Chikondi sat up a little straighter.

‘How much of a drop?’ Jack asked.

She looked him in the eye. ‘Enough.’

I saw a spark in him that had been lost for months. ‘What about the other landing sites?’

She reoriented the map, bringing each island into focus. None of their prognoses were good. Four months, and still, the only ground on Opera was inaccessible.

‘We could orbit for a while,’ Jack said hesitantly. ‘Global storms that last this long – I mean, we’ve seen that on gas giants—’

‘Dust storms on Mars,’ I added.

‘—but not rain. This is new. We could . . . we could make something of our time here.’ He sounded unconvinced of his own words, as if they were what he knew he should say but nothing more.

Elena thought. ‘It’d be a waste of that time,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing we could do from orbit that a team of researchers back home couldn’t do with the same data. You don’t send bodies if all you’re going to do is study satmaps. That’s not what we’re here for. That’s not what we were sent to do.’

The room was silent for a while. Nobody needed to say what we all knew: none of us wanted to stay. We wanted to be gone, as far from this place as the universe would allow. We had spent a third of a year on Opera, and we came back with a one-sided portrait of a single new species and an inconclusive parcel of weather data. We had gained nothing.

‘We could leave a couple of cubesats in orbit,’ I said, ‘so that people back home can study this.’

‘That works,’ Elena said. ‘There’ll be plenty to dig into.’

We were quiet again. ‘Consensus?’ Jack said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Elena said.

Chikondi nodded.

Nobody moved for a moment. Were we abandoning our mission? Or were we doing what we needed – what we, as living animals, needed – for that mission to continue?

I still haven’t made up my mind about that.

Jack broke the silence. ‘Let’s start prep.’ There was no discussion about it. Consensus had been unnecessary; we’d given it months before.

Everybody got right to it, putting away the lab equipment that had never been used, packing up the tools left here and there. I admit that we were not careful. We didn’t do things perfectly. We didn’t use our checklists. We just threw things in boxes, tied them down, and moved on to the next. A door had been opened, and we’d be damned if we let it close.

Launching a spacecraft is a violent act. For all our fine technology, all the wondrous advancements we love to pat ourselves on the back about, the process of leaving a planet has always been the same: push as hard and fly as fast as possible. I had been through over a dozen launches before Opera. I was always overwhelmed by the experience, awed by the raw power at my back – and yes, obviously, a little bit afraid. I’ve heard some astronauts describe the feeling as like somebody putting a massive foot in the middle of your back and pushing you away. I never imagined a foot. I imagined the hands of every scientist and supporter, lifting us up to a place no one could reach alone.

Leaving Opera felt different.

It wasn’t different, I know this – not in mechanics, not in process, not in anything but context. We were strapped in, systems nominal. The engines roared. The seats rattled. I did not feel supportive hands as we lifted away. I felt the reverse: the grasp of a planet that did not want us to escape. My body sagged into itself as the G-forces clocked up and up. The Merian erupted in a chorus of metallic squealing as it fought against Opera’s impartial physics. We were no longer riding a spacecraft, but a tiny bird, caught in a vast pit of tar, beating her wings so hard she risked leaving a piece of herself behind.

The rats were terrified. Some had fallen with the initial blast, but others were still clinging to the goddamn windows, too stupid to understand that the longer they held fast, the more certain their doom. I watched their shuddering bodies as the rushing air sent them flailing, as the ones that did not fall were swallowed in flame and rendered ash. I felt nothing but quiet loathing toward them, and the purity of that feeling was the ugliest I’ve ever felt. It’s not their fault, the good scientist in me feebly argued. They meant no harm. This is a terrible death. They don’t deserve this.

I don’t care, the raw spite in me replied. And I didn’t. For all my impartiality, for all my trying to set aside anthropocentric biases and see the beauty in all forms, I truly didn’t care. I watched them burn, and felt a twisted gratitude.

I have never stopped hating what that says about me.

As if someone had thrown a switch, everything changed. The last wisp of atmosphere melted away. Where clouds had menaced, stars now glittered. My limbs, my head, my chest lifted away from the chair, pushing against the straps that kept me down. I unbuckled my harness without so much as a glance at the readouts, protocol be damned. I shut my eyes. I let my body go limp. I floated in all directions and none, the concept of weight forgotten. I bit my lip hard to stifle the whimper that bubbled up in my throat. It was the moment when the painkillers kick in, the sip of water that keeps you from dying.

More. I needed more.

I flipped myself around, headed straight for the cargo hold, and got myself into my EVA suit. I could hear the others calling me, but their words didn’t stick.

‘Hey,’ Jack said. He put his hand on the window of the airlock as I prepared to let myself outside. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I need to check for damage,’ I said. This was true. We hadn’t been able to inspect the outer hull, and though we’d clearly been okay for launch, I needed to make sure the rats hadn’t damaged anything vital.

Jack opened his mouth to argue with me. Elena appeared behind him, and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘She’s right,’ she said. ‘Let her check.’

The airlock opened before me, edgeless vacuity beyond. There were no winds here, no crashing waves. Only the cold constancy of stars, to which I was just a crude bit of wet carbon, a flake of skin you brush aside. My pain and pettiness and mistakes and inadequacies did not matter. I did not matter. Nothing we did out here mattered. Nothing we could or would ever do would matter, in the face of this.

My comms crackled on. ‘Ari, your tether,’ Jack said. ‘You forgot your tether.’

I hadn’t forgotten. I just hadn’t brought it.

I tested the metal handholds in the airlock below my thick gloves, like a kid getting ready to let go of the side of the pool and kick off into the deep end. I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t thought any of this through. All I knew was that one of my options was easy. So easy.

‘Ari – son of a bitch—’

Elena took over the comms, her voice cool and hard. ‘If you’re going to inspect damage, that’s fine, but you have to follow protocol. If you can’t do it now, come back in and do it later.’

I let go of one of the handholds. I raised my finger, traced it over the stars. God, they were beautiful. How had something as crude as us ever come from something so beautiful?

I could hear Jack in the background. ‘I’m getting my fucking suit—’

‘She’s got the airlock open, you can’t—’