TERRA YORK HELD tightly to the rail. She was tethered to it, but she wasn’t taking chances. As she approached the hatch, her communicator clicked on, automatically opening a channel with Parker as it detected his proximity. Surrounded by ambient noise in atmospheric conditions, the click was almost inaudible. But in space, the sound made you flinch.
“Okay, no more pretending to work,” she said. “I’m back. Now we can get down to business.”
Parker looked over, startled. “There you are,” he said. He must have been too engrossed in his work to hear the click. He looked at her as if something new caught his eye. She didn’t look away.
Maybe it was the shared comm channel, or maybe it was the absence of other familiar sounds; regardless, something drew people together on extended spacewalks.
Parker looked past York. “There they go,” he said.
York turned to see the shuttle heading in the sphere’s direction. “At least we don't have to do that,” she said.
“I don't know. Right now, I think I would trade places,” he said.
“The combustion chamber is in that bad of shape?”
“It's banged up a little, but I think it will be fine,” he said. “We're still trying to squeeze an Atlas-class part into a smaller designed ship.
We can install it, of course, but then we can't close the hatch. So, what I think we'll do...”
York interrupted. “Flatten two sides and reverse fill the interior with this alloy?” She pointed to the cylindrical chunks of metal tied to the transport table.
Parker smiled at York. Her intuitive abilities were uncanny. Although it had only been a week since they left Novos, the two of them had already logged long hours together. He found working with York to be uncommonly easy. York could finish most of Parker's sentences, an occurrence which would have annoyed him if York’s skills didn’t rival his own.
“As much as I want to get this mission over with,” Parker said, “I’m going to miss having somebody as capable as you to work with.”
“Is that all I am to you,” teased York, “just a capable assistant?” She tried to act offended.
“Well, no. You’re much, much…” Parker bit his tongue. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just I’m not used to working so well with people. I’m usually a one-man-band back at Novos. It kills me, but I have more in common with that hermit Brennen than I care to admit.”
York winced. “I hope you don’t have too much in common. You wouldn’t believe what he did thirty minutes ago.”
Parker looked at her inquisitively, then assumed a protective posture difficult to recognize under a spacesuit but was evident nonetheless.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Let’s get this work done.” The two braced the chamber against the side of the ship, took an impact hammer and began to flatten out one side, and then the other side of the chamber.
“You know, York...”
“David, call me Terra.”
Parker swallowed hard and continued. “I've never had a chief-mechanic pick up one of my new designs as quickly as
you have.”
York beamed. “You're the first space-architect to stick around long enough to notice,” she said. “Usually, they don't have anything to do with us grease monkeys.”
After they finished flattening the sides, they began to weld new alloy to the interior of the chamber to strengthen it. “So, how long of a tour have you signed up for with Novos?” Parker asked.
“I can barely keep track,” she said. “I just keep renewing every time.”
“You like it that much?”
“No,” she said, “but I don't know what else to do. This is the only thing I'm good at.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“What, David, you don't have a real life back home?”
“Nothing that even resembles a real life. I have a couple of buddies from school I keep up with and a few hobbies. But that's about it.”
York smirked. “Hobbies, huh? Have any pet fish?”
Parker chuckled. “I guess you saw me.”
“Just a few times,” she said.
“I don't know what it is about the aquaponics system. I go in there, and I'm able to forget about it all for a few minutes. Don't you have a way to relax?”
“Oh, I have ways,” she said suggestively.
Parker swallowed hard again, but this time his throat was dry.
She winked. “I'll get inside the service shaft. As you line up the combustion chamber, I'll help thread the bolts.” She had a way of taking charge without seeming insubordinate. She loosened two straps from around her chest and then started to remove a loop from one shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Parker demanded.
“I’m small, but I’m not that small,” she said. “If I’m going to squeeze into the shaft, I need all the room I can spare.
As long as you promise to rescue me if I float away, I’m better off without this propulsion pack.”
Parker agreed with a nonverbal gesture. In a surprisingly quick movement, he hooked an additional tether to York’s belt and attached the other end to himself.
She looked at him incredulously. “That propulsion pack was your redundancy,” he said. “You’re removing it, so I’m adding a new redundancy.”
“I can read a mechanical blueprint,” she said, “but deep down I’ll never really be an engineer. You’re the most risk averse people in the universe.”
“That’s why people trust us to design multi-trillion cert spacecraft.”
She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Look, I’ll bring my p-pack along, just in case,” she said.
The two worked quickly. Knowing exactly what to do, there was little need for talk. With the chamber in place, York began threading bolts.
Parker worked up his nerve. “When we get back to Novos, I have some designs I'd like to show you.”
York didn't reply. Her hands, still threading bolts, started to slow.
He continued. “I have an enhanced energy-transfer coupling prototype that should make the job we're doing now obsolete. It's back in my lab. I'd love to have you…” He coughed. “I’d love to have you come over to check it out. Maybe we could get dinner while we're at it.”
Parker couldn't see York, except for her hands on the bolts. Her movements slowed even more.
“There’s an excellent Tahitian grill I discovered,” he said. “It’s on an orbiter that’s really close to my lab.”
Her hands stopped moving.
“Terra, are you okay?”
She didn’t respond.
He wished he could see her face, see her expression.
“Terra?” He reached forward and gently touched her hand.
She jerked hers away.
“Listen, I'm sorry if...” He stopped in mid-sentence. York was back to work. But she was unthreading the bolts.
“Hey, I'm sorry if I said something wrong,” he said. “I didn't mean to offend you.”
Her hands moved quickly, faster than he had ever seen her work before. Two of the four bolts were loose. He continued to apologize to no avail.
She had the bolts free in no time. She pushed the combustion chamber hard. Parker, on the other side, backed out of the hatch. He didn’t speak. He didn’t resist. Shell-shocked, it was all he could do to tether the combustion chamber to the rail before it floated past him.
Another object darted out the hatch. Parker watched as York’s propulsion pack zipped away, lost forever. York climbed out of the hatch and began her spacewalk back to the cargo bay entrance.
“What did I do?” Parker pleaded. “Fine. I'll do this myself.” His voice trembled. “You've got a lot of growing up to do, York!”
York pulled herself via the rail, hand-over-hand, toward the cargo bay at an astonishing pace. She was reckless, untethered, and without her propulsion pack. Dumbfounded, Parker heard the click in his helmet as York moved out of range.
Then he heard a crackle over his headset. “Parker, this is Alvarez. We've landed on the sphere.