A Million Suns

36 AMY

THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN, AND IT’S NOT UNTIL I TAKE A HUGE gasp of air that I realize I’d been holding my breath. For all my confidence, I can’t believe that worked.

There are ten cubbyholes built into the wall, one suit in each compartment. Cords and tubes are coiled at the base around heavy boots, and shelves over the suits display helmets that, despite a fine layer of dust, still retain some of their mirror-like shine.

Elder rushes inside and runs his hands over the nearest suit. It looks like a painted paper bag but drips from his hand like silk. Behind the silk-like body suit, I can see harder pieces that look like plastic armor.

“Do you know how to use these?” Elder turns, asking me with shining eyes.

“Why would I?” I say.

“You’re from Sol-Earth. These were made there.”

I laugh, a short, bitter bark. “The whole ship was made on Sol-Earth; that doesn’t mean I know anything about it!”

“But—”

“There’s a manual,” I say. A thick metal-and-glass screen connected to a coiled cord hangs on the wall. Maybe it once worked as video instructions or an interactive guide, but the cord is frayed and the glass cracked. Under the monitor, though, is a thick black book. Good thing it’s pretty hard to break a book. I pick it up and flip to the first page. Two-thirds of it isn’t even in English. The part that is in English is so complicated it makes my eyes cross. At the end of the book, though, is a step-by-step illustrated guide of what to do to operate the space suits. I guess the builders of the ship made sure the people on the ship could use the suits even if their language somehow evolved or something else went wrong.

As I hand the manual to Elder, I notice that it had been resting on another book.

“What’s that?” Elder asks me, but he’s more interested in the manual than the slender book I found beneath it.

“The Little Prince,” I say, reading the title aloud. It’s such a small book that the huge manual hid it completely. Could this be another hint from Orion? One page is dog-eared, and I turn to it. The colors are faded, but it’s still possible to decipher the illustration in front of me: a giant king dressed in a robe embroidered with stars sits atop a tiny planet.

Below the illustration, a line of text is circled and recircled, over and over.

“I,” replied the little prince, “do not like to condemn anyone to death.”

“Well, that’s ominous,” I mutter. The text reminds me of the threat I made last night. Clearly the little prince never met someone like Luthor. I glance up at Elder. I should tell him. But… now is not the time.

I lift up a folded piece of paper that’s been slipped inside the book. My hands shake as I unfold it — I recognize the feel of this paper, thick and glossy.

Sonnet XXX, the clue that was lost. Or stolen.

The text on this page is riddled with lines and a note. “Look at this,” I say, turning to Elder.

Whatever interest Elder had in discovering the next clue is now gone. His entire attention is focused on the space suits. I grin at him; he looks like a kid who’s been told he can get whatever flavor of ice cream he wants from the shop.

I carefully tuck the ripped page into my pocket and turn to the operating manual. It’s obvious Elder couldn’t care less about old books and hidden clues while we’re looking at space suits.

“There are two kinds of suits — one for extended exposure and one for moderate exposure. The brown ones are smaller and easier to use, but you’re only supposed to use them for about two hours or less.”

“That’s fine,” Elder says, going to the cubbyholes. He picks up a body suit, and it’s not so much brown, as in the picture, but bronze. It sparkles in the dim light of the room, and when he shakes it out, dust mingles with glitter.

“The moderate suits have an underlayer of protection against outside elements and hazardous temperatures,” I continue. “Then you put on the outer suit over that, for insulation and more protection. The outer suit seems to just snap on, then you connect gloves and boots over that. This looks crazy simple,” I say. “I thought a space suit would be really complex.”

“The other ones, the ones for long exposure, do look more complicated. But if Orion’s right and the problem is obvious, I should only need the short-exposure suit,” Elder says. “A little help?”

He’s already discarded his own clothes — they lie in a heap on the floor — and he’s zipped himself into the bronze underlayer.

“Uh — no. No,” I say, striding over to him.

“What?” he asks.

“NO. You are not going out there. No way. Not with a flimsy suit you only know how to use because of an illustrated guide. No.”

“Amy, it—”

“NO.”

“But—”

“Don’t you remember what happened to Harley? Space isn’t a field on the Feeder Level! It. Will. Kill. You. And this?” I pinch the silky underlayer with my finger and let it snap back against his body. “This isn’t good enough. You can’t just throw on a suit and jump off the ship!”

Elder looks at me doubtfully, like a child frustrated with an overprotective mom. I don’t care. I lean in closer to him. “You’re too important to risk.”

“The vid,” Elder says, his voice low. “It’s the only way to figure out what Orion meant.”

“You were the one who said Orion was loons.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Besides, that last clue was probably tampered with. Most likely someone didn’t want us finding this room or the suits, and—”

“But Amy,” Elder says. “Space suits!” Elder can’t keep down his excitement about going out into the stars — but I can’t keep down my fear.

“The suits don’t change anything!” But I’m wrong. They change everything. “Let me go,” I whisper. “Let anyone else. We can’t risk you.”

Elder smiles — a huge, carefree grin, and I really do feel like a mother watching her baby totter off into a fire. “I’m touched. You actually do care about me.”

My mouth drops open. “You idiot. Of course I care about you.”

He leans forward quickly and pecks me on the forehead. “Then help me get the suit on.”

I growl — but I can’t stop him. At least I can make sure he’s as safe as possible. I pick up two halves of the breastplate. I feel like a lady dressing her knight in his armor, just like a movie I saw a long time ago on Sol — on Earth. The lady tucked a token — a small scarf — into the knight’s armor to remind him of her love for him. I don’t have a scarf, and I’m not even sure if I love Elder, but I strap him so hard into the breastplate that he grunts in protest.

I keep checking the manual. It doesn’t seem right that all it takes to go into space is a set of bronze long johns and a plastic shell. I knew space suits had come a long way from the puffy white marshmallow-like suits of the twentieth century, but this thin suit doesn’t seem adequate. Still, when I watched videos of men and women working in the space of Godspeed before it launched, their suits looked exactly like this.

Elder steps into the boots one at a time. They go halfway up his calves, and when I push a button on them, they shrink against his legs. Elder hobbles to the center of the room, then turns around, letting me inspect him.

“Looks solid,” I admit.

“All that’s left is the helmet and the backpack,” Elder says, reaching for the helmet.

“This first.” I help pull Elder’s arms through the straps of the pack, and it snaps into the hard shell pieces of the suit.

I plug the wires from the pack into their connectors on the shoulder of the suit. “This is a PLSS, a primary life support subsystem,” I say as I connect a tube to the base of the helmet. “Basically, it has all the stuff you need to live — brings in oxygen, takes out carbon dioxide, regulates pressure, all that.”

I snap on a metal-enforced cable to a hook at the front of Elder’s suit. “And this,” I say, “is your lifeline back to me — to the ship. I’m attaching the other end to the hatch. The book says there’s a special hook there just for this.”

Elder nods. He looks pale, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his face.

I think about kissing him then. Just in case.

Instead, I cram his helmet onto his suit and lock it into place. The PLSS has only two modes — on and off — so I open the latch door, flip the switch to on, and secure the door back in place.

“That’s pure oxygen,” I say loudly. “Get used to it now, before you’re in space.”

Elder nods, but he’s got so much on that his whole top half bends back and forward. I bite my lip, worried.

Elder follows me, clomp-hobbling, to the hatch. Inside, I latch the end of his lifeline to a hook on the floor.

“Come back to me,” I whisper to Elder’s helmet, but I don’t know if he can hear me.

I step back into the hallway. The hatch closes behind me. I look through the bubble window. Elder raises one hand.

I punch the code into the keypad slowly, hesitating before the last digit. Should I do this? Is it worth it to find Orion’s big secret if it risks Elder?

The door in front of me seals shut, a grinding metal-on-metal noise as it locks. Through the window, I have one last look at Elder in his bronze suit. I am overcome with an insane urge to rip the controls out of the wall beside me and keep the hatch from opening.

But it’s too late. It opens.

And Elder’s gone.