Their words were scheduled to stop before the shadow came.
Darae studied the gray block on the joint preparation sheet. Beside it, the orbital diagram showed the habitat entering Earth's dark side. Laid together, they looked like one event. The communications specialist pulled the sheets apart again, leaving enough space to see the difference. The gray block on the preparation sheet referred to a scheduled inspection of the relay equipment, rather than the darkness shown beside it.
It was the morning twenty-two days after all twenty-three residents' temporary handover at Raon. They were reviewing yesterday's overlap between approach preparations and the relay outage. Narae and the two tugs had not departed. Today's task was to establish communications conditions for choosing a towing window, not choose the final window itself.
“Doesn't that mean we lose contact behind Earth?” Darae asked.
“This block is maintenance. Earth's shadow concerns sunlight. A blocked line of sight is different again. They can overlap without meaning the same thing.”
The specialist opened three actual routes: direct visibility between vessels, the Raon link, and booked relays on the existing transport network. Three ships could not simply join any conversation like three telephones in one room.
The first tug's preparations overlapped the outage's beginning. The second had a possible direct line to Narae then, but actual quality remained untested. Relaying everything from both vessels would consume Narae's own observation and operational communications resources.
Mujin covered Narae's role sheet with his hand.
“Who watches the approach while our ship serves as the telephone line?”
Nobody answered immediately. Darae examined the cargo sheet's entry, received by Narae. It included cargo acceptance, structural status and other vessels' holding responses. One recipient was doing several jobs simultaneously.
Communications held the first suggestion: cancel the relay maintenance. Other routes' safe operations and upkeep depended on it. Sai's urgent need could not erase unseen ships' communications. The responsible operator had to confirm what changes were possible.
Giwan suggested the earlier window. The Safety Office said final independent observations and operational review remained unfinished. Good communications did not settle position or relative motion. Darae changed the timetable's heading from departure available to candidate conditions.
Their first redesign moved approach preparations after the outage. That conflicted with a tug's existing return-port booking. Port staff explained that the apparently empty period was reserved for accepting a vessel and inspecting equipment. Someone was using that time too.
Darae remembered her office's return appointments. A customer not yet present did not make the counter available. If speed required moving another person's appointment, they must first ask whether the actual change was possible.
The second redesign sent only the first tug early. A joint rehearsal exposed its failure. The first vessel requested an approach hold; the second, without receiving the reason, prepared to enter its next waiting area. They had agreed on stop wording before, but left its delivery route empty.
Mujin removed his hand from a magnet.
“Stopping without contact also requires somewhere to stop.”
Specialists defined each vessel's safe holding condition. They could not all remain motionless at their present positions. Orbital waiting required a moving plan. Beneath stop, Darae recorded the actual stage to maintain and the next confirmation.
A third proposal emerged before noon. Essential instructions would take priority over cargo records and video. No new approach stage would begin before the outage. After restoration, each vessel's status would be checked before proceeding. Darae's plan to send long videos together moved back.
“How do we confirm receipt without photographs?” she asked.
The specialist suggested separating material essential for identification and restraint checks. Sending everything differed from completing the necessary checks. Darae moved two photographs repeating the same packaging face into reference material, retaining views showing seals, identification and restraints.
The originals remained. Only their transmission order through limited communications windows changed. She asked the receiving officer to check whether those views sufficed. The first answer was no: the restraint's opposite attachment point was missing.
She started for a camera, then remembered the goods were in specialist custody. She did not open their cover herself. She asked the responsible custodian for the side they needed to see. Before requesting a new photograph, she asked whether the existing inspection photographs already showed enough of that part to make the check. The relevant image was linked without another photograph—or sending both omitted images indiscriminately.
At lunch, Seo folded his meal packet's instructions in half. The opening point disappeared inside the fold. When Darae laughed, he unfolded it.
“Make a message short enough, and you lose how to eat.”
“I nearly marked you as not eating today.”
She secured her packet and took its handle first. Her hands had been chasing rehearsal magnets; they needed a different task now. Removing lunch to improve preparations seemed unlikely to improve their afternoon checks.
The relay operator replied that afternoon. Complete cancellation was impossible, but parts of the neighboring bookings could move. Another cargo service agreed to postpone data transmission; the designated officer confirmed receipt of the change. The operating cooperative's review sheet gained actual entries for the costs and staff time involved in making that change. Those were parts of the adjustment, alongside the altered times on the diagram.
A ship without passengers was not empty space in a schedule. Existing cargo arrival notices also changed. Staff sent the revised time to that customer through the established route and confirmed receipt. Saving Sai's work sheet alone would not complete this adjustment.
The first tug queried the notice: its display still showed early approach preparations. Darae checked which sheet they were reading before attributing misunderstanding. It was a summary printed at the previous meeting, not the received attachment. The new booking's relevant page had arrived but never reached the operational preparation board.
The officer retained the old summary as change history, replaced the working sheet and read its stage number aloud. Narae and the second tug checked the pages on their own boards. Sending a revised file had not brought three vessels into the same schedule.
Darae checked the cargo handover sheet for the same holding conditions. One row still used the former arrival order. Correcting it and obtaining the receiving officer's confirmation aligned data transfer with actual loading checks. The comparison delayed rehearsal and shortened their next room booking. It also found a risk now: different papers awaiting the same command during actual operations.
Their revised test introduced an additional data request just before the outage. Narae entered its assigned hold instead of advancing. The second tug missed one response. Communications retained that miss for the post-restoration status check rather than dismissing it as a rehearsal error.
When the link returned, all three vessels read back their last received command and current stage. One sheet still marked the previous stage. Only after operations corrected that difference did they request permission for joint progress. Agreement about their stage came before speed measured in seconds.
Mujin marked a limited pass. The room's transmission procedures and booking conditions matched. Local radio quality and final operational safety remained unproved. Actual predeparture checks and connection-failure stop conditions stayed attached.
Haeseong asked what residents must do during the gap. Adult support duty would receive scheduled summaries, Darae explained. Residents would not replace emergency navigation communications staff. Maru's quick reading did not fill an empty duty slot.
Maru visited with a guardian during daytime learning. Earth shadow went in black and relay maintenance in hatching on the notebook diagram. The specialist complimented the drawing while retaining professional legends on operational sheets. A learning exercise did not automatically become navigation material.
“Is it less frightening if you know beforehand when the words will stop?” Maru asked.
Mujin said knowing when they would check again, and what they would refrain from doing without an answer, clarified their work. He did not promise freedom from fear. Maru closed the notebook when the session ended. Qualified adults had the night communications windows.
That evening, Darae put the relevant schedule changes into the office handover. Revised transmission order moved no equipment. Faulty 7-B, original card and packaging remained at Office 4. S-6's sound main cartridge and two temporary canisters stayed there; Raon's unused coolant pump and candidate cartridge stayed at Raon.
The adapter model remained a test model. A workable schedule did not turn it into flight equipment. Specialist maintenance was comparing available existing connection equipment with original design standards, preparing pressure-tightness, load and release tests. Darae handed over test-item and operational-candidate labels on separate lines.
Mujin arrived at the office door with the new candidate timetable. He asked her not to promise residents a departure date yet. She had already included that condition in their notice. They had both made the same condition explicit. After checking it with each other, neither lengthened the exchange with another elaborate pledge about what would happen next.
The duty clerk brought two lost gloves. They looked like one person's pair, but one belonged to maintenance's shared stock. Darae separated matching shapes from matching ownership. The three vessels' apparently matching empty periods had not meant matching availability either. Objects required their actual histories too.
Jingyeong sent tomorrow's formal correction appointment. She would correct her past completion record and submit material for professional review. Darae did not attach today's scheduling cooperation as grounds to reduce past responsibility. Present assistance and past omissions had separate rows.
Gray blocks remained in the new communications sheet. They had not removed the gaps. They had established stages not to enter beforehand and words to read back afterward. Darae physically passed the sheet to the next officer and confirmed receipt.
Finally she read the title of Jingyeong's forthcoming document: Correction of the Recovery Completion Record. Inside that title lay a check never completed before. Tomorrow, where nobody else's words could be relayed in her place, Jingyeong would have to state under her own name that the work had not been complete.