Alarms sound. Her headlamp flickers as she hurries to the far wall: no time to think. She chooses the handle four from the left and pulls open a seed drawer. Cold vapor spills over her feet: inside wait hundreds of ice-cold foil envelopes in rows. She scoops up as many as she can with her mitts, spilling a number, and clasps them and the axe to her chest.

Somewhere nearby is the ghost of Father or the corpse of him or both. Keep going. You have no time.

Not much farther down the corridor, between Lavatories 2 and 3, is the titanium patch where Mother said Elliot Fischenbacher spent multiple nights attacking the wall. The patch has been secured with perhaps three hundred rivets, far more than she remembered. Her heart sinks.

Oxygen at five percent.

She drops her haul of seed packets and raises the hatchet with both hands. From her memory whisper the warnings she has been hearing since before she can remember. Cosmic radiation, zero gravity, 2.73 Kelvin.

She swings and the blade dents the patch but bounces off. She swings harder. This time the blade sticks through and she has to put all her weight into it to pry it free.

A third. A fourth. She’ll never get through in time. Sweat builds up inside the suit and fogs her hood. The alarms increase in volume; the extinguishers rain down around her. Twenty paces to her right is the entrance to the Commissary, full of tents.

All hands, says Sybil. The integrity of the ship is in jeopardy.

Oxygen at four percent, says the hood.

With each strike, the gash in the patch grows.

In three seconds outside the walls, your hands and feet will double in size. You’ll suffocate. You’ll freeze solid.

The gap widens, and through the vapor on her face shield Konstance can see into the interior, where Elliot has pushed aside conduits of wires wrapped in aluminum tape and cut through several layers of insulation. On the far side is another layer of metal: what she hopes is the exterior wall.

She pries the axe free, inhales, rears back, swings again.

Child, Sybil booms, and her voice is terrible. Stop what you are doing at once.

An atavistic fear flows through Konstance. She reaches back and with all the strength of months of anger, isolation, and grief, she swings and the blade severs wires and bites through the outer sheet. She wiggles the handle back and forth.

When she pulls it free, there is a puncture in the outer wall, a slice of darkness.

Konstance, Sybil booms. You are making a grave mistake.