Holden wanted badly to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. The most he’d been able to manage was a few hours’ unconsciousness that left him groggy and ragged. He’d been given the option of moving back into quarters on the station, but he’d refused. Even though he slept better with gravity holding him to the mattress, he didn’t want to leave the ship. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d shaved, but the patchwork of stubble on his cheeks and neck itched a little. During the work shifts, it wasn’t so bad. The new crew checked the systems they’d all checked before, looking for sabotage they hadn’t seen last time, and it gave him something to do. People to talk to. When they left, he ate in the galley, tried to sleep for a while, then wandered through the ship like he was looking for something but couldn’t remember what it was.

And then, inevitably and against his better judgment, he checked the newsfeeds.

“With the silence from Medina Station, all contact with the colonial planets has been lost. We can only speculate on the significance of the partial report from the Fólkvangr settlement concerning alien activity in the southern hemisphere of New Triton —”

“A spokesman for the port authority said that Ganymede’s neutrality was a reflection of its universal importance and not a political statement —”

“UN forces are en route, but it is not clear whether Prime Minister Smith is actually aboard the racing ship or if this is a distraction to pull the enemy’s attention away from a more traditional evacuation. Regardless, acting secretary-general Avasarala has announced a security zone covering the flight path of the pinnace, and all ships in the area have been advised to move beyond weapon range until such time as —”

Light speed, he decided, was a curse. It made even the farthest corners of humanity’s reach feel close, and the illusion was a kind of poison. The delay between Tycho Station and Earth was a little less than a quarter of an hour, but to travel that far would take days. If Alex or Naomi died, he could know within minutes that they were gone. He floated in his restraints, the cabin lights turned off, and flipped through the feeds, jumping back and forth in case anything had happened, knowing that if it had, there was nothing he could do. He felt like he was standing on a frozen lake, looking down through the ice while the people he cared about most drowned.

If he couldn’t know, if everything that was happening could happen someplace he couldn’t watch, then maybe he could look away. Maybe he could close his eyes and dream about them, at least. When a connection request came on his hand terminal, he was glad to get it.

“Paula,” Holden said.