Atmosphere(23)

“It was the last thing Lydia did before she passed out,” Vanessa says.

“Yes, Navigator,” Joan says. “That is our conclusion as well.”

It was Lydia, of all people, who had saved them. Saved her. Vanessa laughs for a moment—the sound has a dark tinge to it, an uncontrolled terror. She knows that if she keeps laughing, it will be exactly like crying. It will take over her body—her horror shaking within her to get out—and she will not stop until it is far too late. She is teetering on the edge of mania, and it is so tempting to give in to it, to lose all touch with what is happening and let her mind leave her.

But she can’t.

“Lydia has the bends,” Vanessa says.

“That is our estimation, yes,” Joan says.

“How long does that give her?”

“She needs treatment within ten hours,” Joan says. “Griff maybe sooner. We cannot be certain due to the internal nature of his injuries, but we are tracking his vitals and we are formulating a plan. We believe it is possible to have you home in as little as three revs.”

“Four and a half hours? Is that even possible?”

“We believe it is. We will begin deorbit as soon as we can.”

Vanessa closes her eyes. “How soon until you have the deorbit plan?’ ”

“Confirming landing sites, back to you ASAP. In the meantime, we ask that you prepare the deorbit checklist and, as you do, that you leave the biomedical sensors on Griff and attach a set to Danes as well, so that we can monitor her vitals from here alongside his.”

“Roger that,” Vanessa says. And then she cannot help herself but to confess. “Houston . . . we . . . we left the hatch open.”

“Copy that,” Joan says. “We already suspected that was how Griff was hit. We are just glad you were not. We need you up there. Back to you soon with our contingency deorbit plan.”

“Copy.”

Vanessa takes in a full deep breath and looks around the ship. An entire crew unconscious or dead.

She is a mission specialist. But she has been begging to be given a chance to pilot this thing for years. And now, ironically, she will finally get what she’s asked for.

She can do this. She has never landed a space shuttle before—not even in a simulation—but she will do it today.

And so, as Mission Control comes up with the plan, Vanessa grabs the deorbit procedure checklist and reads it.

She has to stabilize everything in the orbiter—nothing can be free-floating, all must be strapped down. This usually refers to things like microphones and sleeping bags and binders, the items the crew needs. She had never, until this moment, realized it would ever refer to the crew themselves. She has to strap them in.

She considers the seats in the flight deck. After all, there are four of them. But she needs full use of the flight deck to land.

And so, for Steve and Hank, she settles on the airlock.

She nods, swallowing. A droplet of blood floats past her, and she pulls away. She grabs a Huggies wipe from the stash that has been ripped off the wall. She takes the wipe, opens it fully, and touches the corner of it to the blood droplet as it passes through the cabin. It absorbs into the sheet, gone from the air.

She begins with Steve. She tucks the wipe into the front pocket of his shirt and then grabs his hand. She can’t imagine not talking to him every day. Not calling him when she’s afraid she’s screwed something up. She has always understood that Steve being ten years older than her has allowed her to put more faith in him than he probably ever asked for.

But now, looking at his face, she regrets so sharply that she never told him how much his guidance meant to her. She had just left it for him to glean from her high fives and thank-yous.

“Steve,” she whispers to him. “I have to put you in the airlock, okay?”

Her throat catches as she sees his expressionless face. But there is no time for that. She pulls his body toward hers and swims slowly through the mid-deck.

She pushes him inside the airlock and knows that she will need to shut the inner hatch to keep him from floating back into the mid-deck. Before she does, she wants to tell him that he’s the best commander she ever had. But she knows what he would say to that: I’m the only commander you’ve ever had.

Anyway, it would feel awfully final. It doesn’t need to be like that. She closes the door.

Afterward, she takes Hank and pulls him toward the airlock, the same as she did with Steve. She tells him that his joke earlier about getting home in time to watch M*A*S*H was funny. But she cannot bring herself to reassure him about Donna and Thea. All she can think of is Donna bringing Thea to the Outpost last month, Hank showing his baby girl off the entire night.

Vanessa snaps herself out of it. This is not something she can indulge right now.

When she gets to Lydia, she looks at her face. It is swollen but peaceful, without any of Lydia’s usual consternation. In this one acute moment, Vanessa regrets not trying to understand Lydia better when they were both on Earth. Joan was the only one who had ever really tried, the only one who had ever seen what Lydia was capable of. Joan had tried to tell her. Vanessa sees that now.

Carefully, Vanessa unzips the top of Lydia’s flight suit and applies the sensors for respiration, temperature, and heart rate. She zips it back up and takes Lydia’s hand in hers for a moment. She squeezes. Wordlessly, she pulls Lydia to the flight deck and puts her in the chair behind the commander’s seat. She buckles her in.