“I get that. I know that. I just—” She cut herself off. Dr. Darzi waited as the silence became too much for Catherine to cope with. Catherine started again. “Ever since then, he wants me to take on more of a spokesperson role, deal with more media, make more appearances talking about the Sagittarius program.”
“You’re the logical choice to be the face of it to the public, especially since the launch.”
“But I’m not,” Catherine argued. “I’m a fucking mess. Look at me. My marriage has fallen apart, my kid isn’t talking to me…”
“Was that why you came to work drunk?” Although her tone was soft, the words were harsh, painful to hear. “Were you looking to get fired?”
“What? No. No, I just…” It was on Catherine’s lips to tell her about the violent impulses, the voices. But she knew it was too much, too far.
“You just what?”
At first, Catherine was determined to sit in silence and not answer the question. And she tried. She really tried. But Dr. Darzi was better at this game than she was. It was her job, after all. “I’m having nightmares,” Catherine finally said. “About my crew. They’re so overwhelming sometimes, they’re almost real. Could they be memories?”
“They may be. Or they may be ordinary nightmares.” She leaned forward. “But what I’m hearing is a woman who feels desperately out of control. You’re still trying to focus on the past and the present at the same time. No human being has ever experienced a trauma exactly like yours, Catherine. Survivor’s guilt would probably be one of the best outcomes we could expect in such a situation.”
Catherine lowered her head to her hands. “But what do I do?”
“Let it go. That’s what we’re working on here, you and I. Catherine, I’ve said it before, but you need to focus on your life here and now. Today is what you can control. That’s all.” When Catherine didn’t respond, Dr. Darzi continued. “Listen, I know. It’s easier to worry about what happened in the past. You’re going to be much happier if you focus on rebuilding your life now, fixing your relationship with Aimee, getting back on an even keel.”
It sounded so reasonable, but why did it feel so wrong? “But to fix things with Aimee, I do have to look back. I never should have hit her.”
Dr. Darzi waited to see if Catherine would say anything else, then asked, “So when you’ve made a mistake with someone in the past, what have you done?”
“You’re telling me I need to apologize to her. I know I do.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“She’s not answering my calls. If she won’t talk to me then what do I do?”
“You keep trying. You give her time and try again.” They went on to talk about some possible methods she could use to approach Aimee, how best to apologize.
As they were wrapping up, Catherine couldn’t help it. She asked again. “If the memories are coming back, how do I tell what’s true and what isn’t?”
“You don’t.” Dr. Darzi stood, and Catherine stood with her. “Catherine, you’re in a very dangerous place. There’s no benefit to going down that path. If you don’t believe me, think about Iris Addy. She couldn’t let things go either. Travel through ERB Prime has side effects. We know that. You don’t want to end up like Commander Addy. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
It was a warning, a stern one. Catherine couldn’t tell if Dr. Darzi was telling her that she would lose her place at NASA if she pushed, or if she… went mad, or whatever it was that happened to Addy.
Either way, the message was clear. If she let things go, she’d have all the help she needed to move forward. If she didn’t let things go, she was on her own.
Sagittarius I Mission
DAY 1137, DAY OF THE EVENT
TRAPPIST-1F, TWILIGHT LANDING AREA HABITAT
They were on their own.
Tom had been working on the comm system for three days. He said he couldn’t fix it, but maybe he just didn’t want to fix it. That was the problem, wasn’t it? They had no way of knowing if he was actually trying.
The irony wasn’t lost on Catherine. Tom was out and about in the ship—albeit under constant supervision—while she was trapped in quarantine, and would be for another week. She spent her time cataloging some of the planet’s biological samples that Claire provided, but God was she bored.
The rest of the crew came to visit her regularly, except for Tom. Catherine suspected they had some sort of visiting schedule set up, but the only pattern she’d spotted was that she never had a meal alone.
“I feel like it’s my fault you’re in there,” Claire was saying, leaning against the glass between them. She’d come to visit for lunch. “If I’d been paying closer attention, the wreck might not have been as bad.”
“Stop that,” Catherine said. “It could have just as easily been you in here. I just got the short straw.” She leaned forward and glanced out the window to see if anyone else was around. No one was. “How’s it going, really?” she asked. “How bad is it?”
Claire sighed and put down her fork. “It’s pretty bad. Izzy and Richie want us to abort and go back, but Ava refuses to do that until either we hear from NASA or things are too untenable to continue here. And Tom is…” She shook her head. “Every time we let him out he’s like a kicked puppy. Perpetually guilty-looking, trying to be friendly with everybody.”
“But he’s still not fixing the comms.”
“Says he can’t. He says there’s nothing wrong with them, just that the signal can’t reach Earth from here.”
“But we were sending data before…”
“And we never got a response,” Claire said. “We have no way of knowing if anything got through then, and now we can’t even try.”
Catherine studied her plate. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe. I mean, we were having communication problems before, but maybe that was him, too… And why would he want to help us, when all Ava is going to do is rat him out to NASA first thing?”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” She couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was her fault, that somehow what happened with Tom had… unbalanced him.
Claire stiffened suddenly, then lifted her head, sniffing the air. “Is that smoke?”
“I don’t smell it.” But Catherine wouldn’t. The air she was breathing was recirculating through her room without ever touching the air outside the quarantine cell. Still, just the mention of smoke was enough to send a chill through her. Despite all the precautions, despite all the safety lessons learned at the expense of other astronauts’ lives, fire in an enclosed area was still one of everyone’s greatest fears.
Claire stood up. “I’m going to go try to track it down.”
“Be careful.”
“I will. Wait here. I’ll sound the alarm if you need to get out. Might want to suit up, just in case.” Claire hurried off.
It might be nothing. It was probably nothing. But Catherine started the arduous process of climbing into her decontamination suit anyway.
She was grateful that she glanced at the clock before Claire left, because five minutes felt like twenty. And it was starting to look hazy outside her window.
Six minutes. Hazier still.
Catherine thumbed the comm on her suit and set the channel to broadcast over the entire Habitat. “Guys? What’s going on?”
Six and a half minutes. Nothing.
“Ava? Claire? Somebody?”
The corridor was actually smoky now. She was heading for the air lock leading out of quarantine when a voice sounded in her ear over the comm.
“It’s all right, Catherine. Everything’s fine.” Tom sounded totally calm. The only way he could speak to her directly through her helmet rather than over the overhead speaker was if he was in the command center still, where he’d been working all morning.