Good Morning, Midnight

EIGHTEEN

SULLY RUSHED BACK to Little Earth and started banging on all the sleeping compartments. She pounded on the frame of Devi’s bunk for a few beats before realizing it was empty, then hurried along the curve of Little Earth to the long table. Thebes was already there, eating dried fruit and looking at her quizzically; the others quickly emerged from their bunks. The overhead lights reached their full morning brightness as she relayed the story of the contact—their first contact since Mission Control went dark. Their expressions of sleepy annoyance gradually gave way to excitement. When she reached the end of her story, however, her crewmates looked more confused than enlightened.

“That’s it?” Tal asked. “He doesn’t know anything else?”

Sully shrugged. “I’m going to keep monitoring the frequency and I’m hopeful we can get him back, but yes, he doesn’t know much about what’s happened. He said it’s been radio silence since the other researchers evacuated a year ago.”

“Why did they evacuate?”

“I don’t know—war rumors. But that’s all he knew, rumors.”

“So then, this guy is what, like the last person on earth? Is that what we’re getting at here?” Tal seemed indignant.

“Don’t joke,” Ivanov admonished him.

Tal rolled his eyes. “I wish I were,” he said. “Think about it. If this guy has been trying to make contact for all this time and hasn’t been able to, not a peep till now…I mean, if something catastrophic happened, where would the safest places be—the least fallout? The poles, that’s where. Exactly where he is. It’s possible he’s the only one left.”

They all fell silent for a moment. Harper had been running his hands through his hair, over and over, as though by stimulating his scalp he might arrive at a new idea, a different angle he hadn’t noticed. He dropped his hands into his lap and sighed.

“I don’t see that we’ve really learned anything new. We’re still looking at a lot of question marks. Sully, let’s try to talk to him again—see what we can suss out. Otherwise, I want our docking seals checked. I think we should hook into ISS and go from there. Reentry sequence as planned. Not much point speculating, right? One thing at a time.”

They all nodded and Harper went back to the comm. pod with Sully. The others trickled after them, and the search for the last man on earth began again—hours of static, Sully repeating his call sign over and over, until finally, hours later, they got their answer.

THE SECOND CONVERSATION was even less enlightening than the first. Harper, Sully, and Thebes were crowded into the comm. pod while Ivanov and Tal floated in the corridor. All five of them were only more frustrated by the time they lost the signal, which didn’t last long. They all drifted over to the observation deck afterward, where they could watch Earth moving beyond the glass cupola. Ultimately there wasn’t a lot to discuss—the man on the other end had told them everything he knew, which wasn’t much—but it didn’t stop them from going over and over the meager facts. They would dock with the ISS and then the conundrum of reentry would be addressed. They couldn’t orbit forever, but without a ground team to pick them up in the Kazakhstani desert, things grew complicated and uncertain. Sully went back to the comm. pod while the others continued debating.

She tried to reestablish a connection with the Arctic but couldn’t. It had become clear that the man didn’t have the information they were hoping for—an explanation—but there were other things she wanted to ask him. She wanted details of Earth: sunsets, weather, animals. She wanted to be reminded of how it felt to be beneath the atmosphere, housed within that gentle daylit dome. She wanted to remember how it felt to be held by Earth: dirt and rocks and grass cradling the soles of her feet. The season’s first snow, the smell of the ocean, the silhouettes of pine trees. She missed it all so keenly she felt the absence inside her abdomen, like a black hole sucking her organs into nothingness. So she waited. No more scanning. The frequency was locked in, it was only the many layers of atmosphere, the angle of the antenna, the rotation of the earth, and the vigilance of the radio operator below that occupied her now. She wondered if it was true—if she’d found the last man on earth.

In the days that followed, Aether arrived in Earth’s orbit. Sully had no luck finding the Arctic survivor again. She wasn’t able to keep her vigil as consistently as she would’ve liked to; as they circled the earth they had their work cut out for them, and the practical purposes for speaking with him again were minimal. The other crewmembers were focused on more pressing things. The plans for Aether had always been to dock with the ISS—the entire spacecraft was designed to eventually become an addition to the space station—so in that respect they were still within the parameters of their mission, following a plan set years ago. But without the other crew in the ISS to coordinate with, the procedure was difficult and uncertain.

As they drew closer to the ISS, she finally found him again. He was equally glad for the excuse to talk to her—about anything. He told her about the Arctic—the dark days and the frozen tundra. When he talked about the polar bear tracks he’d found, she recognized something in him: a stubborn loneliness. As though he couldn’t say aloud, even now, at the end of the world, that he was lonely. That he craved connection without understanding how to obtain it; that finding a set of tracks, the merest evidence of another presence, was his idea of company. It went beyond the isolation of his situation, it was a part of him, and she suspected it always had been. Even in crowded rooms, even in busy cities, even in the arms of a lover, he was alone. She recognized it in him because it was in her too.

The connection broke before she was ready, if she would ever have been ready. She stayed in the comm. pod for a long time afterward. She flicked off the speakers and listened to the hum of the ship itself, the faint murmurs of her crewmates on the control deck. He was all alone down there, tracking polar bears and listening to the howls of wolves. He was older, she guessed from the gravel in his voice, and would be disheveled after so much time on his own in the Arctic wilderness. Long hair, shaggy beard. She pictured his eyes, ethereal blue, she decided, the same color as ice lit by the sun. At first she had imagined saving him—setting down the Soyuz pod on Ellesmere Island and finding his isolated camp—but the fantasy ended there. There would be no way back to warmer climates, and a very good chance they would end up in the freezing ocean or on the frozen tundra and never find him at all. No, the Soyuz pod would be set down in a more forgiving region, a place where the crew could hope to survive. The last man on earth would remain trapped where he was, and she would never know for sure what he looked like. He would always be a disembodied voice, a spectral wanderer. He would die alone.

From the control deck she heard Tal shouting in excitement—they had the ISS in their sights. She dried her eyes on the sleeve of her jumpsuit and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She took a few deep breaths and rolled her jaw, shaking the grief-stricken grimace out of her face muscles. The ISS was good news. She tried on a smile and checked it in the silvery reflection of a transceiver casing. Good enough. Propelling herself out of the comm. pod and down the corridor to the control deck, she ran into Thebes, approaching from the direction of the centrifuge.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to go home.”

They drifted onto the control deck together, where Tal and Ivanov were already waiting. Tal had the docking controls ready and Ivanov floated in the cupola, watching the space station grow closer and closer through the window while Tal watched the port come closer and closer on his docking cam. The station’s solar arrays spread out from the silver maze at its center like huge, illuminated wings. The vivid blue of Earth’s oceans, swept with white ruffles of breakers and wisps of cloud, moved beneath it.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered to Thebes, but he didn’t hear her. Harper came in a moment later, and all five of them watched the two spacecrafts slowly approach, align, and then, miraculously, lock together and become one: a silver angel wandering in an empty heaven.