Mara's mask made the first breath difficult. It always did. The seal pressed against the soft place beneath her jaw, her own inhalation sounded too loud, and for half a second her body believed something had a hand over her face.
She waited it out. Air came. The next breath was easier.
Across the cabin Kit pulled his hood into place and tucked the edge away from his neck seal. Hester watched their readings on her panel. The docking space had passed its leak test; through the little window in the inner hatch Mara saw a patch of yellow wall and the edge of someone's shoulder.
"Entry supply," Hester said.
Mara checked the capsule feed at her hip, the reserve bottle on her back, the valve she could find with either hand. "Good."
Kit lifted a thumb. His sampling wand looked like a ridiculous toy in his gloved hand.
Hester opened the hatch.
The smell stayed behind the mask. Mara could see the room, could see a stained cup on a ledge, but it offered her no scent. A yellow sock hung over a pipe. Someone had drawn a face on the sock. The absurdity struck her harder than the warning had.
A woman stood two paces away, hands spread where they could be seen. Nessa Cho, the photograph in the dossier made human and furious. One cheek was scraped raw, although the scrape had a smooth translucent cover instead of a scab. Two clear tubes ran from a fitting below her collarbone into a loop at her waist, then joined a thicker pair clipped to the wall.
"Which one's Mara?"
Mara raised her hand.
"The lower support's shifting. I need you to look at it before you bring the crawler alongside."
"I need to know the atmosphere first."
"It's the same as the reading you have."
Kit extended the wand. The little screen filled with numbers. He held it away from Nessa, toward the open passage. Then down by the floor.
"No breathable oxygen," he said.
His voice in Mara's ear was very calm. She looked at Nessa's chest.
The woman was speaking on a little outflow of gas, her chest scarcely moving. When she stopped she took no answering breath.
"I can show you the support from the service station. Your rig's got enough reach if you keep it above the—"
"Wait," Mara said.
Nessa stopped. Her mouth remained slightly open. Something glistened at the back of her tongue.
Mara watched for the involuntary catch after a person had talked too long. For a little flaring of the nostrils. Nothing. The tubes along Nessa's side pulsed once, quietly, against the fabric of her shirt.
"How long?" Mara asked.
"Since the first day."
Kit moved the wand nearer to her mouth, not quite touching. Nessa turned her head sharply.
"Please don't put that in my face."
"Sorry." He lowered it. "May I check your pulse?"
She offered her wrist. A clear line ran under the skin, branched at the base of her thumb and vanished into her palm. Kit's fingers settled on it. Mara watched his eyes, the brief change in them.
"I can't get a normal beat."
"There isn't one."
From the passage behind her came a man carrying a stack of towels. He was young, a little soft at the middle, with a wiry beard and a blue towel around his shoulders. He almost collided with Nessa's wall line, stepped over it without looking and smiled at them.
"You're here. Sorry. I thought she was going to tell me when you were here. I have clean ones. They were in a sealed bag."
He set the towels on the ledge. His fingers trembled. A pair of lines emerged from beneath his left sleeve.
Mara could not decide where to look.
"Benji?"
"Yes. You're Mara. Leonie's told us." He offered his hand, saw her glove, drew his hand back and rubbed it on his pants. "Sorry. That's stupid. Do you want water? You brought water. Of course you did."
He smiled again. Between sentences his chest stayed still. The muscles at his throat moved as he talked, and a round spot above his breastbone opened, closed, opened.
Mara's mouth filled with saliva. She swallowed it and felt the mask cup move against her chin.
"Nobody touches our air lines," Hester said over the crew channel. "Marking that now."
Mara touched the microphone switch. "Agreed."
Nessa was watching her.
"We know what we look like," she said.
"I don't," Mara answered. "Give me a minute."
Nessa's jaw worked. She looked away first.
A figure came slowly through the passage. Leonie wore gray pants, a wool cardigan and the sort of rubber-soled shoes nurses wore on long shifts. Her hair had escaped its braid. There were dark marks beneath her eyes, and the left sleeve of her cardigan was stiff with something that had dried and been washed without coming out.
"Mara."
For a moment Mara saw a hospital door instead of the round passage, her father sitting up in bed, making a dreadful effort to keep his smile in place. She took a step forward before she remembered the mask and the gloves.
Leonie stopped too. She pressed her hands against her own thighs.
"Look at you," she said. "Your hair. You finally cut it."
Mara had cut it three years earlier. Leonie had called her after, during Christmas week, but it had been a voice call and Mara had been driving. She remembered promising to send a picture.
"Hello, Leonie."
The physician's mouth trembled. Not the rest of her face. Just her mouth, a small failure she corrected by biting her lip.
"Come through. Mind the line on the right. Benji, help her with the hose."
"Stay behind me," Mara told Kit.
He was already turning to leave a marker at the docking boundary. Clean side, dirty side. On the capsule side Hester attached their feed lines to a guide so they would travel freely. She had her own mask on now. Her eyes above it were narrow and intent.
Mara followed Leonie into the Living Drum.
Someone had tried hard. Loose equipment had been strapped down. Wet clothing hung inside a locker instead of over the passage. A table had been wiped so recently the film of water reflected the ceiling lights. Four cups waited beside a dented kettle. On the far wall a string of little paper triangles spelled out a birthday message, the final letter missing.
At the table Jonah Vale stood to greet them, one hand planted on its edge.
He was thinner than Mara remembered, but his face had color. Not the healthy pink of the picnic photograph in her mind: a flush in irregular patches, the cheekbones pale, the skin at his temples almost shiny. He had a line fitted low on his neck. It divided behind his ear and ran beneath his shirt.
"You're the woman with the spoon," he said.
"You had the spoon."
"Yes. Leonie said I should let that story go. I told her it's one of my six."
"How are you feeling?" Kit asked.
"Better than I look, apparently."
"Jonah," Leonie said.
"Well, she asked me."
"He asked you."
Jonah looked at Kit. "Did you? I'm sorry. It's been a peculiar morning."
Kit nodded. He did not make a joke back.
Mara's gaze had gone to the man's throat. She tried to stop it and could not. Under the skin, something opened like the edge of a small fan. Fine red threads lay across the transparent tissue. They folded together, disappeared, returned. It was neither a wound nor a mouth. She did not know what it was.
Jonah fastened the top button of his shirt.
"Sorry," she said.
"I'm still doing it in the mirror."
Leonie took Mara's sleeve and guided her away from the table. She touched only the fabric, carefully, and for an instant Mara wanted the ordinary pressure of a hand on bare skin so badly she felt ashamed.
"Sit down," Leonie said. "Your knees have gone."
They had. Mara sat on the bench under the birthday flags. Kit crouched to examine the wall connections. Two lines, a pale one and a darker one, ran along a protected channel around the room. At intervals a pair branched toward a person. Little pumps made a soft, uneven purring. It was the first sound she had noticed beyond their voices and her own breathing.
"Four of you?" Mara said.
Leonie nodded. "Four on the circuit. Imani's separate."
"Alive nine days. Like this."
"Yes."
"How?"
Leonie looked toward Kit. He was following the protected channel with his eyes.
"It started at the bore. We had an exchanger for bringing samples across the pressure boundary. Not water, not seawater inside. A membrane. The material was already growing against it. When the power failed, the first emergency circuit—"
She stopped. Mara had not taken her eyes off her face.
"I don't know how," Leonie said. "I can tell you what we connected and what happened next."
"And Imani?"
"Refused. She went into the emergency shelter. I've kept her supplied. Kit can go in. She won't like it, but she needs looking at."
Nessa appeared in the passage. She had drawn her line behind her in a practiced loop. "The support shifted another millimeter."
"I'll look," Mara said. She started to rise.
Leonie set a hand on the table in front of her. "You'll look better if your hands stop shaking. Stay a moment."
Mara looked down. Her left hand was shaking against her leg.
A small scrape came from the floor. Benji had knelt beside her breathing hose. He was untwisting it from around the bench leg, lips pursed with concentration. The back of his neck had the fine dark hairs of any young man's neck. A hole in his sock showed a pink heel.
He freed the hose and laid it where nobody would tread on it.
"Better?" he asked.
Mara nodded.
"Good. I keep doing that with ours. The first day Nessa went around the table twice and nearly took Jonah with her."
"Benji," Nessa said from the door.
"What? You did."
Leonie laughed. It was the laugh Mara remembered, unexpectedly loud, a little embarrassed by itself. Jonah made a feeble attempt to imitate Nessa walking around the table. Nessa told him to stop.
Mara sat in the room without oxygen and listened to living people argue.
Her own next breath scraped through the valve beside her cheek. Everyone heard it. Nobody looked at her.