Serenity Imperative

The airlock door is red. Acer stands back, rotating the silver and lapis ring on his finger. He wants to go for the override switch. But he needs to be careful. The crisscrossing of scars on his forearms is a reminder. He counts the seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.

Behind the airlock, the portal hums at an uncomfortable pitch. Acer knows it’s standing open to a field of swaying grass. He looks at the cracked panel that once gave a temperature readout. The needle sags, hanging well below zero.

Beside Acer, Chase shifts his weight. Acer looks towards where the horizon would be if this planet had one. He can’t even see the edge of the bluff through the haze. He can see Emily, though. She’s inside the glass cube that protects the control panel, muffled in her sandwrap. He can’t see her face, but he can picture her expression. She’ll be frowning at the dials, fiddling with the settings, trying to offload some of the heat.

The override switch is behind a panel beside the glowing door. Acer looks at it, tempted. Chase crosses his arms. “No,” he says. “Remember last time?” He’s a solid presence in this ethereal world of fog and grit. His long hair is bound up under his hood to keep it out of the wind.

Acer looks at Emily again. And his heart lurches. Behind her, coalescing on the thin air, is a shadow. It’s almost nothing—merely a smudge. But Acer knows it’s not nothing. It’s the most dangerous thing about this hostile planet.

Chase sees it too. He steps forward with purpose, raising his voice. “It’s fine,” he says. “Look, Emily. It’s not a big deal. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

The smudge has already changed. Now, it’s a shadow. Whatever furious calculations are going on in Emily’s mind, Chase’s tone brings her back. She looks through the glass. She doesn’t look over her shoulder. But Acer can see her dawning awareness of what she’s feeling. She flips a switch. She calls through the glass. “I could fix this if I had a variable-wavelength jitter injector!”

She’s said this a hundred times. But they have neither a VWJI nor the funds to bring one in.

The portal squeals as it powers down, vibrating so hard Acer feels the rumble in his sternum. The airlock door fades from red to silver. The needle on the temperature gauge doesn’t move. The wind kicks, swirling the fog and causing trails of sand to slither over his boots. Acer forces himself to look away from Emily, away from the shadow behind her shoulder, away from the override switch. He reaches inside his sandwrap and runs a finger along a recent scar. He stares into the featureless sky, refusing to think about the quota. He reaches for the mantra that’s gotten him this far. Experience. Accept. Set aside.

Emily joins them out into the wind. The smudge behind her shoulder is fading. Acer sees Chase relax. They’re all good at shaking things off. Sixteen years, they’ve made it on this outpost, where serenity is required if you want to survive.

#

They’re halfway back to the dugout when a fantastic boom splits the air, causing Acer to clap his hands over his ears. Ahead and to the east, a lightweight but battered interplanetary craft hits the landing pad in an eruption of sand and fog. Acer looks at Chase, who looks at Emily, who shakes her head. The air behind her is smooth again, as if no gap in space-time reality ever began.

The three of them change course. Acer is aware of Emily’s small presence on his left and Chase’s large one on his right. He thinks back, trying to recall the last time anyone landed here. He decides it was the final inspection—the one that resulted in Trident’s decision to stop maintaining the portal. That was five years ago now.

The mystery of this ship is unwelcome. People do not drop by this planet. Mauleiki’s reputation is too well known.

A drop door opens and three people stroll down. A brown person with no obvious gender markers, a dark-skinned man, and a pale woman. None of them are wearing sandwraps. The man and the woman are armed. Acer draws in a breath, holding his thoughts steady. If there’s violence, they will all die. And not because of the weapons.

Emily stops. Acer and Chase stop with her. The three strangers halt a few feet away. The woman speaks. “I’m Angela. This is Lawrence and that’s Lane. Trident sent us to look into some things.”

Her voice is crisp, her stance designed to draw attention to the ray gun on her hip. She has a look of strength and the sorts of curves Acer hasn’t seen in a while. Everything she’s wearing seems too tight to be comfortable.

Emily looks shapeless in comparison. She’s ridiculously fit—they all are—but her slight figure is lost in the sandwrap. She’s frozen with shock or fear or her effort to feel neither shock nor fear. Acer is also at a loss. But Chase steps forward, pulling his sandwrap aside to extend a thick hand. “Angela. I’m Chase. My friends are Emily and Acer. We’ll be the ones to answer your questions since we’re the only people on the planet.”

Angela does not return Chase’s smile. Lawrence does, though. He’s muscular beneath a layer of softness. He’s not as big as Chase, but taller and bulkier than Acer. He’s wearing a brown jacket that looks like leather but surely can’t be. Lane avoids shaking hands. Ve has an apple-shaped body, dewy eyes beneath a short shock of graying hair, and an air of preemptive apology—the implied potential to bruise with ease.

Acer is attentive to the air behind these strangers. They will have been briefed. They will know the dangers. But knowing and seeing are not the same thing.

“Great to have you,” Chase says. He pushes back his hood, frees his hair from its bun, and ties it into a ponytail. “Come on. Let’s get out of this sand.”

He leads everyone towards the dugout, to the locker outside. He dials the combination. “Weapons go here.” He opens the door.

Lane is wearing a bright vest of patterned purple over a crisp white shirt. Ve tucks ves hands into the small pockets as if to indicate both are empty.

But Angela bristles. Lawrence reaches for the blaster holstered to his thigh. Acer feels his heart catch. Breathe, he thinks.

Angela opens her mouth, but Lawrence speaks first. He unhooks the blaster and sets it on a shelf. “Come on, Flygirl. They warned us about this.” He nods at Chase. The two of them head for the dugout.

There’s now a smudge behind Angela’s shoulder. Emily catches Acer’s eye before jogging after Chase, saying something about the state of the airlocks. Lane drifts along behind her, casting a worried glance at Angela before pausing to shake sand out of ves shoe.

Angela looks at Acer. Her eyes are wide-set and small above a narrow nose and a taut, sour mouth. The rise and fall of her chest is overly obvious in her tight shirt. “It’s nothing personal,” he says, pushing back his hood and feeling the grit on his scalp. “It’s just safer.”

He sees Angela notice his scars, sees something in her stance shift one click in a better direction. He decides he’s done the best he can. He turns to follow the others. Blowing sand prickles his hands and his back prickles with awareness of the ray gun. He does not allow himself to brace for pain. He’s gone three steps when he hears the chink of metal on metal and a thud as Angela slams the locker door. By the time they reach the dugout, the smudge is gone.

#

Inside, the Trident representatives decline refreshments. Chase shows them to the guest wing while Acer and Emily prepare lunch. Angela reappears while they’re cleaning up. She has questions about the quota and why the last two shipments were short. Lawrence and Lane drift out a few minutes later. Acer lets Chase do the talking. He watches more than listens, fiddling with his ring. Soon they are handing out sandwraps and heading out again into the wind.

On the bluff, they stand in the blowing sand with the fog all around. The visitors scratch their scalps and the backs of their hands. Emily powers up the portal. The airlock door turns red. She fiddles with the dials until Chase gives her a look and she powers everything down. “Three days, it’s been doing this,” he says. “Emily thinks it’s something to do with one of the slow-moving electrical storms. So we’re waiting. Acer is remarkable, but he doesn’t need more scars.”

Angela has tied her wrap as tight as she can, which defeats the purpose. Sand is building up in the creases. She brushes at one of these, her eyebrows drawing together. “Your reports say the portal malfunctions sometimes. But this is a problem with the airlock. Turn it back on.”

Emily stiffens, her cheeks flaring pink. She’s the smartest of the three of them, but she’s more comfortable with systems and numbers than people. “Heat coming off the portal triggers the airlock’s protective mechanism. When the door is red, it won’t open unless we do a manual override. We risk it sometimes to make quota. But it’s not safe. It’s also not safe to power the portal on again before the system has cooled. I’ve done that once today already, at your request.”

Angela’s small eyes narrow. The air behind her shoulder has started to waver. Chase steps in again, speaking with his typical ambivalent good cheer. “We’ll tell you everything you want to know,” he says. “But not here. There’s no need to be out in the sand.”

#

Back in the dugout, out of their sandwraps, they settle around the kitchen table. The smudge is there behind Angela’s shoulder, but it hasn’t thickened. Chase and Emily and Acer are all trying to watch it without touching it with their eyes. Lawrence and Lane seem oblivious. So does Angela.­

“Okay,” Angela says. “Your quotas have fallen short because the portal overheats when it’s open.” She looks at Emily. “Why haven’t you repaired it? Weren’t you some sort of mechanical wunderkind?”

Emily bares her teeth in a smile that shows too much emotion. “Look,” Chase says. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m just wondering. You know what we deal with here, right? The phenomenon that caused Trident to abandon a habitable planet after the terraforming got to a point where it could support human life? I’m asking because, Angela, I have to say, it doesn’t seem like your tone is designed to support the equilibrium of the group. Your aggression is dangerous for everyone.”

Angela doesn’t flinch. She answers fast, sounding almost pleased. “Most people agree the reports were exaggerated, Trident’s reaction extreme.”

Emily looks down into her mug. “Tell that to the 80% of people who didn’t survive their first week here.”

A tense silence falls. The dugout’s air filtration system hums. The windows let in a dim echo of the illumination that passes for daylight here, but the supplemental lighting was designed to support emotional well-being. The well-illuminated and clean except for a scattering of sand on the floor.

Acer sips his tea, feeling the lack of something stronger for the first time in years. Lane fidgets with the lapels of ves vest. Angela leans back, her expression becoming smug. “You guys are good,” she says. Her stingy mouth twitches into a conspiratorial smile. “But you’re laying it on a bit thick if you ask me.”

Acer breathes. Chase and Emily do the same. Without needing to discuss it, the three of them rise. If serenity cannot be maintained, separation must be enforced. “Let’s take a break,” Chase says. His hair is down so it falls in loose waves around his shoulders, giving him the look of a super ripped guru. “We all need to cool off and think about how best to talk to each other. We’ll meet back here,” he looks at the clock on the wall, “at 18:00.”

The three of them turn for the hall that leads to the residents’ wing. They haven’t gone three steps before Angela scrapes back her chair, stands, and slams the flat of her hand onto the table. The bang stops them in their tracks. “Don’t walk away from me,” she snaps. “I can shut you down if I want.”

Her tone is full of fury. Acer can’t help it. He turns around. He’s in time to see the smudge behind Angela progress into a shadow. And then, one beat later, it becomes a body.

#

The creature that appears is not human. But it’s also not anything else. Bipedal and narrow, indistinct like the fog outside, something about its flowing outline gives the impression of an ethereal priest standing with hands folded inside the draping sleeves of a robe. It’s the first time this has happened in a while. Acer feels the hair on the back of his neck rise. He smells hot tar and rotting seaweed. It’s a familiar scent, both caustic and pungent.

Imjori. That was the name the first settlers gave these phenomena. Acer and the others use the proper name sometimes. Other times, they just call them watchers.

Acer glances at the imjori’s face. For now, there’s nothing to see. A smooth plane of shadow lies within the illusion of a hood.

But Acer knows better than to think this will last. Lane and Lawrence surge to their feet, Lane yelping with surprise. Chase begins to speak, raising his voice to ensure he’s heard. “Okay, we have a manifestation. That’s fine. Everyone, stay calm. Staying calm is the important thing. Strong emotions will attract more. All we have to do is ignore it. Don’t look at it. Try not to even think about it. And whatever you do, don’t speak to it.”

Chase’s tone is steady, the words urgent but unhurried. Lawrence visibly struggles to tear his gaze from the uncanny presence. He succeeds and takes a few steps around the table.

But Lane is frozen, ves frightened eyes fixed on the imjori. Emily moves over, drawing ves attention with a touch. “Don’t look at it,” she repeats. Lane’s head turns. Ves forehead is creased with worry. Ve says something Acer can’t hear.

Angela has gone still. But her expression remains calculating. She tilts her head. “So this is what happens.” Her tone is provocative, radiating skepticism. “Creepy, I’ll grant you. But dangerous? It’s not even solid.”

 Emily is guiding Lane towards the nearest hall. Chase takes a few steps backwards while speaking in the same instructive tone. “We have a protocol,” he says. “Angela, that door behind you leads to an isolation pod. Everything you need to be comfortable for a few days is in there. You can come back out when the imjori fades.”

Angela doesn’t respond. She’s watching the imjori. She thinks it can’t tell, but Acer knows better.

Acer risks another glance at the face. The outlines of eyes have appeared, pupils filling in as if sketched by a rapid hand. Below, he sees the first line depicting what will become a mouth.

Acer looks at Chase. In the weight of their exchanged glance, they accept that Angela is lost. Emily and Lane are nearing the far side of the room, but Lawrence has stopped a few feet from the table. He’s looking at Angela with an expression Acer can’t read. “Flygirl,” his voice is a gentle rumble, “maybe we should listen to these folks. They’ve been here a long time.”

But it’s too late. Below the hum of the air filtration system, down at the edge of Acer’s ability to hear, an eerie whine has begun. He does not need to look at the imjori’s face again. He knows what that sound means. There will be a mouth now—a stretched O of distress.

Acer breathes, feels his escalating terror, and releases it. No one has ever soothed a watcher that’s started to make noise. The question now is how much carnage this one will cause.

Acer has no reason to care if Lawrence lives or dies. But there can be a bridging effect. The attack always starts with the person who agitates the imjori. From there, the violence can leap to anyone nearby.

So Acer takes a risk. He steps forward and puts a hand on Lawrence’s shoulder, trying to guide the larger man away. The touch is light, a suggestion only. He feels the texture of the worn jacket and thinks it must be leather after all. “Come on,” he says. When the shoulder stiffens, he adds. “Lawrence, please.”

The whine intensifies, becoming a vague wail that tingles up the spine. Lawrence looks at Angela, who’s standing by the table in a pose of pure arrogance. The imjori’s eyes are large and shining now, its mouth a wet hole in a face of blotchy, piebald skin. As the wail builds, the smell does too.

“Hurry,” Acer says.

Lawrence begins to move with purpose. As Emily guides Lane into one hallway and the three men reach the other, Angela sets her hands on her hips and laughs. “You’re all acting like children.” She turns to face the watcher, looking directly into its face.

The imjori moves. Forearms emerge from the apparition of its sleeves. It has no hands. Instead of wrists and fingers, there are two coils of pure force.

The imjori snaps its arms in a crisscross movement. Angela doesn’t have time to make another sound. A new smell fills the air—one of charred flesh.

#

“We’re not from Trident.”

Lawrence makes this confession via the vidscreen system. All five surviving humans on the planet have watchers now. But Angela’s vanished after killing her. Acer is trying to count that as lucky.

The rest of them are isolating. Acer’s imjori is so indistinct that even its scent is faint. He ignores it, concentrating on Chase’s face on the screen. Cameras don’t pick up the imjori. This is a safe way for them all to talk.

Chase is sitting well back from the lens, his sleeves rolled up as he lounges in his chair. He drums his fingers on his desk. “Well, I suppose that’s no surprise. Why are you here? I thought everyone knew about Trident’s failed triumph on Mauleiki.”

Lawrence’s eyes are shadowed, his face drawn. His jacket is nowhere in evidence. His shirt is unbuttoned, exposing the dark skin of his throat. Acer has no way to gauge the state of the man’s watcher. He feels confident in his own survival, along with Emily and Chase’s. They’ve all experienced this before. It’s impossible to be alive without attracting an imjori from time to time. Bursts of surprise or joy will do it. Nightmares will too. For everyone but Acer, pain is a guaranteed draw. They know the drill. Isolate. Meditate. Stay calm. If there’s nothing to fuel their interest, the watchers fade.

Lane answers the question. Ves voice is reedy and urgent, seeking to place blame with the dead woman. Ve is still wearing the bright vest, which is looking rumpled. “Angela convinced us. There was an opinion piece on the interplanetary about the state of things here. She had me hack into a reports archive. She got this idea that we could fix the portal. She thought with the way you haven’t been collecting because of the malfunction, there would be a big harvest. We planned to trade our help for some of the spoils.”

Chase is rubbing his temples. Even he sounds strained. “Why didn’t you all say that in the first place? It’s a solid offer. Our contract with Trident prohibits us from trading with any other partner, but they’re also not paying a lot of attention. We’re getting desperate. We would have said yes.”

Lawrence and Lane both look down and away, Lane wiping ves eyes. Acer thinks of Angela. Before retreating to their rooms, he and Chase dragged the separated halves of her body outside and moved the furniture from the dining area so the dugout’s sterilization cycle could run unimpeded. But her death was messy. There will be traces. Blood spatter has a way of getting everywhere.

Chase speaks into the silence “Okay. Well. There’s no wishing we could start over. We’ll wait for these watchers to fade. And then we’ll see what we can do for each other.”

“What about my ship?” Lawrence says, leaning towards the camera. “We can leave this effed-up planet, go into orbit. That’ll shake these things off.”

But Chase is shaking his head. “It’s been tried.”

Lawrence sits back, blinking. “Okay,” he says. His eyes are dark and earnest as they look into the camera. “We wait then. We can wait these things out. No problem.”

#

The next morning, Lane does not accept their call. They try three times, wait fifteen minutes, and try again. Emily overrides the controls and activates the cameras in the guest suite where ve was isolating. They see a mangled body in a purple vest collapsed against the bed.

#

They bury Angela and Lane a week later. Lawrence says a few words over each grave, squinting against the blowing sand. Acer watches for a smudge. But Lawrence’s voice is steady, his eyes dry.

#

Later, they sip tea in the dugout. “Angela was the mastermind,” Lawrence is saying. “Lane was hacker and navigator. Ve had a genius for getting around and away from security of every kind.” He’s telling them of his past. He and his two partners were adept at arriving at neglected outposts and offering help only to make off with more than their bargain entitled them to.

Lawrence is an engineer, like Emily. “It’s not what I ever wanted to do,” he says, shrugging. “I mean, the lying and stealing. But I met Angela after an honest mistake landed me in hot water. It was a fine life. We never did any harm. We only took what folks could spare. And Trident always responds when there’s a crisis. I bet we even helped the overall situation sometimes. We visited a lot of places like this one—failed experiments no longer receiving much support.”

To Acer, this sounds like lazy justification for a morally bankrupt life. He thinks of the discussions the three must have had before coming here and wonders how they got it so wrong.

Lawrence’s eyes flicker as if he knows what Acer is choosing not to say. “Angela thought the thing with the … phenomenon … here was blown out of proportion. She thought we could use the imjori to our advantage.”

His expression darkens. A smudge appears on the air behind him. Emily speaks up, changing the subject. Today she’s dressed in a pair of blue overalls with rainbow stripes on the straps, her hair in a short braid. “Well, she was wrong. But if you have a VWJI and will let me use it, we’re willing to make a deal.”

#

They go out to the bluff in the evening. Lawrence and Emily power the system on, standing before the panel, heads tipped down, bodies angled towards each other. Acer waits with Chase, listening to the whisper of the sand trails. The airlock door lights up and escalates to red. Emily shouts from behind the glass. “Acer, I hate to ask. But this should be the last manual override. We need to get inside the airlock to the portal itself.”

Acer can feel the heat warming one side of his face. He looks into the featureless sky. Somewhere beyond the gray, there’s a horizon and perhaps some clouds. There’s even a sun. When they first came here, young and optimistic, the dugout was full of renderings of the future. Blue skies, green fields. The end result of the terraforming project would create a world designed to support the perfect balance between civilization and the natural world.

Those renderings are gone now. So is that future. Acer doesn’t remember when the posters came down. He suspects it was after the catastrophic panic wave of 103 when the population of the planet fell from 3,000 to 53 in a week. Trident decided to halt the habitation effort until the problem of the imjori could be resolved.

He rotates the ring on his finger. “No problem.”

Chase speaks up. “I could…” But Acer has already moved forward to flip open the access door. He looks at the set of gloves suspended within. They’re made of some high-tech material. He forgets what it’s called. They’ll protect him from any heat or arcing energy.

It’s not the gloves that are the problem. It’s the cuffs that anchor them. Those are made of something less sophisticated. They get way too hot. Acer doesn’t let himself hesitate, doesn’t wonder how bad the burns will be. He can handle physical pain. It’s his inexplicable gift. No matter how badly he burns, has never attracted a watcher as a result.

#

The wounds this time are second-degree. Chase takes Acer back to the dugout and administers the salve. It’s hours before the other two return. He and Chase are at the table, drinking tea. They both sit up when the airlock hisses. Acer hears Emily’s laughter, high and girlish. She’s smiling as she hangs up her sandwrap, her eyes alight. Acer suddenly recalls her at twenty-five, back when she was full of confidence and energy, her talent and particular genius for portals having landed her a plumb position on a planet with enormous untapped potential.

Lawrence is smiling too. “Fixed it,” Emily says. “This man is a treasure.” She reaches out as if she might set a hand on his forearm but stops before making contact.

This should be welcome news. But Acer feels his chest constrict. When was the last time he saw Emily smile that way? She’s happy. Maybe too happy. He trusts her—trusts she’s in control. But Lawrence is another matter. For some people, the positive emotions are the most difficult to master.

Emily looks at Acer’s bandaged forearms. Her smile fades. “Bad?”

“No,” Acer says, already wistful for her smile. He stops the thought. Experience. Accept. Set aside.

Lawrence shrugs into his jacket. His tone is pleased. “Emily’s giving me too much credit. She handled the work with the VWJI. But I took on some smaller repairs. Things are solid now. Tomorrow, I’m going to help you all bring in the biggest bemesten harvest ever seen.”

#

Lawrence is as good as his word. When the portal’s airlock slides open the next morning with a self-satisfied hiss, he’s the first one through. Chase follows, driving the rover with the collection bin. Acer glances at the temperature gauge as he passes. The cover is still cracked, but the needle is upright, resting within a block of green. Inside the airlock, the atmosphere doesn’t even feel warm. Acer crosses to the portal and goes through.

The scene he emerges into is not dissimilar from the one he left. It’s foggy and dim. But there’s no sand here. Luxuriant grass bends beneath his boots. The onil herd Emily picked up with her scopes is a large one. The creatures respond to the appearance of strangers in their midst with their characteristic lack of interest. The field is dotted with bemesten—low mounds that stand out as dark shapes in the mist.

They get started. It’s not messy work, nor is it difficult. The dung is hard and lightweight, having calcified in a process similar to freeze-drying the moment it hit the air. The result is an easily processed source of astatine, which is in high demand for its many uses in the terraforming industry.

The portal can only stay open for so long—the duration dependent on a variety of factors that change every time. Lawrence is tireless. He works in strategic arcs to gather as much bemesten as he can before jogging to the rover to drop his clattering armloads into the bin. They’re at capacity by the time Emily sounds the whistle. They hurry back, Chase bouncing along on the rover with Lawrence ahead and Acer behind.

By the time Acer emerges into the blowing sand, the others are standing around the bin. “This won’t catch us up,” Emily says. “But it’s a great start.” She flashes a smile up at Lawrence. Acer feels his expression stiffen as a smudge appears on the air behind her shoulder before fading out again.

#

The portal works flawlessly the next day and the one after that. They collect more bemesten in three days than they did in the previous three months. Emily and Lawrence are inseparable. They repair all the airlocks, repressurize the sand seal, and work out why the air conditioner has been clunking sometimes.

It’s all good news. The bemesten is a windfall of the kind they’d stopped hoping for. Their contract prohibits them from selling the excess, but they can use it to barter with Trident for tools or materials. They have options for the first time in years. “We should stockpile. Trident has a short memory. They’ll pull us out if we fall behind next year, regardless of how much we send now.”

This is Chase’s stance. He, Emily, and Acer are in the dugout’s greenhouse, which is also the gym. It’s a room designed for growing food, working out, and offering a reprieve from a world with no sky and barely any stable ground. It’s a pleasant place. Peaceful. Lawrence is in his quarters catching up on correspondence. Acer’s burns are healing without complication. The scars will be minor. His morning workout was good. He feels relaxed. He appreciates Lawrence’s help but hasn’t forgotten the man is a thief. It’s nice for it to be just the three of them for a change.

Emily answers. She’s started doing something subtly different with her hair. She’s wearing overalls, though. Acer has never seen her in anything with a waistband. She explained to him once that she can’t stand the feeling of constriction. She’s energetic today, her words quick and full of hope. “But what if a few larger shipments would revive Trident’s interest? Herd sizes seem larger than this time last year. We could ask for a vitality scan. Original projections suggested the grass should have made it across the land bridge by now. It might even have colonized the edges of the continent of Arath. That would provide a whole new harvest zone.”

Emily has been saying things like this for days. Acer is wary of her optimism. They all agreed years ago that getting Trident more involved again isn’t the solution they need. He also can’t help but notice the way she keeps glancing towards the door.

“I don’t know,” Acer says. “Basically nothing the projections predicted has come to pass.”

Emily gives him a weary look. But then Lawrence walks in. She throws him a smile before turning back to Chase and Acer and lowering her voice. “We have three days before the kick,” she says. “Let’s all think about it.”

Lawrence joins them, settling next to Emily. In the process of sitting down, he somehow shifts his chair much closer to her than it was before.

#

Emily doesn’t join them for breakfast the next morning. She vids out while the tea is steeping. “I have one.” She looks tired. “I had a nightmare, maybe. I don’t remember.”

Chase looks at Lawrence. And something in that look makes needles of trepidation dance across the burns on Acer’s forearms. Lawrence walks to the fridge and leans past the door. “You guys ever consider getting some chickens? These protein blocks might nourish, but they do not satisfy.”

“We tried,” Chase says. “They attracted imjori and attacked them. It was a disaster.”

Lawrence emerges holding a mealshake. “You all want to get off this crazy planet, just say the word. My ship’s ready.”

#

In the days that follow, it’s not clear why Lawrence is staying with them or what he expects in return for his help. Acer resists the urge to ask. They’re all adept at avoiding discussions that might become contentious. Emily’s imjori fades. She emerges from isolation. They make three more successful runs. The night before the kick, they agree to fulfill their quota but send nothing extra. It feels like the safest choice. Afterwards, Lawrence helps Emily repair another airlock. This one restores access to a bunker that will be useful for holding the extra bemesten. After this success, they become extravagant. They activate steaks for dinner. All of them eat more than they should. Acer keeps looking up to see Emily smiling under Lawrence’s gaze.

#

The next morning, Emily vids out to say she has another watcher. “Shit, Em,” Chase says. “Is everything okay?”

She looks hollow-eyed and troubled. Lawrence has not yet appeared. “I’m fine,” she says. “Bad dreams is all.”

Acer experiences a sensation of foreboding, which he lets go. He’s certain Lawrence will vid out to say he has one too. But they hear a door fall shut in the visitors’ hall. Lawrence appears. He’s freshly shaven, his hair damp, his jacket unzipped. He joins them, whistling as he pours himself some tea. “Emily?” he says. When they explain, he seems neither surprised nor concerned.

#

Five days later, Acer knocks on Emily’s door. She opens it and looks out. The watcher is behind her, a shadow beyond her shoulder. “Ace,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Let me in.”

Her room is not tidy—she’s always been the messiest of the three of them. She falls back and Acer moves to stand beside a cascading pile of books. He catches the scent of the watcher blended with a singed aroma that makes him think she was soldering something not long ago. Emily moves towards the bed. The imjori drifts with her, as they do. Acer adjusts his gaze to get a look at it using his peripheral vision. His heart drops. It has eyes—clear and dark. Five days in, it should be all but gone. Unless it’s a new one. Or unless strong emotion is keeping it here.

He focuses on Emily. There’s resignation in her expression. “You haven’t fallen in love with him.” This, they agreed after the disaster of 103, was the one thing the group could not afford. There’d been more of them then. Kyle and Desmond, fraternal twins with a knack for growing things in adversarial conditions. Layna the spiritual adviser. Garth who looked after the plumbing. And a few dozen more besides. They’d been a community then—small but tight.

Emily plops onto the bed. Her hair is loose, and she’s wearing her favorite overalls. She gives him a look of conflicted sorrow. “He wants me to go with him,” she says. “I’m thinking about it.”

The words hit Acer so hard he stops breathing. He accepts the blow, forces himself to draw in air, releases the new tension in his shoulders. Experience. Accept. Set aside.

He can practically feel the pull on the air behind him. He lets go of everything. He closes his eyes and stops his thoughts, concentrating on the blameless gray behind his lids.

When he’s ready to look at Emily again, she’s watching him with tear-filled eyes. Behind her, the imjori has developed the faintest hint of a mouth. Acer realizes it was a mistake to come here. “You can’t go anywhere until you get rid of that thing.”

It’s not what he wanted to say. He lets himself look at her for another moment. Everything he’s always felt is there—a sea of longing behind a wall of glass.

But this conversation is dangerous. So Acer does what he has to do. He turns and pushes out the door. Walking fast, he returns to his quarters. He paces for a while, turning the silver and lapis ring on his finger. He searches for equilibrium but it eludes him. He goes to the gym and runs on a treadmill for two hours. When he’s exhausted, he is calm. For all of them, exercise works when the mantra does not.

#

The next day, Lawrence offers to operate the controls so Acer and Chase can collect more bemesten. It’s weird to walk out to the bluff without Emily, weird to look back on the dugout knowing she’s in there alone. Lawrence finds a promising signature. They go through and fill the bin, drive back to the bunker, and add to their stockpile.

#

That night, Chase comes to Acer’s door. “Hey,” he says. “Do you have the launch codes?”

Acer is in his chair by the window, reading a book that arrived with the last supply drop. “What?” He stops turning the ring on his finger. Unlike Emily’s suite, Acer’s is tidy. Nothing out of place. No objects on surfaces at all.

“The launch codes,” Chase says. “We need to send for fuel cells. Emily doesn’t have them.”

The launch codes are important. They clear all incoming and outgoing craft, manned or unmanned, for admittance into the interplanetary web.

Acer feels a twinge of dread. “I haven’t seen them since we opened the drop.”

“Weird.” He shrugs. “They’ll turn up.” He doesn’t seem troubled, so Acer lets it go. Chase leaves, shutting the door behind him. Acer stares at the book in his lap for a long time before turning the page.

#

In the morning, Lawrence and his ship are gone. They find the list of launch codes, the ones for the next three days torn off, waiting on the kitchen table with a brief note of apology. Chase points the codes out when Acer comes into the kitchen. Together, they head outside. They’re not surprised to discover both the storage bunker and the kick site bin are empty.

They walk back to the dugout through the blowing sand. Acer concentrates on breathing. He’s so focused that he feels as if his heart is beating at half its normal rate. And yet, he feels a persistent buzz of fear.

Emily is not in the kitchen. She hasn’t been out of her rooms in days. Acer wonders if Chase has any idea of what they may have lost beyond the next shipment. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” Chase says, filling the kettle. “And it’s like he said. Sure, he stole from us. But the portal works again. He helped with a lot of repairs. We’ll be able to make up for what he took.”

Acer looks at his arms. He should be able to take the bandages off tomorrow. He breathes, feels, and tries to let go. But his mind will not release the train of thought it has latched onto. Without Emily, it doesn’t matter if the portal works. Acer and Chase don’t know how to set up the equations she works every time she configures the portal to hit a target.

Chase turns from setting the kettle on its base and freezes. “What?” He does a double-take before pulling his gaze away. He tries to laugh it off. “I guess you liked the guy more than I did.”

Acer knows there’s an imjori behind him. He can smell it. More than that, the emotions that called it into being are writhing in his chest, refusing to disperse. He needs to check on Emily, to see if she’s left them with no choice but to beg Trident for extraction.

But he’s frozen. He can’t move. He can’t breathe. The smell of seaweed and tar intensifies.

Chase doesn’t look at him, but his shoulders are rigid. “Buddy,” he says. “You got to calm down.”

Acer closes his eyes. His heart is beating harder than it has in years. He feels alive with emotion, awake and wild. He can’t calm down. He’s aware of the lapis ring on his finger—the one Emily gave him years ago. There wasn’t any real meaning in it. She found it in the sand one day. “I don’t know,” she said when she set it on his palm. “It’s kind of handsome. It made me think of you.” She smiled when he slid it onto his finger. It was a perfect fit. He hasn’t removed it since.

For the first time in years, Acer feels too much. He cannot accept this, cannot set it aside. And so, he realizes, he’s going to die.

Chase’s expression is bewildered. There’s a smudge behind his shoulder now too. Acer wants to explain, but words elude him. He wonders about the face behind him. How large are the eyes? Is there a mouth yet?

Acer has known for a long time that he will die on this planet. But he didn’t think it would happen this way. He looks around the familiar room, taking in the translucent countertops, the peaceful lighting, the inevitable scatter of sand on the floor. He listens to the hum of the air filtration system. One good thing about death by watcher is that it’s fast.

Chase is backing away. An eerie silence settles. Acer listens, waiting for the wail that will announce his end.

Instead, he hears a sound down the hall. A doorknob turning, feet on the concrete floor. He knows that rustle. He knows that cadence. He looks up to see Emily emerge into the kitchen wearing the baggy gray jumpsuit Chase always teases her about. “Finally got rid of the damn thing,” she says, flashing them a smile. “And I guess Lawrence flew the coop. I imagine he cleaned us out of bemesten, but he left this outside my door.” She holds up the variable-wavelength jitter injector. She shrugs and looks as if she’ll say something more. But fear comes into her eyes when she sees the watcher. She takes half a step forward before she stops and puts a hand over her mouth.

Acer gazes at this woman he’s known for so long. Her small body, her kind mouth, her intelligent eyes. He draws in a breath and smells the watcher. But something has changed. He’s no longer afraid. He’s no longer stuck. Looking at Emily, he remembers how to feel and release. He remembers how to let emotions pass. Experience. Accept. Set aside.

Acer’s heartbeat slows. His fear bleeds away. He knows the imjori is still behind him. He knows it will be there for a while. He will have to go into isolation for a few days.

But he’s no longer listening for the sound of its cry. He knows he will not trigger a watcher’s voice. Not today. Maybe not ever.

He takes another long look at Emily. Then he turns to Chase. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m okay. I’m fine now.”

They know him well enough to believe what he says. Chase lets out one of his booming laughs. Emily lowers her hand and says, “What the fuck, Ace?” She sets the VWJI on a side table and shoves her hands into the large pockets of her oversized jumpsuit.

Acer can feel the unfamiliar sensation of a smile on his face. For a moment, he lets himself experience the relief.

But he does not forget the shadow behind his shoulder. He doesn’t lose track of what’s at stake. As he heads for his rooms, he reaches for equilibrium and finds it.