Page 91 of The End of the World As We Know It

Then the Graceful Man says,Gemma, grace under pressure.

“But I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve never––”

Trust yourself. I’ll take care of everything else.

A trail of gore drifts between her and the control panel.That’s Matt, she thinks. She sweeps her hand through it, splitting it into countless droplets that spread like an exploding star.

He schemed against you, with her. You know they’d already decided how to end their lives? All without you. They waited until you were asleep.

The shuttle is shivering and shaking now, and Gemma checks the displays, the flickering map, holding on to the joystick and feeling a calm certainty regarding her path. She straps herself into the pilot’s seat asDiscoverybegins to shake.

“I am no disgrace,” she whispers.

The body nudges against her again. She shoves him away.

Lizzie tried to calm herself, forcing herself to slow down. The space suit flipped and floated around her. She’d put one leg in and started spinning, bouncing from padded walls. She stilled herself, breathed deeply, and realized she was taking one of her last breaths.

They died doing what they loved, she remembered fellow astronaut trainees saying about theChallengercrew. She’d scoffed at the time.There’s no good time to die, she’d said.

She was doubting that concept now. The planet was a graveyard, but hope could not die. If her life ending could maintain some kind of hope, then these final breaths were her most precious.

Or maybe she was as crazy as Gemma.

She breathed deeply again and pulled on the rest of the suit. She grabbed the helmet and went to the air lock. The handle felt warm through her gloves, as if someone had been holding it just before her. Her hands felt dirty. And suddenly she was filled with an unreasonable terror about what might lie on the other side.

Lizzie turned the handle and hauled the air lock door open. Inside, she maneuvered her way around and shut the hatch behind her, then turned again to the inner hatch that led into the depressurized payload bay.

This was it. This was––

The shuttle shook and rattled, the vibration increasing in intensity as Gemma took them down, down, skimming the atmosphere and then striking in at a sharp angle, beginning to pierce the earth’s protective cloak.

“Move your fucking ass!” Lizzie said to herself, and as she brought the helmet up she knew they were the last words she would ever speak. A bland epitaph.

She took in several deep breaths, held the last, and secured the helmet over her head and onto the suit. Without an air supply she’d have maybe one more full lungful within the helmet, and that was it. Two full breaths. Maybe four minutes.

The countdown to her final moment had begun.

Always been counting down, she thought,making the most of that dash, Lizzie O’Connor, 1958–1990.

Breath held, she turned the air lock handle.

It was tugged from her hand as the lock vented, flinging the hatch open and drawing her out into the payload bay. A few low lights were on––

––what was I thinking, I should have brought a fucking flashlight!––

––and the first thing she saw was Hans, his body performing a slow spin so close to the air lock that she clashed with him, his sleeping bag half-open, his frost-glittered face staring at her with an open mouth and one hooded eye.

Lizzie cried out, then realized what she’d done. She clamped her mouth shut, then drew in as much breath as she could from the helmet.

Her four minutes were down to maybe two.

She steadied herself, closed her eyes for five seconds, willed her panicked heart to slow.

Opening her eyes again, she took in the scene. The two deadly missiles were secured in their cradle. The payload doors were shut. Hans spun away from her and struck the right bulkhead, and Frank was just visible beyond the payload, motionless against the hold’s rear end.

To her left was the manual operation point for the payload bay doors.

Lizzie pushed herself away and grasped the handle next to the control panel.