He points at Titan and makes the emphatic X again.
Titan . . . isn’t there?
His arms still crossed, Kodiak faces up and down the ship.
The ship itself doesn’t exist?
I might not know what he’s trying to communicate, but I do know that the dread is back, mixed equally with fear. Blood pounds loudly through my veins. “Kodiak,” Isay, even though he can’t hear me, “just come back inside. Right now. Do you hear me? Stop what you’re doing andcome back in.”
I put my hands to my heart, and then gesture to the airlock entrance. Again and again.
Finally, Kodiak nods. He starts moving too quickly, and his feet miss the rungs. His legs kick through empty space, then manage to catch the ladder. Kodiak pauses before continuing toward the airlock, more carefully this time. He keeps one hand always gripping the ship, taking no chances despite the backup tethers.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper to myself, hands clenched.
He stops. At the gray door. The one that’s blocking the last remaining secrets of the ship. “No, keep going to the airlock, Kodiak, I just want you home,” I say under my breath.
I’m about to leave 06 and head back to the airlock entrance when theCoordinated Endeavorrumbles. I thought I knew all the ship’s noises, but this one is new.
I race back to the window, the bulky suit pitching me forward so I fall against the view of Saturn. The ship has released a blast of air, right against Kodiak.
It yanks him free of his handholds. Jerking and flailing, his body sails into space. He reaches out, just managing to snag a finger around a rung.
Another blast. It knocks Kodiak off the ship’s hull again. His hand swings through space to grab back on but misses, slicing through the void.
He falls up toward Saturn, jerking to a stop when he reaches the end of the tether. That slender line is all that’s keeping him from slipping into the expanse, from suffocating in space or burning as he tumbles through Saturn’s atmosphere. Kodiak’s legs kick frantically while he reaches one hand and then the other around the tether, dragging himself back toward theCoordinated Endeavor.
Vision blurring with tears, I stagger toward my airlock. “OS, there’s been an accident!” I cry. “I’m mounting a rescue!”
“There hasn’t been an accident,” Mother’s voice says calmly.
“Yes there has,” I say, my voice choking.
While I yank at the airlock’s handle, I manage a glance through the window. Kodiak’s got the tether securely in his grip and is pulling himself back to the ship, narrowing the distance between himself and the hull.
He’s going to be okay.
Except something impossible is happening.
“I love you,” comes my mom’s voice. My heart seizes. This is really my mother’s voice, not the voice skin OS uses to simulate her. “My darling Ambrose, I love you.”
“What’s happening?” I yell while I jerk the airlock’shandle. “Stop. Everything stop!”
The ship shudders, followed by a horrible rending and slicing, car accident sounds. I watch in shock as Kodiak’s hands race faster and faster along the tether, but his body stops making any progress toward the ship.
His line has been cut.
Kodiak holds the snipped end up to his helmet in disbelief. He pedals and swims toward the spacecraft, but his movements do nothing to bring him closer. He’s drifting.
If I get out there soon enough, I can save him. I’ve got the airlock wheel open now and press my shoulder against it.
The ship rumbles again, and there’s another vent of air. It sets Kodiak spinning as he shoots outward, away from the ship, away from Saturn, away from Titan, into the distant mass of stars and light-years of cold and empty darkness.
“Kodiak, I’m coming!” I scream. I’m in the airlock now, and fight to close the interior door, so the chamber can decompress and I can go out.
As I push the door closed, I hear the external airlock door whir and shudder. “OS, I’m not ready. Don’t open the external door yet.”
“I love you,” my mother replies.
