Mom’s voice blasts through my helmet at top volume, snapping me back into the present like a verbal tether line.
“Talk to me, Joanna.”
“Here.” I gasp. “I’m—”
“You’re here,” she says, lowering the volume a little but keeping her voice sharp. “You’re here, now. Be here. Now. In your suit. Next to me.”
“I’m here,” I say. But my body isn’t convinced. It’s still feeling the memory, not the reality. No matter what I say, what I see, what I know, it feels like I’m still tumbling through the dark. Still alone. No. Not alone. Teddy is there, dying just beyond my reach.
I stumble back, skittering across the airlock and pressing my body against the sealed hatch that leads back into the ship.
Mom’s sigh soaks through my helmet, drenching me in shame.
We don’t have time for this.
I need to get over myself and get out there. My species is depending on it. And so is my mom.
But I can’t move.
“Situation report?” Grandpa rumbles through the open comms feed.
“It’s just a temporary delay, Dad,” Mom says. “This is the first time Jo’s done EVA since the accident. She needs a minute to get her head around it.”
Oh good, so now I’m not just disappointing my mother and putting my whole species in danger. I’m disappointing Grandpa, too.
Mom comes to stand in front of me. Helmet to helmet, like she’s looking into my eyes, though all I can see is the octagonal camera lenses that tile over her helmet.
“I wish you were still a little girl,” Mom says. “If you were, I could leave you here, safe and sound on the shuttle. But you aren’t a child anymore. And I need you. I need the clever, rule-breaking young woman who figured out the ISA’s darkest secret. I need the brave young woman who got herself and her friends out of an extraterrestrial city and back to camp in time to stop us from making a catastrophic mistake. I need the daring young woman who faced off with an extraterrestrial king to stop him from destroying his own world. I need you.”
I know what she’s trying to do, but those memories are just memories. Some of them are pretty screwed-up memories. But they aren’t enshrined by trauma. Not like the accident.
“What you’re afraid of isn’t out there, Jo,” Mom says. She gently taps my helmet. “It’s in here. The only way to escape it is to jump. Trust yourself, not the fear.”
I want to. I need to. I’m not sure I can.
I take a step toward the airlock anyway. Then another. And another.
I grab the doorframe. The ship hums under my fingers. The gentle buzz of reality coats the burning memory.
I breathe.
Then I look outside.
The endless glitter swims in my vision as vertigo slams into me again. My body jerks away, but Mom’s hand is planted on the small of my back this time, holding me in place.
“Just do it, Jo,” she says. “Jump. Once you’re out, it’ll pass.”
I believe her.
I tighten my grip on the airlock. I bend my knees. I tense my belly. Then, just as my toes start to push off the hatch, a suited figure bursts over the golden horizon of the Prairie and surfs down the great disk like a little kid sledding a big hill.
“What the—”
“You stay right where you are, Joanna,” Grandpa’s voice on the comms feed blows through Mom’s expletive. “We’ve got this.”
“Dad!” Mom protests. “You’re less than twenty-four hours out of inso and you’ve got high blood pressure.”
“And I’m seventy-four,” he adds, chuckling.
“Exactly,” Mom snaps. “You are not cleared for EVA!”
“So we’d better get this done quick, eh?” Grandpa counters. “My heart and the future of the human race are hanging in the balance.”
Mom’s sigh is halfway to a growl. She tugs me back into the airlock. “Since he’s out, we might as well do the repair and leave you to pilot Trailblazer,” she says.
“It’s not safe to just let your shuttle drift on autopilot, anyway,” Grandpa tosses in.
“I know, Dad.” Mom grinds the words between her teeth. A red blinking light pops up in the bottom corner of my screen, indicating a private feed has been opened.
“Don’t worry, Jo,” Mom says, for my ears only. “We’ll be fine. And Dad’s right, it’ll be good to have you at the helm here. You’ll be our spotter. When we’re done, I’ll follow him back into the Prairie and you can dock the Trailblazer with her and join us, okay?”
“No, Mom, I . . . Yeah,” I say, the protest slipping away before I can get it out. “Okay.”
Then she hurls herself out of the ship.
Two
My gaze clings to Mom as she hurtles through the void. Her form is perfect, arms and legs tight against her body like a diver plunging into the vast, golden sea of the Prairie.
I hold my breath until she says, “Extending second tether . . . contact!”
That’s step one. Mom is tethered to the Prairie and the Trailblazer now.
A few seconds later she says, “Magnetizing.”
Then I hear the thunk of her boots snapping down to the big ship’s hull.
She made it.
“Releasing, Trailblazer,” she says. “You can close the doors now, Jo.”
I pull the hatch closed and seal it, which takes me straight from agoraphobia to claustrophobia. I don’t want to be out there, but I don’t want to be in here, in this impossibly small airlock, either.
I want to help Mom.
I can’t.
Instead, my seventy-four-year-old grandfather is out there, doing an EVA he isn’t even cleared for because of me. Because I’m too afraid to do it.
“Repressurizing,” the computer informs me. “Please wait.”
I want to scream. My suit feels like it’s shrinking. Suffocating me.
“Atmospheric pressure restored,” the computer announces.
I rip off my helmet and pop the seals on my suit. It doesn’t help. I still feel itchy all over. Hot. It’s like my skin is too small for all the self-loathing stuffed in there along with my uselessly healthy body.
I go back into the main cabin.
It’s already in three-sixty mode, so I watch Mom and Grandpa work while I change back into my regular uniform, dragging the soft gray flight suit up over my body stocking and snapping my regular utility harness into place.
They look so small—just tiny dark specks crawling over the gleaming carapace of the Prairie. I wish I could help them. Then I immediately feel a billion times worse, because I could be helping them. I could be out there right now. I should be. But I can’t.
Mom and Grandpa end up having to extend the sail by hand. Of course. Plan A isn’t a thing on Tau. The job takes hours, but I hardly notice time passing. I just sit there, watching and listening to them talk over the open feed, like if I pay close enough attention, it’ll help them somehow.
I report their progress to Dad hourly. At least he’s stuck on Tau and has an excuse for being a useless observer. Jay and Leela and Chris text me, too. They’re all freaked out and shocked about what happened to Earth. What’s going to happen to Tau.