The second contact held.
Mara felt each clamp close through her knees. Hester did not rush the seal check. That was almost unbearable. A panel showed the docking space draining, pressure settling, the measured stubborn return of a safe passage where there had been water.
Kit's eyes had stopped following her.
"How long?" Nessa whispered.
Mara could not tell her. She watched Hester's hand hover over the release. The green light came on. Hester moved.
Mara left Kit only long enough to open the hatch.
Leonie waited beyond it with fresh lines looped over both forearms. Benji crouched at the docking floor, one hand on a guide, the other holding a prefilled branch. Their stillness made Mara furious. Then she saw the tiny movements of their fingers, the concentration. They were not calm. They were ready.
"Kit first," she said.
Nessa made a sound. She bit it off before it became a protest.
Leonie climbed in and looked at Kit's sleeve. For the first time since the injury her hands hesitated.
"Now," Mara said.
The physician knelt between the seat and the hull. Benji fed her the lines. She opened the return first, joined it to a short bypass, checked it, then released the supply. The fresh fluid entered the clear sleeve in a sudden bright stream.
Nothing happened.
Mara heard Nessa's nails dragging against the frame again. Hester had moved to her and was keeping her hands away from her own fittings.
"Kit," Leonie said. "Can you hear me?"
His eyes remained open. Mara pressed two fingers against his wrist and felt almost nothing. A slow flutter beneath the new tissue, no answer she could trust.
Leonie raised the flow.
The sleeve at his side convulsed. Mara jerked her hand away before she could stop herself. Under the clear skin a line of dark material broke loose and moved into the return. The pale web contracted around the torn ribs. Kit's mouth opened.
He gagged, though there was nothing to bring up. His back arched against the seat. Mara caught his head so it would not strike the hull.
"Easy. Easy."
"Let him move," Leonie said.
"I'm keeping his head—"
"I know. Not his chest."
The little flap beneath his sternum unfolded. Mara saw it through the thinning shirt, a quick fan of translucent ribs. It closed again. Kit's hand struck her shoulder, hard enough to hurt, and stayed there.
"There," Leonie said, with no triumph in it. "There you are."
His eyes found Mara. She wanted to look away from the accusation she expected and found only terror. It was worse.
Benji took Leonie's second line to Nessa. Hester made room, climbing awkwardly over the folded center seat. Nessa could not sit forward to help. The gray in her hands had reached the wrist, and her lips moved soundlessly. Benji touched her cheek.
"Your turn."
He was very direct now. No extra words. He set the return, set the supply, watched the pale fluid enter. Nessa's fingers clawed shut. She screamed, one hoarse expelled note, then bent forward over her lap and stayed there shaking.
Mara waited until Kit's hand loosened. She laid it on the blanket, opened his restraint and told him they were moving. He did not help. His body was heavier now that he was alive again, or her arms had become much weaker. Leonie took his upper half while Mara supported his legs. Hester backed through the hatch carrying the lines.
They almost caught the sleeve on the sill.
"Stop," Benji said.
Everyone stopped.
He freed a loop from the seat buckle, put it in Hester's hand, and nodded. They carried Kit through the dry docking space into the station. Nessa followed with a hand over her eyes and her bag dragging along the floor.
Jonah had cleared the table again.
Mara could not bear the sight of it.
"Bench," she said.
Leonie looked at Kit, then at the wall outlet. "We need him flat."
"Then the table."
They laid him down. The gold threads in his side moved steadily, but something had changed at his neck. A thin blue-white patch spread beneath the skin, flexing when he swallowed. She had not seen it before the ascent.
"What is that?" she asked.
Leonie looked. Her expression went blank with attention.
"New tissue."
"From what?"
"The interruption. The damage it caused."
Mara stood very still.
Kit turned his head toward Leonie. "Get away."
She did not move.
"Get away from me."
Jonah took her elbow. It was a small touch. She yielded to it as if he had pushed her with all his weight. Benji moved into the space she left and checked the line without touching Kit.
Mara followed Leonie to the passage.
"You knew," she said.
Leonie looked back toward the table. "I knew stored charge falls. I told you."
"You told me short transfers. You let me put them in a capsule for a ninety-minute ascent."
"We could turn around. We did turn around."
"They almost died."
Leonie's mouth tightened. "I could see that."
Mara wanted to strike her. The wish arrived with such clarity that she stepped back. Her hands were still holding the shape of Kit's legs.
Hester called her from the dock. She had left the hatch open but the capsule's lights had dimmed. The pilot's face was gray above the mask she had put back on before entering the station.
"Battery spent on the extra approach," she said. "We're still viable. Less margin. I want the rig isolated until I finish the power check."
Mara took her hand off the hatch.
"Sal wants you."
"Tell him the patients are connected. Alive."
"He heard. He wants you."
Mara went into the capsule. The two seats remained unfolded. A clean oxygen mask lay on the floor where Nessa had dropped it. Mara picked it up and hung it on the hook. Then she sat down, took off her own mask in the safe cabin atmosphere, and called Sal.
He listened to the report. Once he asked her to slow down. She had not known she was speaking fast.
"So no second ordinary trial," he said.
"No."
"Can they survive without the station?"
"Not without what supplies the circuit. The outside life."
"Can that come up?"
She looked at the yellow light through the hatch. "Not as it is."
He was silent for several seconds.
"You and Hester, Roan's equipment records, Imani if she's ordinary. Bring them. We work the rest with a specialist vehicle."
"Kit isn't equipment."
"I said his records, Venn."
Mara pressed her palms against her eyes. "Sorry."
"Can you leave him supported?"
"For now. The station's moving. The source is on a loaded cradle."
"Then tell me the actual time you've got, and the actual equipment you need. I can't send a new world down there."
She took her hands away. "I need a physical survey first. I have the operator and the rig here."
"An hour. Then I want a plan I can supply."
"All right."
When she came back through the hatch Imani stood in the Living Drum doorway, her capsule feed reconnected, one hand resting on the frame. She had seen the two patients go past. Her shoes were still tied in those careful bows.
"Do you still want to go?" Mara asked.
Imani nodded.
"You will."
"Don't promise if you don't—"
"You will."
Imani looked away. Mara heard the brutality in her own voice too late.
Kit had closed his eyes. Benji sat on the floor near his line, checking its return color. Jonah stood beside the bench with the blanket, waiting to be useful. Nessa was at the table's far end, bag in her lap, taking the photograph out.
Mara saw a woman laughing in rain, face tilted away from the camera, wet hair stuck to one cheek. Nessa set the picture flat and smoothed it with two fingers. Her nails were pink again.
Leonie stood alone at the sink.
Mara went past her without speaking and down the steps toward the Bore Room. The station's damaged shoe had moved again. On the wall screen a little red mark showed the old position. The new one sat a fraction lower, still impossibly close to it.
She called Nessa's name.
Behind her a chair scraped. Nessa put the photograph away and came.