Mara spent the morning of the third day elbow to elbow with Suri in Kestrel's service cupboard.
The spare went in badly before it went in well. A mounting tongue caught on a lip, and Suri uttered a short, persuasive obscenity. Mara braced the replacement while Suri freed it.
“That's not in the manual,” Mara said.
“Then you've got the abridged edition.”
They checked the connections, ran the first cycle, watched the temperature settle instead of wandering. At the hub end, a bag of tools hung patiently upside down. The ring's large aging circuits went on failing a few passages away. This little loop belonged to a different sealed room. That was why the work could be more than another postponement.
By afternoon the habitat was full of the people who wanted to live in it, and the things they thought living required.
Alma had brought a pillow rather than the chair. It was almost as large as a person. Dev brought a listening kit, repair tools and three tightly tied cases. Nessa brought clothing, a kitchen pack, and one small bag she refused to let Ivo stack under anything else. Oren, Lida and Bess had arrived from their rooms in the ring, still wearing shoes they wouldn't need here.
There were eight of them. Mara and Suri had tested the eight-adult load with reserve margin; no one had to make room by changing their mind. But bodies were not a neat test load. They made the short space hot with conversation, knees, breath and desires.
“Let's try the sleep positions,” Suri said.
Alma released the first restraint, which immediately floated into somebody's face.
“That's affectionate,” she said. “Not ideal.”
They tried again. Oren held onto a rail without letting go, even after he had clipped into the sleeping strap. Ivo showed him how to relax his knees. His foot drifted against Nessa's shoulder. She pushed it away.
“Already better than a housemate,” he said. “No floorboards.”
“There are still feet,” Nessa said.
Mara watched Ivo turn to make space for her. He was good at that. He could discover hospitality in a cupboard. It didn't make the cupboard a hall.
They rehearsed moving to the hygiene compartment, fetching water, sharing an open meal bag without scattering it. Somebody had to get out of the way every time somebody else began. Dev asked whether his sleep corner could be quiet; Nessa asked where dinner would be prepared; Alma tried turning over and found an elbow waiting for her.
The system carried the load. The display held steady. Mara felt the distinct pleasure of a repair that worked, and waited for it to become relief about her husband. It didn't.
“Food and the things we can't recover,” she told them, “are finite. At eight people, the inventory gives roughly six months. That isn't a promise about how long the hardware works.”
“We can get work,” Dev said. “I can talk to Earth. I've talked to people already.”
“Talk, yes,” Suri said. “Don't put a ship inside that sentence.”
He nodded. “I didn't.”
Ivo pushed off toward the middle of the room, caught a rail and turned as if he were marking the beginning of a phrase. His heel stopped short of Alma's pillow.
“We'll find a way to teach,” he said. “Move the cases for a while. It's still people sharing space.”
Mara saw Nessa turn her head away.
“This isn't the commons,” Suri said.
“I know that.”
“Then stop telling them it is.”
“I'm not.”
“You've been using a very large word for a very small room.”
He looked at Mara. She wished he hadn't. It made her stand inside Suri's sentence as if the two of them had prepared it together.
“The ring has different weights,” she said. “You use the floor. You use the room. There's no floor here.”
“I know how movement works.”
“Not the same movement. Not the whole life. You've brought them here to keep something you can't keep.”
His face closed.
“And what did you bring me a seat to keep?” he asked.
She could feel all the bodies around them becoming careful. She hated him for making them witnesses, and hated herself for having given him the chance.
“I'm talking about the test.”
“No, you're not.”
The display was steady. An independent refuge, with enough room for eight people and no room at all for the answer she wanted.
She took one breath.
“The systems passed the test,” she said. “That doesn't make this the commons. But I shouldn't have told you that no life here could be worth choosing.”
He didn't look pleased. She wasn't doing it to please him.
Suri brought them back to work. Each person practiced getting to the service access without moving a sleeper. Ivo bumped a knee, apologized, held a bag while Alma clipped it away. When they tried to make a shared empty center, it held for a few minutes before ordinary activity filled it.
Mara saw what was attractive: Earth all around the windows, the ease of floating, people she liked inches from her hand. She saw what she would miss immediately. A door. A long walk. A place to be bad-tempered without seven other people experiencing it.
They ended the trial with no failure. That made leaving it harder.
In the hub, Ivo caught her sleeve.
“Do you think there's nothing worth staying for?”
She rubbed at a crease the trial had left on her wrist.
“I think there's a lot. I don't want to be one of the things you say survived unchanged.”
He let her sleeve go.
She went to Traverse carrying the readings, and did not turn a good result into bad news. It was a good result. She had given people something they could use.
That evening she ate a meal alone and missed the table more than she wanted to admit.