The thing most often lost in the lost-and-found office was the lost-and-found clerk’s pen.
Yeon Darae looked up at hers. It had come to rest against the ceiling, just beyond her reach. She had put it down while turning a page. Or thought she had. Here in the station’s axial section, there was no floor for things to fall toward.
She hooked a foot under the workbench restraint and stretched. The moment her fingertips touched the pen, it drifted away from her palm.
“Making a break for it again?”
Instead of chasing it, she took the grabber from the wall. A person who launched herself across the room after one loose object was harder to process than lost property.
Her first return of the day had been a single sock. It had made the journey from the laundry in Raon’s habitation ring to the axial cargo section on its own. A name sewn into the heel had found its owner for it. Darae explained where and when he could collect it.
“Do I pay shipping on receipt?” he asked, perfectly seriously.
“Pick it up on your way to work. Shipping would cost more than the sock.”
“Tomorrow, then. Tell it the left one’s waiting.”
Darae entered COLLECTION IN PERSON, TOMORROW in the notes field. There wasn’t room for the sock’s family history.
Sunlight slid across the window to the right-hand side of her bench. Across the station, solar panels slowly changed their angle, their metal hinges catching and losing the light. Outside, there was no up or down, but that familiar movement told her lunchtime had passed.
The barley tea she had brought from the rotating ring was in a pouch with a capped spout. She took a sip and secured it to the wall. She couldn’t go on a spacewalk every time she got thirsty.
She had just retrieved her pen when three knocks came from the cargo hatch.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The delivery signal.
“Opening now.”
She tethered the pen to her wrist before releasing the hatch. A transfer robot waited on the rail, a gray box strapped to its low, flat body.
The manifest appeared beside her workbench.
7-B. CARGO AWAITING IMPOUNDMENT. OWNERSHIP UNDER REVIEW.
RETURN OR DISPOSAL DECISION DUE IN 36 HOURS.
“Catalog. Any hazardous-material markings?”
The sorting program displayed its answer.
NO REGISTERED HAZARD MARKINGS. ONE REQUEST FOR MANUAL CONDITION CHECK.
Unmarked didn’t mean safe. Darae examined the outside: a dented corner, two sealing bands, a yellow card the size of her palm.
Three lines had been written on the card.
You don’t need to tilt it.
Please don’t throw it away without opening it.
If it’s warm inside, someone is waiting.
She read the last line again.
“Catalog. No live-cargo marking either?”
NONE REGISTERED.
The box wasn’t large enough for a person. That didn’t rule out a small animal. She put the transfer on hold and kept the robot where it was.
The infrared thermometer gave a surface temperature of 31.4 degrees Celsius. The office was at twenty-two.
As she pulled on her gloves, the box made a faint sound, like a fingernail tapping a glass far away.
“Is something alive in there?”
She couldn’t quite smile at herself for asking.
The box gave no answer.
Darae called the Safety Office on duty and reported the cargo number, temperature, sound, and markings. The officer told her to secure the box to the isolation rail and check for swelling or leaks.
There were none. The robot’s mass reading was also close to the recorded packing mass. After confirming that the transfer documents authorized an opening for safety inspection, the officer permitted her to remove the outer packaging. Any sealed container inside was to remain sealed.
She cut the first band and slipped the loose strip into a clear bag before it could float away. A small spring jumped out from under the second band.
It sailed past the lid before she could reach it.
The robot beeped a warning.
“I know. Retrieving foreign object.”
She caught it with the grabber. If something that small got into a vent, the station coughed in very expensive ways.
Inside the box lay a silver cylinder, longer than her forearm. Cooling fins folded against its sides. A mechanical pressure indicator sat beside a worn handle, and a white cartridge showed through a clear protective cap.
A small diagnostic unit was connected to one end. That was what had been chirping. Its battery still had some life.
The little screen flashed.
ACTIVE MEDIUM CANNOT BE REGENERATED.
REPLACEMENT CARTRIDGE REQUIRED.
Darae showed the Safety Office the display. They would connect a life-support technician. Until then, she left the cap alone.
“Hello. Yu Seo here. Show me the pressure indicator first.”
The voice was young. Darae moved herself around the unit rather than turning it. Sometimes moving the person was easier than moving the object.
“Low end of the green.”
“Good. Leave the sealed cap in place. That isn’t an oxygen cylinder.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“People see ‘air’ on something and call it oxygen. This one takes carbon dioxide out. It’s a cartridge for a regenerative scrubber.”
Darae looked again at CANNOT BE REGENERATED.
“So it’s unusable.”
“Yes. But I need to know why it’s warm. Regeneration may have stopped halfway through, or it may have been in use shortly before it was packed. Can you get the diagnostic log?”
“There’s a read-only port.”
She fetched a cable. Unfamiliar equipment did not go straight into the office network. She connected it to the standalone inspection terminal and shared the screen with Seo.
Last normal operation: five hours earlier.
OVERLOAD. REGENERATION FAILED. SWITCHING TO BACKUP SYSTEM.
Then, at regular intervals, the same message.
REPLACEMENT CARTRIDGE REQUIRED.
REPLACEMENT CARTRIDGE REQUIRED.
She touched the cylinder and drew her hand away. Even through the thick glove, she felt its lingering warmth. Heat that had once belonged to the air in somebody’s room.
Earth’s rim passed the office window. White clouds lay close to its curved surface, and beyond them a thin blue line shone. When Darae first came to the station, she had been startled by how thin that line was.
Afterward, work had kept her too busy to look very often.
Today a small cylinder held her attention before the blue line could.
“Seo. What would the person who sent this be using now?”
Silence on the line.
“A backup system, presumably. This log won’t tell us how long it can last.”
“Can you tell how many people?”
“The load might give us a rough estimate, but we can’t turn that into a head count. We don’t know the operating mode or whether there are leaks.”
She nodded. There was more missing from the screen than written on it.
The packing was a patchwork, leftover insulation cut and folded by hand rather than a new, fitted insert. One corner had been padded with the thin reflective film used for food packets. Half the words TOMATO SOUP remained on the printed side.
Someone had saved the wrapper from dinner and used it to protect this cylinder. Someone careful with things, or someone who had no choice. Darae didn’t yet know which. She bundled the padding beside the box instead of sending it to waste.
A shipping label was fixed to the side.
TO: RAON LOST-AND-FOUND OFFICE 4.
FROM: SAI.
She opened the station map. Dining halls, habitation ring, maintenance ring, north tow port. Raon had no section called Sai.
Nor was it in the postal directory.
“Catalog. Find a facility named Sai.”
NO MATCH.
“Include retired names and former sections.”
NO MATCH WITHIN YOUR SEARCH PERMISSIONS.
That was a slightly different answer. She noted the difference. Something not existing and something she wasn’t allowed to see were different problems.
The passage hatch opened. Registrar Oh Jingyeong came in wearing gray work clothes, a seal scanner in one hand. The airflow stirred her silver hair clip.
“Have you opened 7-B?”
Darae displayed the safety authorization.
“Outer packaging only. The internal seal is intact.”
Jingyeong checked the number and nodded. At least she wasn’t acting as if she had come to issue a reprimand.
“The owner has not been identified. Inspection does not authorize removal before a return decision.”
“I’m trying to find the owner. It came from Sai, but Sai isn’t on the map.”
Jingyeong’s fingers stopped on the scanner. Only for a moment.
“A small vessel may use the same name.”
“Could you check the vessel register? I can’t access decommissioning records.”
“Send me the intake number.”
Darae turned over the yellow card.
There was writing on the back too, heavy, uneven strokes, as if someone had pressed a thick pen to the card through a glove.
Don’t erase it just because it has no owner.
Underneath was a number.
L-204.
She knew that number.
She didn’t remember every case. But an L meant an earlier intake handled directly by this office, back before the switch to four digits three months ago.
She opened the record.
L-204. ITEMS RECOVERED FROM DECOMMISSIONED CONSTRUCTION MODULES.
COMPLETE. RECIPIENT VERIFIED. RETURNED.
Tools, bedding, dishes, plant-growing mats. Handed over in person by lost-property clerk Yeon Darae.
She took hold of her tethered pen. Its tip had a small nick. She had used the same pen when the case numbers still began with L. Things she expected to keep forever went missing often enough. A face she expected to see only once could return at the strangest moment.
She remembered the middle-aged man who had collected those things. He had attended to his plant before his boxes. It had grown in the rotating ring, he explained; he had tied cloth over the pot so the soil wouldn’t float out in the axial section.
He was going to a new workplace.
He would let her know when it had a postal address.
“They were moving house,” she murmured.
A notification appeared: the diagnostic unit contained a separate data card. Beneath clear tape, she could see its edge.
Seo explained that the card was independent of the diagnostic memory. With the Safety Office’s clearance, she read it on the standalone terminal.
There was one file.
It wasn’t a letter. It was a short video taken beside a narrow window. Earth showed beyond the glass. Inside, a row of little green leaves hung along the frame.
The image shook as someone steadied the camera.
“If somebody gets this, we’re not trying to return it.”
A young voice.
“We’re asking you to find a way back to us.”
The camera tilted toward the wall beneath the window.
Twenty-three handprints had been painted there.
Below them, in place of an address, was Darae’s intake number.