find herself alone. She sat up and stretched, looking around, expecting to see him just out of reach, that teasing smile on his face. But Sergey’s bed, pushed up against hers, was empty, his pillow cold to the touch.
Of course, he’d be in what they laughingly called the canteen, the table and chairs beside the tiny cookstove. But no. The seating modules were empty.
She got out of bed, stumbling in her sleepy stupor. She pulled her dressing gown, the one drab gray garment they’d given her to provide some privacy, around her bulging stomach. She strode past the locked closet, past the camera, its impassive green light blinking.
Peeking through the circular window of the hatch, she breathed a little sigh of relief. One of Sergey’s lunar-exploration suits was gone. He must have headed out to collect samples. When she went to the wide wall of windows, however, she couldn’t see him. It was odd that he’d go out without her. They had a routine; she helped fasten the clips that kept his oxygen line secure over his shoulder, so that he wouldn’t trip on it or lose the nozzle, and then, when he returned, she got him out of the suit and cleaned it for him. Maybe it did have something to do with the fact that they paid her just as much as they did Sergey, or maybe the love she felt for him made everything easier, but she’d never been so happy to do the same thing day in and day out in her entire life.
She scanned the pocked gray surface, squinting. He’d traveled almost to the horizon before, almost out of her range of vision, but she’d never completely lost sight of him. She mixed a little instant coffee and sat on the window ledge, waiting.
A voice inside her head spoke: Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he knew of a way to call for a shuttle home. This is what men do. When you’re at your most vulnerable, and you are, Katherine, it’s a repellent to them. They go. The voice sounded remarkably like her mother’s.
But it was what men did, wasn’t it? They went. Or worse.
She shook her head. It was ludicrous to think he could have, or would have, gone anywhere. “Rubbish,” she murmured to herself. “No way they’d be able to come and get him without waking me.” She stirred the lumps in her passable coffee. “And now I know just how much I’d be talking to myself if you weren’t here. Hurry home, my love.”
Laughing a little, she glanced back at the vestibule, the hatch. Now she noticed what she’d failed to before: both of the oxygen hoses, the hoses that kept Sergey tethered to the habitat and breathing, remained coiled to the wall.
A ripple of fear shot through her. She put her coffee cup down. Slowly, she stood, letting the dressing gown slip from her shoulders and pool at her feet. He couldn’t have gotten far without oxygen, could he? Yet he wasn’t visible, was he?
“Well,” she said, her voice shaking, “ain’t that something?”
There was only one thing to do. As she entered the key code to unlock the hatch, slid up the heavy bolt, and pulled open the handle with a light hiss, she realized just how badly she’d been aching to do this all along. It wasn’t fear coursing through her veins, not even concern for Sergey, not exactly, but excitement. Her fingers trembled as she took the spare Exo-Shell uniform down from its broad-shouldered hanger. No question about its cleanliness—she’d sanitized it herself. Shaking, she eased her bare feet into the attached rubbery boots, then pulled the hard-cased trousers up over her legs. At its joints, the suit was made of flexible material—an impermeable fabric, she presumed—but the rest felt like coconut shells. Since it was sized for a man, she could get her belly inside, but barely. She had to suck in her stomach a bit, and as she did, she imagined the baby putting its hands against the walls to brace itself.
“Sorry, little prince,” she whispered. “Or princess. We have to find your father.”
The helmet was on, locked into the collar. She attached one of the oxygen hoses to the nozzle on the back of her helmet and locked it, then flipped the red switch on the wall. Oxygen flowed. For months she’d been doing this, day in and day out, and now she wondered if perhaps the Soviet command had in fact been training her to be the extra, in case of an emergency like this. Perhaps, in their own sly way, they’d been keeping her in the wings.
She made sure the hatch to the habitat was closed, and finally set forth to open the door to the vestibule. Before her, through another portal window, she could see the bright white land of that final frontier, beckoning her. When had she last flown, really flown? When had she last felt herself overcome gravity by her own power? That would be the first thing she’d do—take a huge leap. The biggest she could. She had been feeling so heavy, so weighed down by this new low center of gravity just below her navel. Now she would step outside, and fly.
After that, she would find out what had happened to Sergey.
There would be no whoosh of air when she clicked open the second door; she knew that. The feeling of airlessness was another factor she’d been curious about. With a deep breath—the boost of oxygen inside her helmet was making her dizzy—she slid the three latches open, then pushed down on the handle.
She hadn’t been prepared for how bright it would seem out here—the habitat must have had light-filtering glass—and was that a whoosh she’d felt? One booted foot reached unsteadily out to land in the soft dust. Under her sole it felt like cake flour. She took another deep breath, then reached out with the other foot. It gave a light bounce—
Something clamped down hard on her right shoulder. A gloved hand. It whirled her around, twirling her in the air, and when she turned there was Sergey, in his suit. She could just make out her face reflected in the glass of his helmet, her eyes surprised and fearful, and behind that, there were his eyes, the brows furrowed in what looked like anger. He yanked her back inside the vestibule and pushed the door shut behind them.
He had his helmet off in a flash, and now he was pounding on hers, knock-knock-knocking like the police at the door of an outlaw’s house. “Take it off!” he shouted, his voice muffled. Without waiting for her to move, he went around behind her and unplugged the oxygen hose. Then he twisted the helmet out of its groove and tugged it off her head.
“Katya! What in the name of hell did you think you were doing?”
“You were gone!” she cried, pushing him a little. “I woke up and you were gone! Where the hell did you go? And how did you do it without oxygen?”
He blinked a few times, as though he were trying to make sense of what she had said. “Without oxygen, what are you talking about? Look! I was connected. I was right there, right beside the habitat. I was collecting the dust in the shadow of our home. Don’t you believe me?”
Did she? It didn’t make sense. She’d seen the two hoses coiled next to each other. She remembered wondering which one she should take, the one on the left or the one on the right. But Sergey was grinning at her, laughing a little now, and everything felt all right. Her belly was beginning to ache. She decided to laugh as well. “You were right there?”
“I was right there! If this was Earth, I’d have been your dutiful супруг, planting your tulip bulbs in our front garden bed.” He reached for her. “Here, let me help you take that off.”
She let him slip the heavy garment off her shoulders, past her belly—ahh—and down over her legs. She held his shoulders as she stepped out of the boots, thinking that now she would have to clean and sanitize two suits instead of one.
“Don’t do that to me again,” she said, pointing her finger at his face. He pretended to bite it. “Wake me before you leave. You know I like to see you off.”
“Yes, dear,” he said, and he turned so that she could help him undress. Now they stood in the small vestibule, stomach to stomach, both in their underwear, her round smooth belly grazing the trail of soft dark hairs that disappeared into his shorts.
“What does супруг mean?” she murmured, reaching up around his neck.
“Husband.” He reached behind him and took both of her hands, brought them around to his warm mouth, and kissed them. “Don’t you do that to me again, yes? You are not supposed to be out there.”
Their eyes met above their interlocked hands. They stood still for a moment, staring at each other, taking deep breaths. She could see pale flecks in the irises of his dark-brown eyes.
Then Sergey broke her gaze and continued, kissing her fingers: “All could have been lost, Katya. All,” he repeated, as he bent to crush her mouth with his, “could have been lost.”