An hour later, and I’ve got my bulky spacesuit on and am standing by my airlock.
“I have to apologize,” OS explains. “I thought that our lack of communication with Earth was because of the solar storm, but there was actually a faulty sensor that was telling me there was a solar storm. That explains why I was finding the flare-ups so difficult to model.”
“So we potentially have two fixes to do out there,” I say, “the sensor and the antenna.”
“Kodiak and I discussed which to prioritize,” OS says. “Without the sensor, I can’t warn you if there’s a radiation storm incoming and you need to shelter. Reestablishing mission control comms is important too, obviously, but comes second to keeping you alive.”
Bulky and unrecognizable in his suit, Kodiak clips and unclips his lines to go partway down the ship, unfastening and replacing a component on the hull.
I stand at the ready while he returns to his airlock. The ship shudders as his outside door thuds closed and repressurizes.
I wait for OS to say something, but there’s no word from Kodiak’s part of the ship.
“OS, report on the sensor. Is it online?”
The silence hangs and stretches.
“OS, report now.”
Then I have my answer: a blaring alarm. Warning lights strobe red.
“I’m overriding the dividing door,” OS says. “Ambrose, make your way directly to theAurora. Kodiak, guide Ambrose to your radiation shelter. You will both enter immediately.”
“Radiation, oh!” I say sensibly as I race through my quarters, my bulky spacesuit knocking over tablets and food pouches and chairs as I plunge along. Part of me wants to take the suit off so I can move more quickly, but it has substantial shielding against radiation, so it’s probably best I keep it on.
The orange portal is open.
I step through, heading into the ship’s zero-g center. I hurl myself up rungs until my legs and arms become lightenough to float, then after I launch off I soar through the middle space, slowing as I reach the center before speeding up again. I punch the walls, trying to turn myself around so that I’ll fall toward the far side feetfirst, but I’ve only just gotten myself reversed when my float becomes a plummet. I reach for the rungs, but I can’t see much because of the stupid helmet—my hands pass through empty space as I dive harder and harder, dropping the last feet in full free fall, my legs crumpling under me when I hit bottom. The suit absorbs a lot of the force of the impact, but I still gasp when I strike the floor heavily on my shoulder and helmet. I’m disoriented and flailing, and then hands are on my sleeves and I lumber through space, guided by Kodiak. He slaps open my visor, and I gulp in moist air. “Out of your suit,” his voice commands, then the helmet is off and the heavy zipper is being tugged down and my sweaty body slips out, half caught in Kodiak’s arms and half sliding along the floor. There’s a body of water, strangely enough, a pool in outer space, and Kodiak is tugging me into it. The surface flashes red in the strobing emergency lights, waving into purples and blacks as Kodiak steps in. His suit is instantly soaked, sticking to his legs and waist, and I clutch for it as I tumble in beside him. I swim freely, feet finding no bottom, as Kodiak pulls a set of breathers from the wall. Treading water all the while, he slams the mask over my face, the hard polycarb cutting my skin, then cranks the oxygen on.I fix the breather over my face as I watch him do the same with his own mask, before diving under the strobing red water. I follow him into the watery dark.
Down and down into the impossible water, cold as a mountain lake. At the bottom of the pool I reach the warmth of Kodiak. I curl into it, his body solid as an anchor in the darkness.
“What is going on?” I try to scream, but the words are sucked away into the breather.
We huddle at the bottom, surrounded by darkness except for the red waves above us. I can hear nothing but the noisy respirator, can feel nothing but cloth and warm flesh pressing into me.
This is all totally out of my control, and it’s flipping me out. I count my breaths so I can keep the mask on my face and my body at the bottom of the water when all my urges are to get out of this pool, to run out of the spaceship and into some sandy sunshine beyond, sandy sunshine that I know is not there. Kodiak and OS clearly have a reason to have taken us down here. I have to trust them. One, two, three. Breathe, Ambrose. Let Kodiak be in control.
At least I figure out why we’re underwater. Our atmosphere on Earth protects us because of its sheer volume—HZE particles have to pass through so many miles of air that they slow to non-deadly speeds before they reach the human body. Hydrogen molecules are efficient atblocking radiation, and water of course has plenty of them. If Kodiak got the sensor back online, and the sensor immediately told us that we were being bombarded by solar radiation, then we were sent right away into our shelter—which is at the bottom of the ship’s water supply. I didn’t know about that contingency, because the water reservoir is on Kodiak’s half of theCoordinated Endeavorand Kodiak has more or less refused to speak to me.
We could have died from this lack of communication. Whatever’s happening between Fédération and Dimokratía, our separation must end.
Kodiak’s ass tenses and relaxes as he adjusts next to me. Will this radiation storm last an hour? Two? Will it last days?
I press my shivering body even closer to Kodiak’s. He reaches an arm around, pinions my knee closer to his. Even now, are some of my cells becoming tumors, growing and dividing? Are Kodiak’s? There’s a very good chance that we’ll die on the ship. We might have already begun our dying.
Kodiak’s fingers, warm in the clammy water, reach over my sleeve. He pulls the fabric back so my skin is bare. He’s going to hold my hand. No, he’s checking my pulse.
He presses against the vein that runs along the insideof my wrist until, apparently satisfied, he sits back. I edge over so that I’m beside him again, our breathers bumping awkwardly as he eases close to me. I hold the weight of his hand in my lap as I work down the sleeve of his suit, press my forefinger into the flesh that throbs with hot blood. His wrist is thicker than mine.
During the battle of Juba, Dimokratía deployed an experimental weapon that released an aerosolized hot sludge that encased bodies in carbon. The world media was full of images of soldiers fossilized while holding each other, like in Pompeii. I imagine Kodiak and me immortalized this way, two boys who don’t know each other, taking each other’s pulse.
The red strobing stops. The water’s surface returns to ink.
Kodiak strokes to the surface. I watch his feet flutter the water, then I push off the floor and swim after him, the currents from his thrashing legs buffeting my face.
At the top, I hear Kodiak call something out in Dimokratía while he treads. He switches to Fédération when I emerge. “Is it safe, OS? Is the radiation over?”
“Yes,” OS reports in my mother’s voice. “The storm has passed. I apologize for the lack of warning about this crisis. My radiation sensors were giving faulty readings, and the moment you fixed them, Kodiak, was the moment I realizedthat the radiation levels were above acceptable limits.”
