I let her go and she drifted away from me. I watched the light go out of her eyes, and she floated there, her head tilted too far over, lips parted as if she wanted to ask me a question. The silence was enormous.
The rest of the crew heard my screams.
Everyone heard them. They came flying like ghosts out of the shadows. They found Garcia. Dying, not dead. They found Sophie Enfers. A broken doll floating among the worlds of blood she had spilled. They found me a few yards away from her. Also broken, and in ways that I don’t think can ever be fixed.
It took a long time for me to tell them what happened.
Director Colpeys called my mother immediately, to warn her about Marcel.
But Marcel was already gone. He had died in the night. So had three others, including Inga, who had relapsed and faded. The infection had taken its toll.
Forty of us had left Earth. If Garcia lived it would mean that thirty-five of us would reach Mars. That was math I could understand. And the sums were horrible.