“Well, he’s decided that I’m one of his problems to solve.” Catherine felt the warmth from David’s hands and tried to draw on it. David was trying to fix everything, the way he always did. That was a good thing. Wasn’t it? And he wasn’t wrong. Cal did look at her as if she were a problem, not a person.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about him. Most people around here see him as kind of an oddball. A useful oddball, but an oddball nonetheless.”
She thought about the odd way he conducted himself at meetings and briefings, focused on his own information, and thought of the way Aaron Llewellyn seemed to rely on him. “Not everybody. Everyone working on Sag II takes him pretty seriously.”
“Cath, trust me when I say nobody outside your department takes him seriously. You’ve got Lindholm in your corner, and that’s all that matters. Plus, your psychiatrist, right?”
Catherine remembered how Dr. Darzi pushed for her to let things go. “Yeah. She says I’m fine,” she said, with a trace of irony in her voice.
“Then don’t worry about Cal Morganson. He’s terrible with people. Just ignore him and everything will be fine.”
So many people were telling her that everything was fine. But how could she be fine if she was losing time? How could she be fine if she’d gone to JSC without realizing it?
And how could she be fine not knowing what actually happened to her crewmates?
What if Cal was right? What if she’d gotten everyone killed?
Sagittarius I Mission
DAY 1134, THREE DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT
TRAPPIST-1F, TWILIGHT LANDING AREA HABITAT
Tom was sitting in the command center of the Habitat when Catherine came in. The command center was a small room, made more crowded by all the system monitors and communications equipment. There were intercoms and suit comms, and the long-distance comms, which so far had remained silent. “Oh, hey,” she said.
He made a noncommittal grunt. Since their talk, he’d been friendlier with the rest of the crew, but he still barely said two words to her.
“Still no word from NASA?”
“No. We knew it might be months.” He looked up at her. “Why are you here?”
“Oh, uh. Richie needed a hand with some air-lock alarms.”
Tom stood up. “I’ll get out of your way. Wouldn’t want anyone to gossip about us being alone together.”
“Tom—” But he was already gone. Catherine sighed and sat down, turning her attention to the monitors Richie needed her to watch—and frowned at what she saw. Richie was in one of the air locks, checking the seals after some alarms had gone off.
“Hey, Richie. You got a buddy out there you need to tell me about?” Catherine asked.
“Just me and my shadow. Why?”
“Your shadow’s got a fever then. Thermal monitoring is going bonkers in here.”
“Nah, everything’s fine.”
“That’s weird.” Catherine watched the numbers on the thermal scanner and eyed the outlines on the spectroscopic monitors, the skin on the back of her neck starting to crawl. “I’m getting localized readings of nearly forty-four degrees. Do you not feel that? You should be roasting.”
“Nope, I’m cool as a cucumber. Damn it. The seals are fine out here, and now you’re getting weird readings. Looks like I’ve got two fucked-up monitors to try to fix.” Richie sounded as though he were just waiting for one more thing to go wrong.
“Everything else is green across the board.” Catherine kept her voice neutral. “Are you sure there’s not a hot spot out there?”
“Yeah, there’s nothing.”
Richie was right. He had to be. That much heat couldn’t possibly remain in such a single tight area without dissipating. And a random warm spot in the Habitat wouldn’t have clean, well-defined edges. The monitors were glitchy. The rest was just her imagination.
Later, she caught up with Ava in the corridor, still trying to put it out of her mind. “Are we getting any information through to NASA?”
“Tom said he thought some of our information might be getting through, but we don’t know yet how long the transit time is for sure. The wormhole wreaks havoc on all the calculations. We haven’t received any communications at all from Houston.”
“So we’re on our own out here.” They knew it was a possibility from the start, but it was the worst-case scenario.
Ava looked at her more closely. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just homesick.” Catherine smiled at her faintly. What she saw had spooked her; it would’ve been nice to know they could contact NASA if something went wrong. Not that NASA could do anything at this distance. “Richie and I found a couple of monitoring glitches, too. He can probably give you more information than I can.”
“Ugh, this is what I hate about being the first to use new tech out in the field.” Ava rubbed her forehead. “All right. I’ll make sure it gets reported. Between this and the issues we’ve been having with the oxygenator, I’m tempted to send the testing department a very strongly worded letter.”
The dry humor in Ava’s voice made her laugh. “ ‘Dear Sirs: Why were you not able to replicate working conditions precisely in a location no human had ever seen before?’ ”
Ava grinned at her. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Maybe I’m not being fair.”
Claire came down the corridor, suited up for going out. “Cath, are you ready?”
“Oh shit, I’m running behind. Give me a few minutes and I will be.” She and Claire were going to take the rover out and explore the landscape around the terminator line. They were going to go deeper into the dark side of the planet than they ever had before, and Claire was chomping at the bit to see what changed across the border.
Catherine pushed all her worries aside and went to get suited up.
Claire steered the rover slowly between some of the large rock formations that dotted TRAPPIST-1f’s landscape. With each EVA, the team was venturing farther and farther from the Habitat to gather data and samples. Full dark and full daylight were both too far from the Habitat to reach by rover, but they were going as far in either direction as they could. Catherine had initially volunteered for this EVA because she needed a break. A few hours away from the occasionally tense atmosphere of the Habitat sounded perfect.
The more data they gathered on their current home, the more like Earth it seemed in many ways. After a lot of discussion with Izzy, Ava gave the okay to reduce pressure-suit protocol on EVAs. As a result, Catherine and Claire both wore oxygen masks instead of full pressure suits; although the planet’s atmosphere was breathable, it wasn’t optimal, and there was always the question of potentially harmful microbes. They kept their skin covered, but the lighter suits were much more comfortable in TRAPPIST’s intense heat.
“Man, we really do need to get a botanist up here,” Claire said. “I’m not an expert, but the way the plant life changes as we get closer to the dark side… I feel like I’m watching evolution happen.”
The wonder in Claire’s voice made Catherine a little envious. It wasn’t that things weren’t amazing here. They were. After the constant twilight of the Habitat’s surroundings, to drive deeper into the dark was exciting as hell. But no matter how exciting things were, Catherine was constantly aware that she was responsible for the friction that still lingered among the crew.
“Look over there.” Claire pointed to one of the flatter rocks they were passing, caught in the rover’s ambient light. “See? That lichen is growing in similar patterns to the stuff that’s all over the place on the light side, but… it’s bigger.”