“C’mon Dorothy, I need you to check out these radargrams. I have what might be an underground structure on the far side of the river but I need confirmation.” Rebecca waited for a response from beyond the smooth, white door. “You don’t even have to leave the ship. I can bring the reports to you—”
“Yes she does,” said Captain Stratton. “We all have our jobs to do. And it’s time for Hackford to start doing hers.” He raised his voice to be heard through the door. “Twenty-four slots, Dorothy, that’s all there were, and you got one. This doesn’t even happen once a lifetime. Don’t waste it.”
He was met with silence. “I fought for you, Dorothy. Bruheim said your evals were borderline, but I said you were the best geologist on the Keseburg and I wanted you on my crew.”
There was no response and Stratton began to lose patience. He pounded on the door with his fist. “Now, Hackford. Or you’ll be facing court-martial when we return. ”
“I think she’s really frightened, Captain,” murmured Rebecca. “I don’t think she means to disrespect—”
The door slid open. Dorothy Hackford was a drooping, weeping mess. The red puff of her eyes sagged into heavy wrinkles of exhaustion. Rebecca thought she’d aged ten years in the past day.
“It’s not so bad out there, I promise,” she offered.
Dorothy didn’t seem to hear her, just stumbled out of the cargo hold, halfway into her suit, empty arms trailing behind her. “Let me see the reports,” she mumbled.
Rebecca handed the printout to her and Dorothy flipped through it, rubbing her eyes with one palm. Captain Stratton watched her grimly, arms crossed over his chest.
“Emery, go get Dr. Cardiff,” he said. “Tell her that Hackford is getting ready to begin her field duties and we will need her assistance.”
Dorothy exchanged a panicked glance with her, but Rebecca just confirmed the order. “Yes, sir.”
She hoped the odd curves on the radargram would distract Dorothy enough for her to overcome her panic, but in the end, it took both Dr. Cardiff and herself to finish dressing the woman and all but pushing her down the airlock’s exterior ladder.
Dorothy stood at the bottom of the ladder on the dirt, sobbing and motionless.
“You have to calm down, Dorothy,” pleaded Rebecca. “Concentrate on the pages. Tell me what we’re seeing.” The radargram fluttered in a passing breeze and Dorothy dropped it as if it had scalded her. Rebecca sprinted clumsily to catch the pages.
“Look at me Hackford,” the doctor was saying behind her, “focus on what’s actually happening, not what you are afraid will happen. You’re safe
. We’re just at the bottom of the ladder. Here, touch it—”
Rebecca returned just as Dr. Cardiff was placing Dorothy’s arm on the metal ladder. “There, now take a deep breath—”
Rebecca could hear Hackford gasping in her helmet. “Can’t— breathe—”
“You can, slow down. It’s the same air—” started the doctor but then Dorothy grabbed at her helmet, reaching for the
clasps.
“Have to get out.”
“No!” cried Dr. Cardiff reaching to stop her. “Don’t take it off!”
The two grappled with a clasp for a moment, before the doctor yelled for Rebecca to help. “Have to get out!” Dorothy screamed, flailing at the two women holding her.
“Get her up the ladder, inside,” said the doctor, trying to yank her up the metal rungs.
Rebecca wrapped her arms around Dorothy, the slick plastic of their suits making her slide loose. She tried to push her up the ladder, but it was too late. Dorothy unclasped her helmet and twisted it off. It tumbled over Rebecca’s own helmet and down her back onto the alien soil.
“Soil and Rain,” swore Dr. Cardiff.
Dorothy just gasped.
“Get her in the airlock.”
Rebecca shook her head and let go of Dorothy. She bent and picked up the helmet. “We can’t. You know the procedure.” She pulled a bottle of disinfectant from her pocket and sprayed the ring and interior of the helmet.
“We don’t even know if it’s breathable air!” shouted the doctor.
Rebecca calmly swiped the helmet with a soft cloth and then twisted back over Dorothy’s head, turning the clasps. “Oxwell and Titov finished their tests last night. It’s breathable, but we don’t know if there are harmful microbes—”
“So what, you want to just leave her out here to have a panic attack?”
Hackford sunk slowly onto her knees, still gasping, making herself as small as possible, pressing herself against the familiar metal rungs of the ladder.
“We have to report it as an exposure,” said Rebecca. “We can’t let her back into the ship until she’s been cleared.”
Dorothy had recovered her breath enough to begin screaming.
“We can’t leave her like this— the stress, if she has any abnormality in her heart or her brain—” Dr. Cardiff shouted over Dorothy.
Captain Stratton’s voice broke through on their filaments. “Everyone back to the ship. We’ve had an exposure. I need everyone back with their samples. Now.”
“Captain, what about Hackford?” Dr. Cardiff asked.
“You know the procedure.”
“She won’t last seventy-two hours like this. Not alone, certainly.”
“We can take shifts and stay with her,” said Rebecca.
Dr. Cardiff shook her head. Dorothy continued to scream.
“Can’t you give her something?” Rebecca asked.
“No,” said Stratton, “Not until the tests are finished. We don’t know how a sedative might react with whatever she’s been exposed to.”
“This is cruel and unnec—” Cardiff said, starting up the ladder.
“Don’t tell me what’s unnecessary on my
ship!” shouted Stratton. “It’s my job to keep the crew safe. And that’s what I’m doing. If you have a problem with it, take it up with the Admiral when we get home.”
Cardiff climbed back into the ship, her face twisted with anger, ready to fight. Rebecca knelt next to Dorothy, one arm around the screaming woman’s shoulder. The radargram flapped under Rebecca’s knee. She watched the small buggy appear at the end of the landing zone and rattle toward the ship. The five scientists were unreadable in their clean plastic suits, the strange orange sun reflecting off their helmets so that their faces were invisible. Rebecca waited until they climbed past her and into the airlock before curling around Dorothy. She covered the sides of Dorothy’s helmet with her arms,
making a dark, close shell. The woman finally stopped screaming and Rebecca pressed her own helmet against the other looking in. All she could hear was Dorothy’s ragged breath. At least she was still alive.
“Better?” she asked.
“A— little. Don’t move your arms. The sky— it’s so pale and terrible, so far away—”
“We should never have come here,” said Rebecca softly. “We don’t belong here. We’re meant to be out there. Safe.”
Dorothy sobbed. “Don’t say that. I just got scared. I just needed a little more time to get used to the idea. But don’t say that we shouldn’t be here.” Her glove scraped against the gravel and she picked up a small stone. “I don’t know what’s going to happen Emery, but I didn’t expect this. This is the first non-mined rock I’ve held in my entire life. I don’t even know if I’d recognize a natural stratification from an artificial one anyway. Somebody meant
for us to find a planet. Our parents, their parents, somebody way back on Earth meant for us to land here. Otherwise, why keep training us like this? Why bother with geologists and entomologists? Why did you study anthropology? Because we thought we’d find somewhere. Because we thought we could learn to adapt to another place, another society. We’re dying up there, Emery. Can’t you see? This planet’s going to kill me because I couldn’t keep my head. Because I’ll go nuts if I lift up my head and see all the room around me without people, without ship walls. We’ve forgotten what makes us human. We’ve forgotten how to overcome. Whatever happens— the Keseburg needs
this place, or one like it. And we need it soon.” Dorothy curled the stone in her hand and brought it to her chest, still hiding her face from the outside.
Leroux finally emerged from the ship with the medical supplies, followed by Titov and Alice carrying the portable lab. “Oxwell,” she said, “Help me get the isolation chamber
up.”
Alice and Titov unpacked the kit. A flap of loose plastic went up and began closing them in. Dorothy lifted her head and her breathing slowed as the translucent material made the world around them a jumble of bright colors without shape or meaning. “Thanks for staying Emery,” she said. She held out a hand. “I’ll take a look at that radargram now.”
Rebecca nodded and handed it to her. Leroux and Oxwell rolled a metal cot into the small plastic room, unfolding a plastic floor covering and beginning to seal it. Rebecca left to give them more room. She slowly climbed the ladder into the ship and went through decontamination. It was early in the day, but nobody seemed in the mood to continue working. She flipped through the photos of the lake site on her filament feed half-heartedly. She traced the rough lines with her eye and then shook her head. It wasn’t going to be structures. They never were. Not in all those hundreds of years. Titov would tell her the metal piece was just a fluke, just some natural formation that her mind insisted was special and significant. They were just so desperate not to be totally alone. One solitary ship of life limping through space. She closed her eyes.
“We’re dying up there, Emery. Can’t you see?” Dorothy’s voice echoed in her head.
Maybe that was okay. Maybe it was right that they dwindle, peter out. Maybe sentient life was the anomaly, not the rule. In all these years, in all these generations they’d never found a hospitable planet. Spixworth had been incredulous, but Rebecca was starting to wonder. If life like ours is so normal, we ought to have found it somewhere. We ought to have colonies from here to Earth,
she thought. Instead, Dorothy was sitting in a claustrophobic plastic bag, waiting to see if she’d die. Just for thirty seconds of unfiltered air.