Or maybe it was just a habit now. Maybe the weight of history had ground him down because he didn’t know how to shrug it off. Didn’t know that he would choose to, even if he had been able. Two ways of saying the same thing.
“Is this going to be a one-shot,” Alex asked from the flight deck, “or are we expecting we’ll want to chew the fat some once you’re done?”
“I don’t understand the question,” Jim said.
“If we’re just popping you out to work with Elvi’s crew, I’ll park us close. If you think we’re going to want to be in the same room, you can pop out the cargo lock, and I’ll put the bridge back up.”
Before he could answer, Naomi did. “Put the bridge up. It will be good for the other ships to see it, even if we don’t use it.”
“Copy that,” Alex said. “I’m taking us in.”
Jim unstrapped and headed for the cargo airlock.
Teresa was already there. She was wearing a vac suit, testing the seals at the boot and glove and the charge on the mag boots. Jim paused and steadied himself as the ship drifted under him. Her hair was back and tucked into a tight cap that emphasized the shape of her eyes and the roughness of her skin. She lifted her chin in a gesture that might have been a greeting or defiance or both.
“Going somewhere?”
“If my father’s there, you’ll want me there.”
Jim shook his head. “If we find something, I will let you know. And if we need you, I’ll get you. I promise.”
The girl shook her head, left then right, no more than a few millimeters. Her expression was hard. “It’s my dad,” she said.
Jim felt a wave of emotions that rose and fell in him in seconds. Frustration, sorrow, guilt, fear. And, almost randomly, a deep nostalgia. He remembered being in school and coming home to find Father Anton in the back of the house building a firepit. It had been a moment of no significance. He hadn’t thought about it in years, and then there it was, as present and powerful and filled with love as if it had happened a moment before. It’s my dad.
“You understand the risks?” Jim asked.
“No, I don’t,” Teresa said. “Do you?”
Jim shrugged. “Make sure you check your helmet seals.”
When they were ready to go, he cycled the cargo airlock. The air pumped out, and as it grew thinner, the sound in his suit changed, growing softer the way it always did. Leaving him feeling more isolated, or more aware of his isolation. His breath, the gentle whir of the fans, the creaking of the suit, it all came to fill more of his senses. It felt almost like falling asleep. Then the vibrations came through the deck as the outer doors unlatched, and the cargo bay opened. Light spilled through the cracks like it never had before, and it took him a few seconds to understand why it was strange. Normally, the light that a ship like theirs opened to was worklights or a star—strong, harsh, and directional. The milk-light that diffused into the hold now came from every direction. It was soft and shadowless as a hazy afternoon on Earth. Like a child’s simplistic imagination of heaven.
The station rolled under them, a metallic sphere five klicks in diameter. Too big for a ship, too small for a planet, too smooth and regular for an asteroid. And on its glowing blue surface, a dot like a grain of rice with Elvi’s team barely more than dust motes beside it.
Jim and Teresa guided the suit thrusters in toward the group, and the scale of the ship became clearer by having human figures beside it. It was tiny. The whole thing would almost have fit in the cargo hold they’d just left. Smooth as skin and seamlessly curved, it seemed more organic than constructed. One side was open, the flesh of the egg-shape peeled back layer after layer after layer until the hole was big enough for someone to step through.
One of the forms moving around it broke off and came toward him and Teresa. Elvi’s face swam up from the other side of the visor like he was looking at her under the surface of a still lake. Her voice over the radio was staticky and distant, given how close she was physically.
“It’s a match to the artifacts on Laconia,” she said. “It must use the same inertialess movement that Eros did back in the day, because nothing on it looks like a thruster. We can’t tell how long it’s been here from the temperature because—” She gestured at the thousand bright gates around them.
“Are you sure it was him?” Teresa asked.
“Provable? No. Silly to assume anything different? Yes. At this point I’d need evidence that it wasn’t Duarte before I’d entertain it seriously. I hear hoofbeats, I’m still thinking horses at this point.”