Mom must be a really good boss, because almost everyone immediately heads back to their posts.
“I’m nonessential,” I say. “Probably.”
“I’m essential here,” Paul answers. Which is no doubt true, but he still sounds arrogant as hell. But then he turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Get out of here while you can. Save this Marguerite. Save yourself.”
As much as I’d like to be on an escape vessel right now—which is a whole lot—I don’t know if I can leave with my parents and Paul still aboard. Would this world’s Marguerite evacuate and leave them behind? Somehow I doubt it.
To Paul I only say, “Go. See if you can figure out what they need you to do.”
He runs. While he has no memory of what to do in this situation, maybe his genius brain has a chance to figure it out. Or maybe his reminder will lose power soon and let this universe’s Paul back in, just in time to do his job.
For me, the path is even more uncertain. I’m not sure whether to escape or remain and be useful, but the fact is, I don’t even know what to do to make either one of those things happen. Finally I keep running in the direction Paul and I had chosen, hoping I’ll see a new flow of traffic, figure out where it’s going, and be able to decide.
I turn the corner and there’s Mom, frantically working on a computer panel. They must have rerouted primary controls to her nearest interface. Even as she types at supersonic speed, she spies me from the corner of her eye. “What are you still doing here?”
“I don’t want to leave you,” I say, which is the truth. Whatever she orders me to do next, though, I’ll do. As much as I hate the idea of leaving the others, I came here to save this Marguerite, not to put her in even greater danger.
But Mom nods toward a nearby console. “Handle Earth communications. You should be able to manage it.”
Oh, crap. I go to the console and poke experimentally at the interface. To my surprise, this actually looks fairly simple. Like figuring out how a tPhone works—you go from clueless to proficient within a few minutes. It only takes a few strokes of my fingers to send the right calls to engineering, to ops, to commander_astraeus (a. k. a. Mom). Having a task to perform makes me feel stronger.
As Mom continues to work, she says, “I have to ask you something.”
Is this really a great time for a mother-daughter chat? “Uh, sure.”
“Yesterday, when you were in the venting apparatus—did you do this?”
My gut sinks. “I don’t remember doing it,” I say honestly. “But I think I must have.”
“Marguerite.” I’ve never heard her say my name like that, so pained and so lost.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should never have been here.” I should have figured out how to stop Triad by now. If I had, your world wouldn’t be in danger. This space station would be safe. But I messed everything up. Oh, God, Mom, I’m so sorry.
Sirens continue blaring. My mother continues typing. After a couple of seconds, she answers, “You told us you needed to be watched. You tried to warn us that you weren’t well. You’re not to blame.”
Hearing Mom take the responsibility for Wicked’s plotting and my mistakes is too much. I want to argue with her, but this is when the gravity goes out.
In the movies it always looks like this magical moment straight out of Disney’s Peter Pan—you can fly, you can fly! Astronauts grin and do somersaults like being in zero-G is the most fun humanly possible. To me, it feels like I’ve just been thrown from a spinning swing—queasy, disoriented, too dizzy to function. Only the dark ceiling with its red flashing lights remains as any hint of what “up” might be. My stomach rebels, sending fresh waves of nausea through my gut.
Mom’s feet are now floating above her head, but she just grabs a cable from her belt, hooks it onto one of those brackets on the wall, and keeps typing. Does my jumpsuit belt have one of those? Yes, and now I’m reminded that the small brackets are everywhere. I clip on and continue working with my screen, routing the communications from Earth as fast as I can.
Then my screen blinks with a new message, one I haven’t seen before: Mission Control General Admin to Astraeus Comms. If comms means communications, this call must actually be for me. I double-tap the screen, which seems to be the way to answer—
—and my busy computer screen is replaced with the image of Wyatt Conley’s face.
This is who we’re relying on to save us? We’re all dead.
Conley says, “Comms, this is Mission Control. We haven’t been able to raise Kovalenka. Was she injured in the original malfunction? Over.”
“She’s kind of busy right now! We have a crisis going on, in case you hadn’t noticed. Uh, over.”
Conley’s sigh of frustration is audible in outer space. “We need an official report.”
“No, you need a working space station and astronauts who are alive!”
My answer is half bluff, but it actually gets through to him. “Can you patch any system controls back down to Houston? We could lift some of the load from you guys.”
I have no idea whether or not that would work. But apparently my mother can hear him. Over her shoulder she calls, “I’ll reroute atmospheric controls. If they can keep those stabilized while I seal off the vents, we have a chance.”
“Did you hear that?” I say to the Conley on my screen, and he nods.
This Wyatt Conley isn’t the enemy. He’s using his genius in a better way here. At least, I have to hope so.
The scene within the Astraeus’s corridors has turned into a Salvador Dali canvas. Drops of dark fluid, probably coffee, float in perfect spheres. A sneaker drifts along close to the floor, laces trailing behind. My hair coils and bobs around me like I’m wearing my own personal storm cloud. Voices shouting in alarm rise in pitch, and I instinctively tense even before I hear my mother swear in Russian.
What happens next feels and looks like the station gets shoved out from under us. I hit the far wall; Mom’s face mashes against her screen. A low vibration ripples through the very framework of the Astraeus, and if we’re going to die, it will happen any second.
But I keep breathing. After a few endless seconds, the vibration stops. My mother stares at her interface, then sighs heavily in both relief and remorse. “We lost the primary solar generator. But we preserved atmospheric systems and backup power. That gives us a chance to fully evacuate and potentially salvage.” She turns to me, her eyes red with unshed tears. “Patch Houston through. I must personally report the loss of the Astraeus.”