I groped through hangers of suits to find one my size and then, as if executing a scripted command, began unzipping my uniform and peeling down to my underwear. By the sound of articles of clothing dropping onto the floor, I could tell Eve was doing the same thing, and my chest clenched. Don’t be a creep, Aaron, I thought, my legs turning to rubber as I fought the urge to glance behind me. Instead, I just kept repeating the words over and over in my head—staring at the wall—until Mr. Katz’s and Eve’s voices resumed in ping-pongs off the metallic chamber, and I got the sense that they were finished.
I’d known she was beautiful; but between her nearness now and the fact that we were heading into a void that we wouldn’t last thirty seconds in without our suits, I understood what she meant to me. The feeling was euphoric—I believed I could do anything, be anything—but it was reckless, too. Spontaneous. The thought of sacrificing myself for her kept popping into my head, at first in the periphery and then filtering inward, filling me with this kind of single-minded drive to be useful and courageous. To be just as perfect to her as she was to me.
“All right, Mr. Sheridan, your turn,” said Mr. Katz after he and Eve had passed under the beam and the bulb had flashed blue above the readout.
Once we’d climbed down into the Explorer, he continued, “I know you’re making an ascent in the pilot rankings, but since I’m the only one who has the requisite certification for this dropship—I’ll be the only one flying.”
“Aye, Captain,” I said, noting the self-consciousness in his voice and the tentative way he began flipping switches.
The pilot came over the commline. “This is Fox One. Sacagawea, you are clear for separation.”
“Wasn’t Sacagawea the translator who helped the white people on Earth ‘discover’ the rest of America?” I asked Eve, turning to her, amused, as I clicked my harness into place.
“They should’ve at least given her a cruiser for that.”
“At least.”
The Explorer had a giant window that stretched across most of my peripheral vision, all the way under the craft’s nose, making me feel vulnerable and exposed to the emptiness we’d be dropping into. But there were so many electric blue lightpanels and dense, modern-looking readouts blinking around us that I couldn’t help but simultaneously feel safe and well-equipped. Especially with Eve getting strapped into the seat right next to me. Especially knowing that whatever happened I was going to be the best version of myself that I could be.
“You see those masks clipped to the ceiling?” asked Mr. Katz. “Put them on. It’s important that you get pure oxygen to cycle the nitrogen out of your bodies. Otherwise, bubbles can form in your blood causing decompression sickness, a.k.a the ‘bends.’”
I shuddered a little, having gotten the bends scuba diving one time with my dad on Mars and remembering it being awful: Lightheadedness, vertigo, numbness. I hadn’t been able to stop throwing up either, dry heaving for hours in the back of the skiff. “I’m glad you’re here looking out for us, Mr. Katz.”
“That’s what I get the big bucks for. I’d hate to have my ‘fake-steak rations cut,’ as Cadet Maxwell would say.”
Chapter 34
The nebula bled purple around us, the sun spilling onto the asteroid’s ridge so bright I could barely make out the edges. Without any layers of tempered glass or partitions to obscure it, the UV unspooled in an unbroken panorama of color, reflecting off dust and rock in razor-sharp definition. It made the uneasy feeling I’d gotten while the air was sucked out of the airlock and we did the last in a series of buddy-checks, manually inspecting each other’s atmospheric suits, seem like a distant memory. I was still vaguely aware that any fall or perforation of the fabric could be fatal, yet the excitement crowded out the fear.
I could tell Eve was appreciating it, too, but her steps were more deliberate, tilting toward the nebula for only a second before moving to the U-dev’s coordinates. “Up ahead is Nilithic 72, a potential alloy for heavy ship plating,” she said, interrupting the haunting, stark sound of breathing amplified in my helmet. The pitch of her voice was lower than normal, just like Mr. Katz had said ours would be, since the lower atmospheric pressure and the nebula gasses made the soundwaves longer and smoother. “It’s not widely used because it’s tricky to refine, but I think we can make a pretty strong case that that’ll change in the next five to seven years.”
“I’d say more like four to six.”
“What do you know about it?” Eve asked.
“Nothing, but you’re conservative enough that I can shave at least twenty percent off of your estimates.”
“———— ———— —— ——- ——- hardly conservative ———-.”
“You’re breaking up a little there, Eve.”
Even though he was just a few meters away, Mr. Katz’s voice sounded like a distant transmission over the cooling fan in my suit. As Dr. Mitchell mentioned in the briefing ——— ——- ——-, there’s going to be a bit of nebula interference —— —————.”
“Copy that, Mr. Katz. We’ll keep it tight,” said Eve.
“It’s actually one of the clearest days I’ve seen, though, if you can believe it,” said Mr. Katz.
“Lucky us.” And then, turning toward me—her helmet light brightening her face, Eve said, “Do you have that sample bag handy? I’m about to saw off a piece.”
“Come on, that’s my one job.”
It wasn’t exactly an easy one, though, considering how rigid and bulky our suits were. Since they were pressurized, there was resistance to every move I made—like I was trying to control someone else’s body. Someone else’s swollen limbs. And despite my best attempts to orient around different rock croppings and patterns of illumined dust, I was constantly transitioning perspectives, the nebula going from above me to under, back to above me again in the span of only a few, somersaulting moments.
“Just making sure. People get distracted by the nebula’s ——- —- —— especially with the ——— —- ——- ———- like ——. Tends to ————- — —————.”
“So this isn’t your first time?” I asked.
“Nah, a few science classes take field trips out here. Especially lately with this asteroid coming through and all. The definition of a passing opportunity.”
“And how am I doing so far? How’s my moon walk?” I shuffled my feet backward, for the first time having the confidence to look away from the heads-up readout in my helmet.
“——- -se work,” said Mr. Katz.
I stopped when I saw that Eve had begun sawing through the rock with the laser blade and awkwardly began to unbuckle the sample bag from my utility belt. “Ah, well, let’s see yours then. Simon said he walked in on you doing a mean foxtrot with Ms. Shaw in the rec room so I know you’ve got it.”
“——- ———— — ——- ———- —- —————— —-.”
“Didn’t catch that.”
“—- ——- —- ———- — ——— —- — ——?”
“The interference is ———- —ller. We should try to stay —— enough to each other —- ——- —- to see each other’s vital readouts on the backs of our packs.”
“Hear that, Eve?” I asked, assuming Daries’ airy banter. “We gotta stick close to mama duck.”
I adjusted the climate control panel on my arm since the local star, Ephesus, had just passed behind Drieus and the temperature was beginning to drop.
“Is it too late to switch partners, Mr. Katz?” asked Eve a few moments later.
“You’re the one who chose him. But I am glad he’s enjoying himself . . .” Mr. Katz stopped walking a few meters ahead of me. “It is pretty neat out here.”
After another hour of collecting samples, Eve and I were back on the Pulsar, lifting our face plates and taking our helmets off in the equipment room. It was strange. One would’ve thought that I’d be less anxious coming back inside, out of reach of loose rock and meteor showers, but if anything my heart wa
s speeding up as I ticked through the post-walk checklist: Withdraw Emerg Line from Feed Port. Remove Inlet “Y” Fitting. Remove Outlet “Y” Fitting. Connect Both ECS Hoses while removing Interconnect. Remove EVA Restraint.
“The interference was something else, but I think I got pretty good at guessing what you guys were saying,” I said, immediately thinking how weird it was to hear my normal voice again, unfiltered by the comm line and the atmospheric suit.
“Not too hard when it was just ‘hurry up.’”
I pressed a button that told the pump in my suit to start sucking up the water flowing through the cooling system. “Oh, come on. My boots were set to the gravitational level of a neutron star. It was like tramping through a . . .”
Mr. Katz leaned in to see my readout. “No, completely normal.”
“Like you said, Aaron. It was your first time. First times can be a little rough,” said Eve.
“Was yours?” asked Daries, flashing a smile as he poked his head into the room while we started to change. “So are you ladies about finished yet, or what? You’re spilling into our EVA.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Someone’s an eager beaver today.”
“Damn straight. I want to win this freaking bet.” He turned back into the corridor. “We’re gonna take these chumps down, aren’t we Simon?”
A few minutes later, Daries, Simon, and Mr. Katz were out on the asteroid and we were in the Pulsar, relaxing in the passenger seats.
“You’re sure in a good mood today,” Eve commented.
I nodded. “Yeah . . . I haven’t really felt like this in . . . in a while.”
“The nebula can do that.”
“It’s more than the nebula,” I said, more earnestly than I’d intended. In fact, I hadn’t intended to say anything like it; given what she was focused on, the last thing I wanted was to be too intense. It would scare her. It would scare me if I were trying to find the cure for a terminal disease. At the same time, any game-playing seemed wrong, too, like that was something only done back on planets where you were safe and bored and starved for excitement. There wasn’t time for that here, and pretending like there was would be just as out of touch. There was a coldness in the back of my neck, and suddenly I was just as nervous as the first time I’d met her in the lab.
“Then maybe it was Daries. He can be quite the—”
The words just kind of tumbled out. “It wasn’t Daries.”
“Then what?”
“Well, uh . . .”
“Oh stop, I know it was me,” Eve said, and she punched me on the arm.
It was funny and I laughed, but as soon as the lightness and relief rolled off, there was nothing there to catch the silence and we were just looking at each other. I felt dizzier than I’d ever felt before. My mouth moistureless. I knew this was where we were supposed to kiss, but I’d already waited too long for it not to be awkward.
“Guess what day it is?” asked Eve.
“Friday.”
“Yeah, but what’s the actual date?”
“I thought they didn’t keep track of them here.”
“No, but I do. It’s May seventh, and just about now my secondary school class is heading to prom.”
“Prom?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“Yeah, prom. Don’t you have that on Mars?”
“Well, we have Spring Formal.”
“Same idea. Anyway, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I was thinking we could have a dance or two.”
“Oh, there’s no risk; that’s definitely cheesy,” I said.
“Come on, it’s my freaking senior prom. That’s not cheesy, it’s just . . .”
“Nice?”
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“But won’t we need music?”
Eve held up her U-dev. “Fifty million songs on here. We’ve got, let me see . . . Kara Eva Es, James Blackwood, White Falcon.”
“White Falcon easy, but I’m not sure those doors are soundproof,” I said, glancing toward the bridge.
“The pilot’s been sleeping ever since we got back.”
“So something dreamy then,” I said.
She nodded as she docked her U-dev on the terminal and began scrolling through screens. “The trick’s getting it over the speakers.”
“I flew this model in the Box last week, so it shouldn’t be too hard.” I reached around her and toggled the controls on the lightpanel. “Okay, we’ve got sensors, weapons, life support—definitely don’t want to hit that one—and here we are, communication frequencies.” I keyed a few more buttons. “Routed through the internal speakers. Go ahead and hit play.”
The song began and immediately I felt lighter. “May I have this dance?”
“You may,” she said, taking my hands and placing them on her hips. “But we have to do it retro. That’s what’s in this year.”
“And how do you know what’s in?”
“The new Greens tell me,” Eve said.
“And does your captain care about what you tell the Greens?” I asked, thinking about how Caelus was so careful to regulate communication, ostensibly so no one was unduly influenced in the Daily Casts.
“Whistler’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t care much about anything. He did when I first got here—shaking people out of the bunks at all hours of the night for extra training sessions, making sure everyone was getting the right NUs and patched up at Medical. He and Lieutenant Kava were like our parents and got us near the top of the rankings . . .”
I tried not thinking about how sweaty my hands were, or how good she was making the ship’s recycled air smell, or how it felt like there were bombs going off one after another in my chest. My voice only sounded a little shaky when I asked, “So what happened?”
“They got divorced. Whistler was already seriously depressed, so when Zeroes started going around, he was a buyer. High-functioning at first, but it still infuriated Kava who, funny enough, is the biggest Zero fiend of them all now.”
“Why was Whistler depressed if things were going so well?”
“It was because things were going so well that he was depressed. What he had to do to make them go well. And then it rubbed off on the rest of the block.”
“You don’t seem depressed.”
“Poor odds don’t matter if you’ve got a good enough reason to roll.”
I took a deep breath.
“This part’s great,” Eve said, resting her head on my shoulder, sending a jolt corkscrewing through me. I felt like I was outside on the asteroid again, floating in zero-G, terrified, yet floored by how beautiful things could be. Floored that I was still here after coming so close to not. “Just when you think the song’s going to do one thing—it pretends to go where you least expect it to, but then it totally does—”
“That one thing,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Are you surprised now?” I asked.
“Only a little,” she said, taking her head off my shoulder.
And then we kissed. An agonizing kiss. A kiss that made me want to cry, because I hadn’t known it was possible to feel something like this. Careful yet urgent and cascading; the kind of moment you wanted to slow down, stretch out, and fit yourself inside forever. But even as she reacted, and then reacted to my reactions, I couldn’t quite believe it. Why would she care about me? I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I was so lost, so beat up and emptied out. So rudderless that holding on to me seemed like the stupidest thing anyone could do. It was only when she brought her hand to my face and held it there that what was happening, and how much was still possible, sank in.
“Some might say this is irresponsible,” she said, breaking away from me slightly. “Starting a terminal relationship.”
“You’re only a few months away from the cure.”
“Yeah . . .”
“And it’s my job to shave a couple off, remember?” I said.
“I remember.”
“And you just said it yourself: It’s not the odds; it’s t
he reason.”
We kissed again, and all the regret and fear and powerlessness dissolved on contact. It made the breathing I’d done before feel plastic and cold because now it was wrapped up in something impossible, something that made everything more real—a shift in matter that somehow started to unknot everything that was wrong inside of me.
“Do you hear that?” asked Eve, breaking away again.
“What?”
“Voices. They’re coming from . . .”
“It’s just the song.”
“No,” she said, and turned to the control console.
“I must’ve powered up the comm array when I put the music on and it’s been scanning bands,” I said, coming in from behind and shutting off the track.
“—— —— —- ——- —- ———- —- ————- ——- SOS —- —— ———— colony ——— ca—- -ra— ——, —— ———— ————— Mars. Pr———- kind ——- ——————— — ——— ————- danger. ——- tha- ———————- the freight— ———————— antid—— —- —- —— ———- all frequency bands ——— ———.”
“Can you make that out?”
“Not really.”
“—— —— —- ——- —- ———- —- ————- ——- SOS —- —— ———— colony ——— ca—- -ra— ——, —— ———— ————— Mars. Pr———- kind ——- ——————— — ——— ————- danger. ——- tha- ———————- the freight— ———————— antid—— —- —- —— ————- all frequency bands ——— ———.”
“Probably a recording that’s being sent out on a loop. Some kind of an SOS, by the sound of it,” Eve said.
“From where?” I asked.
“Hard to say, with all the nebula interference.”
The loop started again and she closed her eyes to listen more intently. “You heard the word ‘colony’ or ‘colonists’ or something like that, right?”
I nodded.
“But there’s no colony anywhere around here. Not even in any neighboring systems.”
Lakes of Mars Page 22
