When I opened the outer door, the ladder was above, then below, my mind switching the orientation. I gripped a handhold inside the airlock as vertigo washed over me. I would have to get used to it. I would get used to it. Adam was fond of saying that humans made a choice to be adaptable or not, and all the failed space missions of the past, especially the generation ships that had sailed into the darkness and fallen silent one by one, they had faltered because they chose to cling to the false comfort of Earth’s weighty prison. I was not going to make that mistake. I would adapt. I would make space my home.

Ten meters away the airlock on the shuttle opened, revealing two suited figures in a square of light. One raised an arm to wave, and Nico’s voice came over the radio. “Sending the next group across now.”

“Did you find the bioaerosol testers?”

“Yeah, but we had to dig for them. I’ve got the first cargo rack loaded,” Nico said. “You first. Get out there. Make sure you hold on tight.”

“Oh, no.” A woman’s voice, barely more than a whisper. “I can’t.”

“You don’t get a choice. Move.”

“I can’t,” the woman moaned. “I can’t. I can’t. There’s so much—it’s too much.”

“Is that Lilia?” asked another woman.

“Sounds like it. Lilia?” That was Bhattacharya’s friend, speaking over the radio from inside. “Lilia, it’s okay. Just look at the ladder. Focus on the ladder.”

“This is so stupid,” Nico said. “I’m going to fucking drag you over there.”

“Send a cargo rack across first,” I said, annoyed with the woman’s cowardice and Nico’s stubbornness. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Fine, fine. Get the fuck out of my way and don’t—fuck!”

Across the ten meters of space, I saw space-suit-clad legs kicking outward from the airlock door, a flurry of motion, shadows blocking light, a confusion of limbs.

The woman was crying, “No, no, no!”

And Nico was raging, “Let go of me, let go, or I will fucking shoot,” and over the radio somebody else was shouting at him to not shoot, it sounded like Dag or Henke or both, and Boudicca was demanding to know what the fuck was going on, and for a moment the light from the airlock was blocked, then it reappeared, the woman screamed, then—

It was a quiet sound over the radio, no more than a snap. One, then another. The screaming gave way to whimpering, then silence.

“The fuck did you do?” Boudicca asked.

“She wouldn’t—”

Light flashed in the shuttle airlock, and Nico’s explanation was lost in a concussion of noise. Somebody screamed, but it sounded so very far away, muffled by the agonizing roar.