I remembered her laughter. The warmth of her arm around my shoulders. The pulse-skip of fear in my throat every time I thought about how far we were traveling. The answers I mumbled and excuses I offered when my mother noticed that I was not happy. I remembered her shoving me playfully when I rolled my eyes at her passionate biography of the universe, and the feeling of free fall that came with drifting toward the windows, as though there was nothing between me and the darkness, then a moment of panic, the kind of panic that claws at the throat and chills the blood, and I turned without thought, reaching for my mother, grasping for her hand and finding it out of reach, turning again, spinning out of control, and where my mother had been there was a pillar of fire in the darkness, and all at once, with the suddenness of a door slamming shut, a dream ending, a life snuffing out, my entire body shuddered with pain.

I cried out, a pathetic animal sound, the noise muffled in the helmet—

Helmet. Space suit.

Darkness, and light, and darkness again.

My vision was blurred, my head throbbing so powerfully I felt every heartbeat in my eyes, and my chest burned with a fiery agony that intensified with every breath. I was in a space suit and turning slowly—spinning, with nothing to grasp, nothing to reach for—and as I spun again, head over feet like the spokes of a wheel, I saw House of Wisdom, and smaller, so small, Homestead. The ships were tiny and distant and burning.

The collision had been indirect. An angled blow across Homestead’s nose had torn a great gash in the hull. Gases vented and the space around the ship was dotted with dust—

Not dust. Bodies.

I couldn’t breathe. The dead were tumbling into space from the broken hull. I had killed them. They looked like specks from this distance. I had killed them. I couldn’t breathe. As I turned again, the wheel going around, Homestead dropped out of sight, and there was the Earth, a small, cold marble, and the Moon, and the bright disk of Providence Station sliding out of view—and there were the ships again. Silent explosions, like lightning from far away, spewed blinding white light from every jagged wound along the hulls. They were so very far away.

I turned again, and there was nothing but darkness before me, and I moved without thinking, grasping although there was nothing to hold. Gathering spots overtook my vision. I thought I heard a beep—a voice—but it meant nothing, and I blacked out again. Somehow, somehow, even in the darkness, I knew I was spinning, and I knew I was falling away from the wreckage and the fire, and I knew I was alone.

•   •   •