“The computer’s feeding me instructions through my hud,” DJ said.
“But you still have to have some clue what to do. You really are a computer genius, aren’t you?”
“You can bake.”
“Anyone can learn to bake,” I said. “What you’re doing is on a whole other level.”
DJ’s laugh filled the emptiness. It was quickly becoming my favorite sound. “I’ll teach you about computers and you can teach me to bake.”
“How is that a fair trade?” I asked. “Baking is fun.”
“And fixing computers isn’t?”
“No.”
“That’s only because you’ve never done it,” DJ said. “There’s a rush that comes from solving a problem that’s like nothing else.”
“You are such a nerd.” DJ’s enthusiasm was endearing. I still had no desire to learn how to tinker with computers or write code, but I could’ve happily listened to DJ talk about it all day.
“I’m serious!”
“Oh, I know you are,” I said. “But you should stay focused on what you’re doing.” I pointed at the screen.
Maybe this isn’t so bad. Spending time with DJ and Jenny, laughing and telling jokes. I was smiling before I realized it. And then the horror of what I’d been thinking hit me. The idea that this could be normal, that I could get used to living on a spaceship, was revolting. I’d toss myself out of the airlock before I let Qriosity become my new normal.
“You done yet?” I asked, getting impatient.
“Almost.”
“Good,” I said. “The faster we flip on the GPS and go home, the better.”
FOUR
FIXING THE NAVIGATIONAL ARRAY TOOK two long hours. I had plenty of oxygen left, according to the readout in my hud, but I walked as quickly as I safely could back to the airlock, determined to get out of the suit.
“What’s the hurry?” DJ asked.
“I want to see if it worked.” I was winded, but I didn’t want DJ to know.
“Do you hate it here so much?” DJ asked. “It’s not like you get the chance to explore space every day.”
“Are you serious?” I stopped, and DJ stumbled into me from behind. Instinctively, I crouched down and grabbed hold of something to make sure I didn’t fly off, but my mag boots held tightly to the surface. When I was sure we were secure, I stood.
“I was mostly serious,” DJ said when we were walking again.
“I was kidnapped and brought aboard Qriosity, DJ. There’s nothing fun about it.” It was driving me mad that DJ couldn’t seem to get that through his head.
“But what if this doesn’t work?” DJ asked. “What if we get stuck out here for a long time?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“What if it does?” DJ pressed.
“Do you want to stay out here?” I asked. “Did you hate your life so much that you’re willing to ignore how seriously disturbing it is that someone put three teens who don’t know anything about running a ship in charge of one?” I shook my head, not caring that DJ couldn’t see me do it. “I’m not playing their game, DJ.”
DJ’s voice was calm despite my anger. “So if you don’t get your way, you’re going to give up? That seems like a real terrible way to live your life.”
I rounded on DJ and yelled, “You don’t know the first goddamn thing about my life, okay?” I was vibrating with anger, but DJ didn’t respond, so I took off walking, not caring if he followed.
DJ caught up to me as we neared the airlock. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, Noa. I’m just worried about losing you again.”
“Losing me again?”
“You know,” DJ said. “To the couch. To depression and Anastasia Darling.”
I tried to throw up my hands in frustration, but it didn’t have the same effect in a gravity-free environment. “Why did we come out here if you’ve already decided it’s not going to work?”
DJ sighed. “There are so many things that could go wrong. We might’ve fixed navigation, only to discover something else is broken. Or we might get back to Earth and find that nothing’s the way we left it.”
“None of that is going to happen,” I said.
“But it might.”
“It won’t!”
“You don’t know that, Noa!”
DJ and I didn’t speak again until we were inside the airlock and the outer door was secured. We were stuck in the tiny space together for two minutes while it pressurized, making him difficult to avoid.
“Sorry for yelling,” he said.
I began to apologize too, but I wasn’t sorry. “I didn’t ask to be here. I’m not the kind of person who can shrug and accept that this is my life now. And I don’t know what will happen if fixing the nav array doesn’t work. I can’t even think about it because if I do, I might sit down in this airlock and never get up again. It just has to work. There’s no other option, okay?”
DJ looked at me, and I could practically hear the speech he’d composed about how I was stronger than I thought I was and how we could face anything if we faced it together or some other nonsense. There were entire monologues written across his face that I never got to hear. Because when he finally spoke, just as the airlock chimed and the inner door opened, all he said was, “Okay, Noa.”
Jenny was sitting at the starboard station with her feet propped on the console when DJ and I reached Ops. “Good, you’re back,” she said. “I tried calling you, but neither of you answered, so I assumed you were dead.”
“And you look absolutely broken up over it,” I said.
Jenny shrugged. “You, at least, have been dead before. I figured it might not stick.”
DJ slid behind the nearest console and began to work. I stood over his shoulder, trying to follow along, but I was immediately lost. DJ navigated the system like he’d been working on it his entire life. The only difference I noticed was that the status lights that had been red before now shone green.
“It worked,” I said under my breath. We’d fixed the array. The countdown clock on the screen said we had four hours and fifty-three minutes until our next jump, which meant we could be home in under five hours. My skin felt hot and itched. I was sure that if I’d been in the spacesuit, the hud would be warning me to practice deep breathing.
DJ and Jenny, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to feel the way I did about Qriosity. DJ viewed it as an opportunity to explore the stars like a hero from a science fiction book, and I couldn’t get a read on what Jenny thought of our situation, but she didn’t seem terribly troubled by it so long as she had a steady supply of Nutreesh. For me, though, Qriosity was a prison. There might not have been jailers, and we might have been able to travel freely from one end of the universe to the other, but the ship was still a prison and we had been sentenced to life.
“Here goes,” DJ said. “I’m asking Qriosity to scan for our current location.” He tapped a button on the console and then sat back, folding his arms across his chest.
My entire body tensed while we waited. It seemed like forever, but a moment later a message appeared on the screen: Location scan in progress. Location scan will take approximately thirty-one hours and twelve minutes.