Page 90 of The Brightness Between Us

“Owl, judging from Minerva’s history, that embryo is highly unlikely to develop into a viable fetus. My priority is protecting you.”

Too bad. I’m already up and out of the hatch and speeding toward the submergedEndeavorand its unit behind the gray portal, raising its small and fragile life. OS is wrong, anyway. We have schematics that will help. This embryo has a better chance than any before it.

It’s helpful that I’ve walked the same small patch of this planet for all my life. The dull familiarity of it, which a few weeks ago was deadening, is now a blessing. The blinding light of the impending comet floods out all detail from the surface, warps the air and gives the sky the same texture as the ground. My feet pass along newly soft soil, crumbling under the heat. When I stumble I switch to all fours, scrambling across the plain. With the uneven ground and no visuals to help, I can’t trust my balance. The ground ishot beneath my gloved hands.

We left the gestation device in place for as long as we could, so that the embryo could have the best chance possible for stable early development before we disturbed it. The rest of the zygotes were long ago transferred to theAurora.But we know we have to bring the gestation unit down before the comet makes impact. I’d counted on having Rover’s help, but I should be able to drag thirty-five kilograms on the tarp, or maybe even just waddle it over to the hatch so we can get it plugged back into power as quickly as possible.

I glance at the timer counting down in the corner of my helmet. Fourteen minutes until the hatch seals for good.

Once, years ago, the dads stood outside the gray portal of theCoordinated Endeavor, listening and waiting and watching a clock count down to the birth of their daughter. How they must have felt, waiting for the first offspring of our new world. And then she came out of the device, followed by another a few months later, and then baby Yarrow. Those first two children died. I won’t let this latest one meet the same fate.

I have two clocks counting down on my helmet display this morning: the gestation device’s duration, showing 131 days and three hours and forty-six minutes, and the now 13.6 minutes until I need to be inside the bunker. One of these two countdowns can’t go fast enough; theother needs to slow down.

I’m nearly at the settlement site now. I try to stay focused on it and not the glowing mountain in the sky, but it’s hard not to look at something that takes up half my view. It will disappear eventually, impacting the far side of the planet. That’s the only reason this giant light above doesn’t mean my instant death.

The living structures have long ago been deflated and stashed away in theAurora. The only sign we ever inhabited this planet is the deep pit where we mined hydrocarbons, and the sliver of theEndeavorthat’s still aboveground. Even those subtle signs that we were here will soon be eradicated.

I make my way to the gestation unit, through the gray portal, the only part of the submergedEndeavorstill visible.Six crucial joists connect the gestation unit to the ship wall, and I need to sever them before I remove the device, unplug it from its nuclear power source on theEndeavor, and hope the embryo survives its slowing centrifuge while I get it to theAurora.Sparks fly from my cutter as I test it in the open air.

I kneel beside the device and begin sawing it from theEndeavor’s frame. The ship wall whines in protest. The gestation timer on the outside blinks out, but it’s still counting down inside my helmet. The arm inside must already be slowing, but OS predicts it can go hours before its core hasany lethal shift in temperature. I hope it’s right.

Eleven minutes left.

I’m most of the way around the device, the cutter whining and sparking as it goes. The unit starts to wiggle in its frame. While the saw forces its way through the joists, I look around the rest of the remaining wreck of theEndeavor, which for all I know will be melted shut after the comet strikes, never to be accessed again. We’ve ransacked it for the settlement’s needs: its internals are all bared, surrounded by hacked-up polycarbonate. All that remains behind the gray portal is a laminated black book:Surviving Sagittarion Bb.I tuck it under my arm, like a schoolkid out ofPink Lagoon.

Pink Lagoon.Yarrow. He’s somewhere out there, probably dead. If he’s alive, maybe he’s looking up at the sky in fear. Alone. I touch my free hand to the soil beneath me. “I love you, Yar.”

I move my hand to the wall of theEndeavor.Many shades of sadness course through me: I’m mourning Yarrow and the stillborn baby, and I’m mourning the ship itself. Our life in the settlement, which we’ll have to start anew if we manage to survive the strike.

Once I’ve sawed through the remaining joists, the gestation device tumbles forward onto the tarp, the bottom half tilted up where it’s held by one last length of cabling. I unplug the unit from the ship’s wall, squatting so I can fallwith it, using my body to cushion its landing on the tarp.

The backside of the device isn’t impersonal gray paneling. It’s slightly translucent. I see, inside, the curled form of a small alienlike human, no longer than my palm, all forehead and hands and blue-pink eyes, a thin cord going from its belly to the device’s internals.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say as I drag the gestation unit through the comet’s blasting heat.It’s heavy, but manageable.

Even though the space suit shields me from the worst of it, I can feel the angry radiance of the comet burning my skin. I have to squint to see anything, even with the helmet’s shading.

Eight minutes left.

I lug the tarp a few yards, and then stop.

Someone’s here.

Way off to the side, in the square of packed dirt where once was an inflatable habitat, the very place we used to sleep and wonder and play, is my brother.

How can this be?

He’s lit up by the impending comet, and the brightness between us eradicates every detail of him except the dark hue of his tunic, his ragged mop of hair. He’s kneeling like a prisoner from a reel, head bowed forward and hands clasped—tied?—behind his back. In this blinding light, I can’t tell exactly what he’s done to himself.

I yell his name over the roar of the hot wind, the mufflingshield of my helmet.

He looks up. His mouth drops open.

I let go of the tarp and gestation device, and step toward him.

“Leave me!” he shouts.

I don’t. I break into a run.

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