Page 15 of The Brightness Between Us

I know that, of course. But I had to fill the void somehow, and asking about his wish was the first thing I thought to say. But Yarrow surprises us all by going ahead and saying what he wished for. “I want Owl to get to explore a full ten days. That’s my birthday wish.”

My eyes widen. I gulp. I look at the dads.

They stare at each other. “We talked about how long shecould go for. Ten days is pushing it, but if we carefully plan her route, and she brings Rover with her...,” Dad says.

“We can allow this, Owl,” Father says. “For Yarrow’s birthday.”

Tears are in my eyes. It’s been a whiplash of a minute. “Yarrow,” I say quietly. “You gave your birthday present to me.”

Just like I’d expect him to, he gives me that goodlier-than-good smile of his, like I ought to be thanking the universe for its magnanimity rather than him for his mortal kindness. But there are still signs that he’s not himself. His brow is shiny. His hands are clenched tight. A thousand wrong things are hitting my brain in its subconscious parts, telling me that Yarrow isn’t quite Yarrow anymore.

I see him see me see him.

Don’t say anything, his expression says.

He’s my brother, and I love him, so I don’t.

But he’s also not my brother. I don’t know where my brother went.

Chapter 7

Each time I remember that I’m past our lives’ previous horizon, my skin draws tight and my heart races. OS and I are three days out to the west, so I get that feeling a lot.

Here, I think.Here is finally something new.

Well, “new.” So far this hyped-up expedition of mine has all been flat muckland. Pond scum.

Because our dads crashed on Minerva instead of properly landing, we don’t know where we are on the planet. Based on the constancy of the weather, without any real seasons, there’s either little tilt to Minerva’s axis or—more likely—we’re living at one of the poles.

If we’re at a pole, all directions are pretty equal, which is why Father and I planned for me to just pick one and go straight. We chose north because it’s the far side of the settlement from the malevors, and it’s easy to orient myself using each sunset and sunrise of the Sisters. Rover can do that with far more accuracy than I, but Father and I both like that I’ve got an offline backup plan.

Today OS and I have decided to rest through the Scorch. It’s not so hot that I couldn’t hike through it, but the skinon my face turns red and irritated if I don’t get under shade for the hour. And the spot on my backside where I got gored has been giving me pins and needles. I’m relaxing against my pack, sunshade unfurled, while Rover makes slow rotations. Guarding us. We’re far from the malevor herd, but an AI doesn’t need to nap and it’s better safe than sorry.

“So, OS,” I say. “How would a comet strike actually go down? I’m going to assume the dads gave us a sanitized version.”

“Having access to the information you request will be suboptimal for your morale,” OS responds through Rover.

I snort. “Yeah, I can imagine. I’d still like to know.”

“I could shield you from the worst reality of it, so you will feel only moderately desperate afterward. Would you like me to do this?”

I shake my head. “Lay it all on me,” I say.

“The Scorch is almost over,” OS says. “If you start getting ready for the afternoon’s trek now, I’ll tell you over the course of the seven-point-one minutes it usually takes you to pack up.”

I’ve been eating concentrated algal chews, so there’s no meal debris to clean up. I’m surprised to find out it usually takes me that long. Rover has been towing a floating platform with polycarb bags of water; I guess getting myself hydrated is part of the seven minutes? I take slow sips from one of them and stretch my hamstrings while OS fills me inon our imminent doom.

“The first thing you would see is a faint new star in the sky. You might not even notice it for the first day or two. Then it would get as luminous as Eagle, then Cuckoo.”

I look up at Cuckoo, the nearest planet in our solar system. It’s bright enough to see even during the Scorch. We watch its orbit end-on, and its tiny bright circle in the sky seems to flit crazily between the two suns. I blink against the purple image it sears into my eyeballs.

“So then what, everything turns into a great fireball?”

“No. You will wake up one day to notice that there is another body in the solar system with as much light as the Sisters. Then even more light. Hours later, it will strike the surface of Minerva with one hundred million times the energy of the largest nuclear bomb that ever went off on Earth, at least up until the departure of theCoordinated Endeavor.”

“Oh.”

“If you were anywhere on that half of the planet, there would be no hope of survival, no matter what precautions you had taken. Struck at that speed, the air in Minerva’s atmosphere has nowhere to go, and so it heats up thousands of degrees under the pressure. All surface liquids would vaporize. Wherever the comet strikes, the physics of the planet’s surface would change to fluid dynamics, and it would splash. The impact would send out a wave of soil thirty-fivekilometers high, and might even expose the planet’s molten core in the trough. Though only briefly, the impact site would reach the same heat level as the surface of the Sisters.”

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