A Door Without Hinges

The door grew shut behind them.

Mara disliked that more than she disliked its shape. Doors should have hinges, pistons, something whose failure you could predict. This one sealed in a slow ripple of translucent layers, leaving her alone with an unconscious friend and a stranger who had already heard too much of her ship's language.

She lowered Eli onto a bench. Her hood flashed thirty seconds.

The stranger crossed to a recess and turned an actual wheel. Mara nearly laughed with relief. Air hissed from a vent. A mechanical gauge climbed, and her suit's sampler confirmed oxygen, nitrogen, tolerable carbon dioxide. No recognized toxins.

That did not mean no unrecognized ones.

He removed his own mask from beneath his coat and breathed conspicuously. Then he pointed at a filter hanging beside the bench, followed by her hood's intake port.

“That's a better offer,” she said.

He did not understand, but he waited while she checked the fitting. The filter had an adjustable collar and an inner mesh so fine it looked solid. She attached it, kept the hood on, and let local air enter through two layers of filtration.

Her lungs stopped fighting her.

The stranger exhaled too. An oddly private sound.

“Mara,” she said, touching her chest. Then she indicated the bench. “Eli.”

“Sael.” He pronounced it softly, one syllable with a breath inside it.

She repeated it. His eyes creased at the corners. Apparently she had got close enough.

The almost-smile caught her off guard. It made him look younger, less like another impossible feature of this moon. She tried his name once more, and he repeated hers with such careful attention that she looked down at Eli before her face could warm.

The room held two benches, a wall of drawers, and a narrow inner door. None of the instruments had screens. Needles, weights, colored fluid: someone had built a refuge that refused to listen.

Mara pointed to Eli's leg. “Can I have that light?”

Sael followed her gesture and placed a lamp where she indicated. She cut away the sealed fabric above the injury, cleaned the blood with her last sterile wipe, and checked circulation. His ankle was swelling, but his foot stayed warm. A fracture, likely. A problem Tomas could solve, if she could reach him.

Sael laid two flat splints beside her. He watched her hands instead of taking over.

“You're good at this,” she said. “I hope that's because people here break ankles doing something ordinary.”

He tilted his head.

“Bad joke. Sorry.”

She secured the splints. Eli stirred, muttered a complaint about the service, and slipped back into exhausted sleep. His pulse remained steady beneath her fingers.

Only then did Mara notice how badly her own hands shook.

Sael noticed too. He set a sealed drinking pouch within reach and moved to the other bench. Space offered without ceremony. She appreciated it enough to feel briefly angry with him; she could not afford to appreciate anything until her crew was safe.

She opened her wrist unit in passive mode. No transmitter, no sound. The emergency translation package could learn through a cable, provided his people possessed written language and he consented to sharing it.

Sael rose immediately.

“Off,” he said.

Mara froze. His pronunciation was exact. Her own voice, almost.

“You understand me?”

He touched a metal disk behind his ear. Three tiny lights glowed along its edge. Then he held up three fingers, lowered one, and pointed toward her device.

Limited charge. Or limited translations. She could work with either.

“It doesn't send,” she said, keeping her words slow. “Receive only.”

His gaze held hers. She turned the unit outward so he could inspect the disabled antenna. He examined it without touching her, then nodded once.

From a drawer he took a slate and stylus. He drew the ship, six short lines beneath it, and a circle around the room. When he pointed to the remaining four lines, Mara's throat tightened.

“Yes. Four outside. I need them.”

Sael drew a route between the ship and shelter. Across it, he added a row of teeth.

“The silver threads?”

He nodded. His second eyelids swept sideways, a quick shimmer.

Mara drew a radio antenna. Sael crossed it out hard enough to score the slate. Then he drew a small square inside a head, followed by the silver teeth.

It learned voices. It followed signals. Neither fact explained why the moon had seized control of their guidance before impact.

She drew the Aster descending, then a question mark.

Sael studied it. At last he activated the disk again.

“Invitation,” he said. A pause. “Mistake.”

One light went dark.

Mara felt a coldness that the warm room could not touch. “Whose mistake?”

He looked toward the inner door.

Before she could press him, a dull impact sounded through the wall. Three knocks, a pause, two more.

Their shipboard emergency code.

Mara lurched to her feet. “That's Jo.”

Sael moved in front of the door, then stopped when she tightened her grip on the wrench. He stepped aside and pointed to a tiny inspection slit.

She looked through.

Jo stood outside in a yellow pressure suit, one hand braced against the glass. Rook was behind her. Tomas supported Nessa, whose helmet hung at an alarming angle. Four living people, exactly where Mara needed them.

She reached for the wheel.

Sael tapped the slate sharply. He drew six lines again, then crossed out the radio antenna. He pointed at Jo and made the same crossing motion.

Their transmitters.

Mara couldn't signal through her own without attracting the threads. She looked around the room, spotted the lamp, and seized it. Sael watched as she covered the beam with her glove and flashed the suit maintenance code against the slit.

Radio fault. Disconnect power. Confirm.

Jo stared, then raised both middle fingers at her.

Mara almost sobbed. Definitely Jo.

One by one, the crew detached their communication cells. Sael checked a gauge beside the wheel, waited until its needle settled, and opened the outer chamber.

They came in coughing, swearing, carrying the bitter smell of scorched insulation. Rook counted them all before she allowed herself to sit. Tomas reached Eli in three strides. Nessa looked at Sael and whispered, “Oh.”

“His name is Sael,” Mara said. “He helped us.”

Rook held out an empty hand. Sael considered it, then touched his fingertips to hers.

“Our long-range dish survived,” Jo said. “We can pull it off the hull and call the Wayfarer before its orbit takes it behind the moon.”

Sael's expression darkened at the word call. Apparently the disk continued learning even when it could no longer speak.

“No active signals yet,” Mara said. “There's something outside that follows them.”

“And if we don't transmit?” Rook asked.

Mara had no answer.

Sael crossed to the inner door and unlocked it with a strip of dark metal. Beyond lay a circular chamber, its walls covered in handwritten marks. At its center, suspended between copper clamps, hung a fragment of the Aster's guidance beacon.

Mara recognized the serial number. She had installed it herself, six months before launch.

The fragment was buried beneath years of mineral growth.

Sael touched the last lit point on his translator.

“Not time,” he said with painful care. “Copies.”

From the copper clamps, in Mara's own voice, the fragment whispered, “Six people aboard. Let me show you how to open the door.”