‘Well, she can’t, either! Ari, listen—’

The comms went silent again. I took a breath. That’s all I could hear – my own breath. No screaming wind, no endless waves, no slimy mouths sucking. I heard nothing but the air travelling in and out of me. This was good. This was good. I didn’t want anything but this, not ever. I didn’t even need to look at the stars anymore. Just knowing they were there and that there was no wall between us was enough. I could live behind my own eyelids. This was good.

I heard the comms switch back on. For a moment, all that greeted me was silence.

‘Ariadne,’ Chikondi said.

I opened my eyes.

‘Ariadne, come back inside.’

I turned toward the airlock door, away from the calming dark and back toward the harsh lights and oppressive walls. Only, it didn’t look as bad as before. It didn’t look as bad because Chikondi was there, floating on the other side of the window, his palm pressed toward me.

‘Do you want a pet,’ he asked, ‘when we go home?’

I stared at him.

‘I’d like to get a dog,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a dog before. My brothers were allergic, but I’m not.’

I shut my eyes. I didn’t want a dog. I wanted the stars. I wanted no walls.

‘I think I’d like a beagle. Not too big, not too small. I like their ears. Davide in astrophysics had a beagle, do you remember him?’

My breath caught, then quickened. I wanted him to go away, I wanted all of them to disappear. I wanted to disappear.

‘Come on, Ari. We need you in here.’ He pressed his hand harder against the window. ‘In here.’

‘I—’ I hadn’t cared what I was doing when I’d gone out there, but now the lack of that knowledge confused me. What was I doing? Who was I right then?

‘I know,’ he said, even though I’d said nothing else. He gave me a sad smile. ‘I know. Come on.’

I let the door close, the pressure equalise. Jack pulled me inside. Elena removed my helmet, my gloves. Chikondi pulled me out of the cocoon of my suit. I could still hear my own breath, but it was quieter, and I could hear theirs, too, every breath and heartbeat as they held me close – as we all held each other, floating in the centre of the room, no beginning or end to us.

Votum

Our species evolved for a world that spins. The lengthy days and nights of our planet’s poles prove challenging for our diurnal minds, inviting summer insomnia and winter depression. Falling and staying asleep was one of the most common frustrations for early 21st-century astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, who saw the sun come up every hour and a half in their constant gravitational free-fall. But steady planetary rotation is not a given in the universe, nor even the norm. Red dwarf systems have a tendency toward tidal locking – a state in which an object’s rotational period is the same length of time as its orbital period. To illustrate this more simply: think about the way our Moon looks from Earth. When looking up at a full Moon on a clear night, you will always see the same friendly arrangement of craters shining back. Some cultures see a face in the Moon; others, a rabbit. Whatever the interpretation, the underlying truth remains the same. One side of the Moon is always facing Earth. The far side never does. This is a tidal lock.

It is unusual that it took us until Votum to land on a world that holds still. Aecor is tidally locked with its parent planet, but not its star, so it experiences night and day in regular rhythm, just as Luna does (you’ll know the lunar day cycle as a slow exchange of shadow and light – the phases). If Mirabilis and Opera had thin atmospheres, they likely would be locked with Zhenyi, but their thick quilts of clouds have a spin of their own, pushing against the surface as they whip around. This nudging is powerful enough to make a planet turn (an effect you can see on Venus as well).

In this regard, Votum, with its textbook tidal lock, is a more conventional planet. With an atmosphere only sixteen percent the thickness of Earth’s, there is not enough force to shove the mountains forward. One side is in permanent darkness, the other in daylight. As if this were not challenging enough, Votum’s close proximity to Zhenyi also means heavy bombardment by solar particles. The robust magnetic field that surrounds Votum helps, but there’s only so much that can be done. The combination of these factors means the surface temperatures are extreme, and protection from Zhenyi’s rays is minimal. It is not a leisurely place, this little world.

We astronauts are already protected from dangers like these in the nakedness of deep space, but travelling to a planet such as this – one that stands forever unblinking in the face of its sun – was new territory for OCA. We had not, when I left Earth, sent any crewed missions to the hot surface of Mercury, and the other Lawki missions were still in their first legs of transit when the Merian took off. We weren’t sure what to expect, physiologically. So, to be on the safe side, my skin’s appetite for radiation was increased, providing me with an extra layer of in-built sunscreen. And while our survey schedule would take us to the planet’s frozen shadow, our first stop was the sunny side. Our antifreeze would not help us there, and we did not have a supplementation on hand for losing heat instead of retaining it. We warm-blooded mammals are a nuisance that way. This challenge is one that does require a technological solution – our TEVA suits, whose full spread of climate controls would be deployed at last.

That is all I awoke with on Votum: a thicker skin and the tools I already carried. I floated in front of the mirror, studying my unclothed form. There was nothing about me that appeared different than it had on Opera, not in a visual, touchable way. But I was different, as different as a stranger. My mind felt quiet, at last, but the feeling was so precious that I was reluctant to accept it. I had become so accustomed to the cacophony that part of me perversely wished for it, more trusting of unending discord than peace that could be snatched away. I would never again be the Ariadne who had not been to Opera, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left Earth, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left her parents’ home, who had never bled, who had yet to learn to walk. A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. It is a paradox – the impossibility of reclaiming that which lies behind, housed within a form comprised entirely of the repurposed pieces of that same past. We exist where we begin, yet to remain there is death.

But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself. I might not be able to return to the other Ariadnes, but I would not always be the Ariadne floating in front of the mirror, either. I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her.

I cut my nails. I put on my clothes. I left my cabin to find my crew.

Elena refused the dice roll on Votum. She said she’d already been the first somewhere, and that the honour should be Chikondi’s. He protested; she won in the end.