“I suppose she would. I need to think about this.”
Gwendy takes her hands and squeezes them lightly. “No,” she says. “You don’t.”
49
BACK IN HER QUARTERS, Gwendy sits down at her desk, opens the RECORD app on her phone, and begins talking immediately. There’s no time to waste, the chocolate may start wearing off anytime, but it doesn’t take long to say what she has to say. When she’s finished, she scribbles a quick note. She rubber-bands it to her phone and puts the phone in a manila envelope. She begins to close it, then thinks again and adds something else. She seals it and writes ADESH on the front in big capital letters.
Then she goes back to bed. She falls asleep with two hopes: no more dreams of the monster that calls itself Bobby, and that when she wakes up, her mind will wake up with her.
50
THE CREW MEETING IN the conference room takes place at 0600. Kathy lays the situation out with a crisp conciseness Gwendy couldn’t possibly have matched now that the effects of her late-night chocolate treat are almost gone. They are bright men and they understand. They also understand the solution Gwendy has proposed will save a great deal of trouble, expense, and possible Senate hearings where they will be mercilessly grilled on nationwide TV.
There is only one substantive question and it comes from Reggie Black. “What happens to Winston? Or what remains of him?”
“Vaporized with the rest of the trash before we leave the station,” Sam Drinkwater says, and makes a sucking sound. “Poof. Gone.”
No one has anything to say to that.
When the meeting ends, the crew stands in a kind of receiving line. Each of them hugs Gwendy. Adesh is last. “I’m sorry,” he says as he hugs her. “You’ve been so brave. You don’t deserve this and I am so, so sorry.”
She hugs him back. “I have an envelope for you. My phone is inside, with a message for my father. Would you take it to him?”
“It will be an honor.”
He wipes his eyes, but his tears—emblems of his grief and regard—float in front of his face.
“And I’m going where no woman has gone before, so don’t cry for me, Margentina.” She frowns. “Is that right? Margentina?”
“Absolutely,” Adesh says. “Absolutely right.”
51
0730.
There are airlocks on the MF, one in the outer rim beyond each of the even-numbered spokes, but Gwendy and Kathy will egress from Eagle Heavy, where the air tastes stale and the three crew station levels feel abandoned. Before suiting up, Gwendy pops the chocolate she saved into her mouth.
“Don’t suppose you have another one of those, do you?” Kathy asks.
Gwendy considers, shrugs, and then loosens the drawstring top of the aluminum-quilted bag on the bench beside her. She brings out the button box. It feels dull now, powerless, as if resigned to its fate, but Gwendy doesn’t trust that. She pulls the lever that delivers the chocolates. The cunning little platform slides out, but there’s nothing on it.
“Sorry, Kath. The button box giveth and sometimes it don’t giveth.”
“Roger that. Would have liked to try one, though. Are you good, Gwendy?”
Gwendy nods. She’s very good. With the chocolate onboard, she’s clear as a bell. The woman who had to print RIGHT and LEFT on her gloves is gone, but she’ll be back.
Or maybe not.
“What’s funny?” Kathy asks. “You’re smiling.”
“Nothing.” But because something more seems required, she adds, “Just excited about my first spacewalk.”
Kathy makes no reply, but Gwendy can read her thought: First and last.
“Are you sure the computers in Mission Control won’t register us opening the airlock down here?”
“Positive. These computers are all off until the return. To conserve power.”
They float their way into the airlock, helmets under their arms, and sit on the two benches. The space is tight—all spaces are tight on Heavy—and their knees touch. Gwendy starts to put her helmet on, but Kathy shakes her head. “Not yet. Sixty inhales and exhales first. Prebreathing, remember?”
Gwendy nods. “To purge the nitrogen.”
“Right. Gwendy … are you sure?”
“Yes.” She answers with no hesitation. Everything is in place, the story they will tell later set and agreed to by all hands. Gwendy and Winston weren’t at breakfast, but no one thought that was unusual because they are passengers, supercargo, and have the luxury of sleeping in. No one will start to worry until at least 1000 hours, and by then Kathy will be back onboard the MF. There will be a search. It will be at least 1400 before Sam Drinkwater calls the down-below to tell them the VIPs are missing and may have drifted away while attempting a spacewalk. Terrible accident, God knows why they would have done something so foolish, blah-blah-blah.
Gwendy gets a little woozy from the fast respiration. Kathy tells her that’s normal and will pass by the time they egress Eagle Heavy. After two minutes of breathing, Kathy tells Gwendy it’s time to put on her bucket. “And remember, helmet-to-helmet comm only. No one hears but just us girls. Let me hear your roger.”
“Roger that,” Gwendy says, and dons her bucket. Kathy moves to help her secure it, but Gwendy waves her off, does it herself, and looks for the green light on the little control panel at mouth level. When she sees it, she dons her gloves, secures them, and waits for a second green light. She makes a thumb-and-finger circle to Kathy, who returns the gesture.
Kathy closes the door to Eagle Heavy and the two of them sit waiting for the airlock to depressurize.
“Reading me, Gwendy?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Set your suit temp to maximum hot, then adjust it down.”
“How long will the heat last?”
“In theory as long as your breathable air, just shy of six hours. The heat may actually last longer, but …” Her shrug says the rest: But you won’t feel it.
There’s a belt around Gwendy’s waist with two ordinary high-altitude carabiners attached. She knots the drawstring bag with the button box around one of them. Kathy attaches the buddy cable to the other. They are now tethered together like scuba divers: the instructor and the pupil.
“Ready to EVA?” Kathy asks.
Gwendy makes another thumb-and-forefinger circle. She thinks, Oh yes, very ready. Been waiting for this ever since I first looked through my telescope, over fifty years ago. I just didn’t know it.
“Don’t wait too long to lower your outer visor. Night pass ends in just about seven minutes.”
“Roger.”
Kathy turns the red lever in the center of the airlock’s outer door, then pulls it.
0748.
The airlock opens on the stars.
52
THEY FLOAT INTO SPACE, tethered. Gwendy can hear her own breathing and, through the helmet-to-helmet comm, Kathy’s. Beside them is Eagle Heavy, and she can see where someone from the ground crew has printed GOOD LUCK YOU GUYS on the fuselage in Sharpie. Below them is Earth, blue and cloud-streaked, with a golden nimbus growing on one gorgeous shoulder. Here comes the sun, Gwendy thinks.
Kathy leads them slowly downward, using indented handholds on Heavy’s flank. Near the bottom, these handholds are smudged from the blast of the last rocket bursts, as Kathy lined them up for docking.
On the way down they pass hatches labeled A through E. The last one, Hatch F, is just above the rocket boosters. It’s the only one with a keypad; the others can be opened with a simple socket wrench. Kathy has to duck under a solar panel to get at it. She raises the little plexi-shield over the pad and punches the combination Gwendy has given her. It’s the same one that opened the CLASSIFIED case.