“Hello, sweet thing,” Jhoe said, putting a hand on Luna Shiloh's shoulder. “Have you looked outside?”
His hand, like the rest of his body, had layers of pale, dead skin flaking off it in messy, thumb-sized curls. Fortunately, he seemed to have suffered no other ill effects from his exposure.
“What?” Luna croaked, turning blearily to face him. Her face looked puffy and red, her eyes slitted, her hair an unruly tangle.
Jhoe frowned, looking around him at the coordination center. It stank in here, stank of sweat and farts and partially eaten sandwiches, of improper ventilation, of days of uninterrupted human occupation. Two other workers shambled about, seemingly as dazed as Luna herself.
“Damn,” he said. “You people haven't left this room, have you?”
“What?” Luna said again. She blinked at him, then looked over at the diagnostic board and blinked at that for a while.
Oh dear. Finding things well in hand after his brief but city-saving mission, Jhoe had evacuated himself to the nearest shelter. To his surprise, he'd found it not too terribly crowded, not too terribly uncomfortable. His bunk space, considerably smaller than the interior of Luna's car, had shrunk his world a bit, but someone had gone through and furnished the bunks with soft pillows and mattresses and blankets, furnished the individual rooms with plants and rugs and great heaps of paper books. Jhoe had actually spent his time quite pleasantly, snacking and reading and sleeping, speaking sometimes with his neighbors or listening to the songs that they sang together and quietly memorizing the lyrics.
He had worried about Luna, of course, but he felt it appropriate to leave her in peace to do her job. And of course, she had promised him she would look after herself and her people, and Jhoe had seen no reason to doubt this.
Here and now, in the coordination center that looked as if a tribe of primitives had moved into it, he realized his error. Technical people left to their own devices, permitted in their time of danger to ignore such logistical irrelevancies as sleep and hygiene... He saw his retreat now in a somewhat gloomier light, less prudent than selfish and cowardly. Clearly, they could have used his help around here.
“Come to the window with me,” he said, taking Luna by the elbow and leading her toward the room's exit.
“Jhoe,” she said, as if recognizing him only now. “What's going on?”
“I think it's over,” he said to her. They stepped through the arched doorway that marked the coordination center's exit.
“Ove—” she started to say, and then stopped when she saw the windows.
Night had returned to Unua once again.
Outside, the sky had the deep, yellow-purple look that Jhoe associated with summer evenings, when the sun had set but its light not entirely faded.
Neither Lacigo nor the brown dwarf sun occupied the heavens right now, but a kind of star, bright and small and sparkly-pink, glared fitfully near the horizon.
“That's Soleco,” Jhoe said, pointing at the star. “You can't see it anymore, but the ships were all diving in there. Dozens of light trails, all scrunching in together and disappearing. It's been going on for hours.”
“Why is it red?” Luna asked, seeming more alert now than she had before.
“That has to do with relativity,” Jhoe replied. Not that he knew anything about it, of course, but he remembered the example of Black Hole Bahb.
“Oh,” Luna said, and sagged against him.
He put his arm around her and felt good for a second, a lover reunited with the subject of his desire. But Luna's slump continued, and he had to move his arm beneath her and lift to keep her from falling. Her body felt a lot warmer than Jhoe thought it should.
“I'm sorry,” she said, vaguely. “I feel so... tired and I just...”
Jhoe placed a finger against her hot, cracked lips, hushing her. “You're sick! Oh, Luna, I warned you... Well, never mind about that. Your shift is over now; I'm going to take you home. No, that's not right. You probably have cancers blooming all through your body. I'm taking you to the hospital.”
“You can't take me there,” Luna protested. “My...”
“You'll be just fine,” Jhoe said. “If the Unuan doctors can't help you, I feel sure the Introspectia ones will. I bet they'll be busy cleaning this mess up. A lot of radiation cases, I would think.”
“You can't take me to the hospital,” Luna repeated, more insistently this time. “You smashed up my car, remember?”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, so I did.”
The last of the alien ships vanished into Soleco, leaving the sky completely dark, and Jhoe began, very inappropriately, to laugh.