When the voice cut out, Darae tightened her chair restraint.
By “floor,” Maru probably meant somewhere to hook a foot in microgravity. Darae didn’t want to imagine its absence only in the terms she had learned on Earth.
“Can we reconnect?”
The safety officer shook his head.
“Station structure is blocking the signal. We’re checking another relay path.”
Mujin was recording the reception time. Rather than leave a frightened voice on the channel, he was working out where the next connection might be possible.
Seo separated the instrument readings onto two displays.
“Nothing we’ve received establishes immediate depressurization. ‘No floor on the north side’ could mean a hull breach, or it could mean a connecting module has detached. We need to find out which.”
“Maru said Haeseong was holding the door.”
“A person can’t hold a door against a large pressure difference. Maru said it wouldn’t line up. It may be a latch in an internal passage.”
Darae wrote down Maru’s exact words again. Recording what someone actually said wasn’t the same as treating them coldly.
Jingyeong passed the received data to the observation officer next door. They began narrowing the search from the old orbital elements and looking for the beacon. A spacecraft wasn’t a truck that could drive to the address on a box.
Mujin opened Narae’s fuel sheet.
“What parts are we taking?”
Seo counted them off.
“A compatible replacement cartridge, temporary sorbent canisters, and a coolant circulation pump. Physical inspection for all three. We also need to check what they have there.”
“Personnel?”
“I’ll have to go.”
Darae raised her hand too.
Mujin didn’t give permission at once.
“Start with what you can do.”
“Identify and transfer cargo. Secure it. Check the mass sheet and make sure nothing is missed on the return manifest.”
“Emergency training?”
“Station staff course completed. My spacecraft passenger certification is current through next month.”
He sent over a verification screen. She authenticated with a fingertip. She wasn’t going to learn to fly. This was a check that she could do her own job properly somewhere dangerous.
“We’ll decide whether you help by coming once we have a rescue plan. One more person means more water, more air, and more mass to bring home.”
She lowered her hand. For a moment she felt refused; then it passed. After hearing there were twenty-three people out there, she couldn’t treat one place for herself as a given.
A notification arrived from her office. The transfer robot’s mass measurement for 7-B had been preserved.
She pictured the box. Hand-cut padding. A tomato-soup wrapper. Even a small cylinder could arrive wrapped in everything someone had to spare.
She reopened L-204.
Below the returned household goods was a linked recovery certificate for retired modules. At the time, she had only needed to hand her own items to their recipient. She hadn’t read who had taken the modules.
This time she scrolled to the end.
MODULES SCHEDULED FOR RECOVERY: SIX.
MODULES TRANSFERRED: FIVE.
The notes field was empty.
“Registrar. Six became five.”
Jingyeong turned. Darae gave her the screen.
After reading for a long time, Jingyeong opened a separate transport record, one Darae hadn’t been able to see. The tug’s measured mass appeared beside the expected mass on the recovery list.
The discrepancy was 6.2 tonnes.
“Don’t divide that by a person’s weight,” Seo said.
“I wasn’t going to. It looks more like a room.”
She scanned the module list. On the sixth line was SERVICE MODULE S-6. Dry mass: 6.1 tonnes. Hull and fittings, without fuel.
Mujin checked the measurement conditions first. The tug’s fuel and external equipment had been accounted for separately. There was measurement uncertainty. A difference of 6.2 tonnes couldn’t identify an object by itself. But it was enough reason to test the idea that a module had been left behind.
“Did someone mark a recovery complete without recovering it?” Darae asked.
Jingyeong took a breath before answering.
“It’s possible. For now, observation comes first.”
It sounded like evasion. Darae changed the question.
“Does the old layout show where S-6 was?”
Jingyeong found it. Five long bodies met in a star-shaped arrangement. A small cylinder was attached to the north.
No floor on the north side anymore.
“This could have broken away.”
Mujin sent the layout to the observation officer.
“Check objects around the main structure too. Don’t discard them as debris at the start.”
Earth’s blue edge vanished outside. Raon was entering night. One by one, the bright scratches on the rescue vessel’s hull went dark.
The communications-room lights suddenly seemed too bright to Darae.
On the opposite wall, the observation display turned black. Points crossed it. The officer compared their motion with the background stars. Magnification didn’t make everything clear. There were changes in brightness, part of a shape, the distance something had moved by the next frame.
Then one point blinked regularly.
Three flashes. A pause. One.
The beacon pattern Haeseong had sent.
“Candidate located.”
Darae tried to stand and caught against her restraint. She sat back down. Getting closer to the screen wasn’t what mattered.
Several minutes passed before a second observation came in. Seo used them to compare part specifications with stores. Jingyeong authorized emergency cargo release. Mujin recalculated Narae’s available payload.
Darae contacted her office to start packing.
There was no reason to take faulty 7-B along. Having inspected it, Seo specified a sound replacement. Darae read back its inventory code one character at a time.
The wrong item brought in a hurry weighed more than bringing nothing.
The first cargo reached the port. She moved toward it by reflex, then stopped at Mujin’s gesture. A closed safety hatch separated the communications room from the loading rail. Only when the open indicator lit did she enter the passage.
The box slid slowly toward the end of the rail. On Earth, one person would barely have lifted it. Here, two fingers could set it moving. Darae didn’t put her body in its path. She took the handle at its side. As the rail brake slowed it, the force against her hand gradually eased.
Looking light and being light were different things.
A packer passed her a restraint strap. Before fastening it, she checked which end would be released aboard Narae. The handle needed to face someone wearing gloves. A box loose in a spacecraft stopped being a filter and became something to collide with.
She read back the inventory number and recipient.
Yu Seo. Life-support maintenance. Manual release.
Seo pulled the other strap to test it. They gave each other a small nod and moved apart. No handshake was needed. They had just checked whether a pull would hold them together.
The second observation supported the first.
Sai existed.
Five joined modules, outside an old construction orbit, gradually drifting away from the planned recovery track. Two had their radiators folded.
Seo pointed.
“That would explain the reduced heat rejection.”
“Can we tell them to unfold them?”
“We need to know why they’re folded. More commands won’t open a broken drive.”
Darae thought it had been too simple a question. Then she decided that without asking, she would have stayed ignorant longer.
The Safety Office authorized preparation of an emergency approach plan. That was not yet a launch order. Mujin drew a line toward where the habitat would be when they reached it, not where it was now.
“Can’t we just chase it?”
“It keeps moving while we do. We also need fuel to stop when we get there.”
Two lines appeared over the orbital plot. One began at Raon. One followed Sai. They met well ahead of Sai’s present position.
At last Darae could see why a postal address wasn’t enough.
A destination was a place and a time.
She kept her finger away from the small point on the screen. If she thought too hard about the people inside it waiting for her, she might want to open the window and go straight out. Instead, she read the arrival conditions one by one. Help could be slower than wanting to help. It still had to arrive properly.
The port attendant prepared the departure safety briefing. Darae was provisionally included to support cargo transfer and the securing of items inside. Her mass went into the calculations for the expected return complement and support for those who might remain.
She took the office key from her neck, handed it to the duty clerk, and put the empty neck cord in her pocket. Suddenly she felt she really was leaving her workplace.
Asked where she was going, she named Sai. The clerk searched the map for a moment, then stopped when she explained that it still had no address.
“Then what number do we reach you on?”
“Safety Office rescue channel. Keep the office open as usual. Someone’s coming for a sock.”
“Even now?”
“It’s what he has to collect today.”
She tried to smile, and her face did something slightly odd. She wasn’t resentful that other people’s days kept going. If everyone could return somewhere to collect their own things, perhaps this unfamiliar day would one day become an ordinary return record too.
She checked the handover terminal under her name one last time. The destination field read SAI — LOCATION BEING VERIFIED. Leaving a blank was harder than filling it with the wrong answer.
The reception indicator lit again.
This time it was Haeseong.
“Raon, please respond. We’ve moved to the window antenna.”
Seo took the microphone first.
“Current pressure. Is the door closed?”
“Pressure holding. It’s the internal passage latch that’s twisted. No pressure difference between the two sides.”
Darae relaxed her fingers. Haeseong wasn’t holding back vacuum with his bare hands.
Mujin read out the habitat’s observed position. For a moment Haeseong didn’t answer.
“Can you see that light?” Mujin asked.
“Yes. But you mustn’t use it as your target.”
The observation officer changed the view.
Below the five modules was a dim point moving differently from the stars. It might have been debris reflecting starlight. But it darkened, then brightened again.
As if a window were slowly turning back toward them.
Mujin reopened Darae’s old layout.
S-6.
The service module suggested by the missing 6.2 tonnes.
It was no longer attached to the main structure.
Mujin erased the two lines he had drawn.
“Tell me where your people are now.”
A brief metallic sound came through the receiver. Haeseong seemed to be moving the microphone.
Outside, the little point turned once more. In the faint light, a rectangular window appeared.
Haeseong’s voice came back.
“All twenty-three of us are in the part that broke away.”