I take those few minutes to walk into the cockpit. Roderick is sitting in what I consider to be my seat—the pilot’s chair—and is already monitoring the readouts. In addition to the skip’s cameras, some suit monitors send information directly to the skip itself. And both suits send heart rates and breathing patterns—or will so long as nothing interferes with the signal.
I plug Karl’s handheld into one small screen but only look at it to make sure the information is coming to me. Grainy flat images, mostly of the line, appear before me.
Then I look up. Roderick still has the portals opaqued.
“Let’s watch this in real time,” I say.
He doesn’t look up from the instrumentation. “I don’t like staring at interior station walls when I’m on a skip.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “We have a team out there. We need our eyes as well as our equipment. We need every advantage we can get.”
I shudder to think he’s run dives in the habitats on instruments only, and make a mental note to tell Karl that night. It should be a requirement for each dive that the pilot watches from the cockpit. The pilot won’t be able to see inside some of the spaces, but he will be able to see if there’s a problem between the lead and the skip itself.
“Karl says I’m supposed to make the decisions,” Roderick says.
“Well, I have twenty years of dive experience, and let me tell you, only amateurs let their people out of a ship on instrument only.”
He winces, then flattens his hand against the control panel. With a hum, all of the windows become visible.
Usually being in the skip with the windows clear feels like you’re inside a piece of black glass moving through open space. Right now, it seems like we’ve crashed into a junkyard. A blown wall opens to space on our left side. Beneath us, the habitat’s floor is in shreds. Above us is the sturdy floor of the next level, and to our right is the line, leading to the Room’s door.
Karl’s already halfway down the lead. Mikk is hurrying to catch up.
I look at their breathing and heart rates. They’re in the normal range. But it’s not like Karl to move that fast.
I touch the communication panel. “You seeing something?”
“There’s not a lot between the skip and the door, Boss.” There’s laughter in Karl’s voice, as if he expected me to ask this question. “Relax.”
I take my hand off the panel. Roderick is glaring at me, but in his expression I can see resignation. He knows that I’m going to run this skip while Karl’s gone.
Roderick also knows he has no recourse. Even when Karl returns, telling on me won’t make any difference. Karl won’t ban me from these missions. If he does, I’ll declare this entire trip a bust and leave. Then I’ll return on my own or with a new team and dive it all again.
Karl reaches the door and tugs on the lead, checking its hold. It seems to be fine. Mikk arrives a moment later. His feet are curled beneath him, but they could just as easily brush against the floor.
This is the part of Mikk’s dive that I would hate—floating there, waiting for Karl to do the actual work. For the first time since Karl changed our plans, I’m happy to be in the skip. At least I can pace here.
Karl runs a gloved hand along the door’s edge. The cameras on his wrist light up and show what we saw on our preliminary dive—that the edges of this door are pockmarked, not from time or debris, but from people trying to break in. The metal is smoother here than anywhere else, as if countless people have run their gloved hands along the edges in the past.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” my mother asks me through her suit. She turns her head toward me just a little, and I can see the outlines of her face through her headpiece. Behind her something hums.
Sweat has formed on my forehead. Goddamn Karl, he’s right. I would have gotten lost in my own head, in my own memories, if I had gone in alone on this first trip.
I shake my head as if I can free it from the past, then settle into the copilot’s chair.
Karl pans the door, making sure nothing has changed since the last time we looked at it. Then his gloved hand slips down to the latch.
My breath catches as the door opens. The lights on his suit flare. He turns toward us, waves again, and then goes inside.
For a moment, I can see him outlined against the Room’s darkness. Then he propels himself deeper and he is no longer visible through the clear windows of the skip.
The monitors show that his heart rate is slightly elevated. His breathing is rapid, but not enough to cut the dive short. This is the kind of breathing that comes from excitement and eagerness, not from panic or the gids.
“My God,” he says. “This place is beautiful.”
“It’s even prettier inside,” my mother says. Her voice sounds very far away. The lights blink against her suit, making her seem like she’s covered in bright paint—all primary colors.
“You should see this,” he says.
The cameras have fuzzed. We’re not getting any visuals at all. The audio is faint.
“I don’t like this,” Roderick says as the instruments slowly fail.
I knew it would happen. Maybe I remembered something—or something in my subconscious recalled how faint my mother’s voice had become. But I had known.
I had warned Karl and he said he was prepared.
But I’m cold. I’m sitting in the copilot’s chair with my arms wrapped around my torso, feeling terrified.
My father said the device worked.
But what if it fails like the cameras are failing?
Riya says a dozen others went in and came out. She showed me evidence.
Showed us evidence.
Karl made this choice.
“I don’t like this at all.” Roderick’s hands are flying across the board, trying to bring up the readings. I glance at the handheld screen. The image is still there, faint and reassuring. Just a blur in all the fuzz.
Karl is moving forward.
But I know better than to tell Roderick everything will be all right. I glance at Mikk through the clear porthole.
He’s holding the lead and waiting, just like he’s supposed to. And good man that he is, he isn’t even peering in the door.
He’s following orders to the letter.
Static, a buzz, and a harmonic. A voice? I can’t tell. Roderick is still working the instrument panel, and I’m staring through the window at the door beyond.
All I see is blackness.
Karl is probably seeing lights. Hearing voices in harmony. Listening to the blend.
I hope the device protects him.
My arms tighten. My stomach aches. I feel ill.
I catch myself about to curse Karl for being right about my reactions. But I’m superstitious. I can’t curse him. Not now.
Not while we’re waiting for him to come out of that Room.
TWENTY-TWO
We wait for an hour. Then an hour and a half.
Then two.
At two hours ten minutes, Mikk asks, “Should I reel him in?”
We haven’t had any contact. We don’t have any readings.
Karl is the kind of diver who never wastes a second, the kind who is always on time.
“How much oxygen does he have without the refills?” I ask Roderick.
“Five, maybe six hours, so long as he’s breathing right. He didn’t think he needed the larger storage, since the skip was so close.”
I would have made the same judgment. My suit can handle two weights of oxygen as well. The backups are in case the internal supply gets compromised somehow, not as supplements to it.
“You want to wait another hour?” Roderick asks. No more pretense at being in charge. We both know I’m the one qualified to make the right decisions.