Vessel

Sagittarius I Mission ^{DAY 1137, DAY OF THE EVENT TRAPPIST-1F, TWILIGHT LANDING AREA HABITAT}

They were on their own.

Tom had been working on the comm system for three days. He said he couldn’t fix it, but maybe he just didn’t want to fix it. That was the problem, wasn’t it? They had no way of knowing if he was actually trying.

The irony wasn’t lost on Catherine. Tom was out and about in the ship—albeit under constant supervision—while she was trapped in quarantine, and would be for another week. She spent her time cataloging some of the planet’s biological samples that Claire provided, but God was she bored.

The rest of the crew came to visit her regularly, except for Tom. Catherine suspected they had some sort of visiting schedule set up, but the only pattern she’d spotted was that she never had a meal alone.

“I feel like it’s my fault you’re in there,” Claire was saying, leaning against the glass between them. She’d come to visit for lunch. “If I’d been paying closer attention, the wreck might not have been as bad.”

“Stop that,” Catherine said. “It could have just as easily been you in here. I just got the short straw.” She leaned forward and glanced out the window to see if anyone else was around. No one was. “How’s it going, really?” she asked. “How bad is it?”

Claire sighed and put down her fork. “It’s pretty bad. Izzy and Richie want us to abort and go back, but Ava refuses to do that until either we hear from NASA or things are too untenable to continue here. And Tom is…” She shook her head. “Every time we let him out he’s like a kicked puppy. Perpetually guilty-looking, trying to be friendly with everybody.”

“But he’s still not fixing the comms.”

“Says he can’t. He says there’s nothing wrong with them, just that the signal can’t reach Earth from here.”

“But we were sending data before…”

“And we never got a response,” Claire said. “We have no way of knowing if anything got through then, and now we can’t even try.”

Catherine studied her plate. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe. I mean, we were having communication problems before, but maybe that was him, too… And why would he want to help us, when all Ava is going to do is rat him out to NASA first thing?”

“I hadn’t thought about that.” She couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was her fault, that somehow what happened with Tom had… unbalanced him.

Claire stiffened suddenly, then lifted her head, sniffing the air. “Is that smoke?”

“I don’t smell it.” But Catherine wouldn’t. The air she was breathing was recirculating through her room without ever touching the air outside the quarantine cell. Still, just the mention of smoke was enough to send a chill through her. Despite all the precautions, despite all the safety lessons learned at the expense of other astronauts’ lives, fire in an enclosed area was still one of everyone’s greatest fears.

Claire stood up. “I’m going to go try to track it down.”

“Be careful.”

“I will. Wait here. I’ll sound the alarm if you need to get out. Might want to suit up, just in case.” Claire hurried off.

It might be nothing. It was probably nothing. But Catherine started the arduous process of climbing into her decontamination suit anyway.

She was grateful that she glanced at the clock before Claire left, because five minutes felt like twenty. And it was starting to look hazy outside her window.

Six minutes. Hazier still.

Catherine thumbed the comm on her suit and set the channel to broadcast over the entire Habitat. “Guys? What’s going on?”

Six and a half minutes. Nothing.

“Ava? Claire? Somebody?”

The corridor was actually smoky now. She was heading for the air lock leading out of quarantine when a voice sounded in her ear over the comm.

“It’s all right, Catherine. Everything’s fine.” Tom sounded totally calm. The only way he could speak to her directly through her helmet rather than over the overhead speaker was if he was in the command center still, where he’d been working all morning.

“Tom? What’s going on?”

“Just a little mishap. Stay where you are. It’s not quite safe out here yet.”

“I’m seeing a lot of smoke,” Catherine said. “Where is everyone?”

“It’s fine; it’ll all be fine in a minute or two,” Tom said soothingly. Something about his voice prickled the back of Catherine’s neck and she shoved her way into the air lock, dialing in the commands that would let her out as fast as she could. Her hands were shaking as she slammed the last button and waited for the pressure to equalize so she could get out.

“Come on, come on, come on.”

The door opened into the Habitat hallway. The smoke was so thick Catherine could barely see three feet in front of her. The suit’s air tank protected her lungs, but she had to get out. Please let the others already be outside.

“Catherine, where are you going? I’m showing that you breached quarantine.”

“What are you doing, Tom?”

Tom laughed, as if that were the silliest question he’d ever heard. “I’m in the command center, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, what else?”

The door that led out of the Habitat was right in front of her. If the others weren’t outside… No, but they would be. Whatever game Tom was playing, the others would have evacuated by now.

It was twilight out on the surface, but then it was always twilight. There was no sound on TRAPPIST-1f except for the wind blowing between the pillars of rock. There was no sign of the others. The rendezvous point in the event of an evacuation was half a kilometer away, not far from where Sagittarius sat waiting for their return trip.

There was still no sign of anyone.

Then she heard a low, tearing rumble. She turned back just as the Habitat expanded outward in a slowly unfurling giant cloud of dust, rubble, and smoke, until the walls shattered from the force of the pressure. A fireball rose from within the smoke like a bright orange sun in the dim landscape.

The others.

“No!” Catherine ran toward the flames, her breath coming in harsh, sobbing pants. The debris field met her before she even got close to the Habitat’s remains, flying toward her and falling from the sky. There was no way to get closer. The air was too hot. She stumbled back, choking back her tears. As she flattened herself behind one of the stone pillars, she prayed something didn’t land on her from overhead.

When she stopped hearing debris slamming to the ground, she took a chance and looked around the pillar. The remains of the Habitat blazed brightly, the skeleton of the structure showing amid the flames. There was just enough oxygen in the atmosphere to feed the fire.

Catherine tried to get closer, but there was still nothing she could do. The fire extinguishing equipment was inside the Habitat, where it was burning as fiercely as the rest of the module.

All she could do was circle what had been her home, helpless. Hoping that someone might come out of the burning wreckage, but there was no one. Everyone was dead except her.