“You all right?” he asked. His demeanor always changed around her. Edison could relax, take off the military man, just slide into home. The vanishing accent of her roots crept into his voice, a tiny flicker of Atlanta.

“I’m just fine, baby. Just fine.”

Edison saw her hand flex before the spoon dropped again, but this time he caught it.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Why no hug?”

“Of course I would hug you,” Diana whispered. “I just don’t want you to feel how brittle these bones have become.”

Edison felt the memory flicker around him. At his side, his mother stirred nothing, just a wooden spoon going around and around on top of a stack of dirty environmental suits. She was blue, all blue, made of glowing turquoise starlight.

“It’s in my bones, in the marrow,” she told him, gruff. “The cancer. I’m gonna feed you and then we’re gonna sit for a long time.”

“There are options.” The words came out too fast, like a reflex.

“No options but one,” she said. Diana put down the spoon and shook her head. “I know you aren’t going to take clean filters out of here. I know you won’t do that to me.”

Edison froze. The spoon was gone. The scent of garlic and oregano vanished, leaving him in the rubber and antiseptic stink of the storage room. He backed away from her, from his faintly glowing mother.

“Baby, listen to me. You can still win her over. She’s pretty, right? You like her? That’s just fine. You win her over. Just pick up the filter, air it out a little, then give it to her. She won’t know the difference and then she can be with us. Be with you.”

“I can’t do that, Mom. I can’t.” Edison backed away until he rammed into the closed closet behind him. Wincing, he stumbled to his left, his head exploding in pain. He wondered if that was how Tuva had suffered before the end, when her brain felt like it was being lanced with fiery needles.

The captain. Be the captain.

Edison scrambled across the room, to the low bank of plastic shelves bolted into the wall. Several labeled bins held the accessories needed for suit maintenance, including emergency patches, extra gloves, shoe covers and visors, as well as a bin specifically for the new, sealed oxygen filters. He smacked the bin open, reaching in to find their stock was low. Dangerously low. He thought immediately of Piero. Had he tried to sabotage the filters? If so, he had missed two. Two. He had no idea how long those would last Rosalyn, but it would just have to suffice.

Listen to me.