We Leapt Into the Sky

Chapter 4

Kendra's legs ached after spending the day exploring the cliffs, and she fell into bed long before Antony. She woke in the night to sounds her sleepy mind couldn't understand.

Antony shifted and murmured in his bed. He let out a muffled groan and his hand shot out toward the wall to brace himself. Stubbing his fingers, he yelped.

"Hey," Kendra said. "Are you okay?"

Extricating himself from the twisted blankets, he sat up. Light glinted off the sweat on his forehead. "No. Not really," he said. "I need air."

"Want company?"

He nodded.

Kendra pulled on a hoodie and followed him. After a quick stop in the kitchen, they climbed the ladder to the roof of the research station, opening up the sturdy hatch at the top. The roof was flat and relatively free of sand. On the side opposite the hatch, the solar panels jutted out, their dark surfaces reflecting the moonlight.

Antony sat down with a grunt. He stirred his drink with a small spoon and took a sip. "Thanks. This helps."

"I'm glad," she said. "Always reminds me of home. Makes me feel better."

He nodded and paused, staring up at the stars.

"Have you ever noticed that Seph's pants don't fit?"

Kendra huffed. "Not really. Please don't mention it to him."

"Yeah no, I wouldn't do that. But his appearance is so deliberate otherwise. I mean, his hair is perfect every time I see him, and he's got to be doing something to his skin. But his pants are a size or two too big."

"Are you talking like you haven't accidentally brought the wrong clothes on an expedition before?"

"Obviously I have. It's just an observation. I mean, I don't know how to dress myself under ideal circumstances, let alone work in the middle of a desert and look and smell nice all the time," Antony said.

"That doesn't sound like just an observation."

He scrubbed his hand over his cheek. "I mean, I'm a little jealous. It's like he isn't trying to avoid aging, but by god he's going to do it gracefully."

"He's only a couple years older than us though, right?"

"Yeah, still."

"Maybe he hit the jackpot on lifespan extension," Kendra said. "I know treatments are unpredictable when it comes to hair and skin, but people get lucky. Hit thirty and spend a hundred years like that."

"Or he takes care of his face." He tilted his head toward her. "You look good, too. Not much gray, but you'd look good either way."

Kendra broke eye contact, fixing her gaze on a point on the horizon. "Thanks. Just genetics, I guess."

The wind picked up, sending sand blowing across the dunes in the distance. Kendra burrowed deeper into her hoodie, pulling the cuffs up over her knuckles.

Antony sighed. "I ought to be grateful. I'm about as healthy as I can expect. Even my grandparents hit 200, so I should be in good shape."

He ran his hand through his hair, fingers tracing waves of gray. "I feel old and sad, and Seph is gorgeous. If I could get along with him, if I weren't so messed up in the head, I might even—I don't know." He sighed, drumming his fingers along the side of his mug. "His personality is too different from mine."

"I don't think you two are that different, but I hear you. Did you know he's worked on those huge research vessels?"

Antony squinted, his lip curling. "Those have never appealed to me—can't deal with the crush of people. Tiny cabins with eight researchers to a room. Bunk beds. It's like undergrad, except everyone has a PhD."

"Some of them, even the academic ships, mandate uniforms for everyone. Everyone's got the same space suit, the same ground suit, even standard issue pajamas," Kendra said with a grimace.

"Yeah, that sounds awful." He chewed his lip. "You can spend years going from expedition to expedition. Some with no space for personal property, no creature comforts, and you end up with half your belongings scattered across storage containers all over the universe."

"Yeah, then years pass, you gain a few pounds, lose a few pounds. You get your clothes out of storage and bam," she said.

"Your pants don't fit," Antony said.

He was quiet. Kendra looked up at the sky, where the planet's two rocky moons were visible amid an astounding number of stars. The moons were bright, closer than those she'd seen on any other planet, and their light illuminated the white desert sand.

"Have I been waking you up?" Antony asked.

"Not much. I hear you moving, but I don't mind that. It's nice to know someone else is nearby," she said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I get that."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Antony sighed. "Seph was acting weird when you two got back from the cliffs, and I ribbed him about it. But then it was obvious something had freaked him out. I get it. Those peaks and rock formations at the top are unlike anything I've seen before. I took the drone up there while I was surveying the far part of the desert, and the images are stuck in my head," Antony said.

Kendra studied his face; it was somber, the lines around his mouth deep. "Seph and I found this crevasse in the rock, and I guess he got vertigo. Or call of the void. Intrusive thoughts about falling in," she said.

"Oh," he said. "Did you see anything up there?"

"A trick of the light, I thought. But I don't know. It almost felt like someone else was there with me. Like a presence."

"I've had dreams about these cliffs," Antony said. "Tonight, it was dark, and I flew up to the cliffs, to those spires. The closer I got, the more they looked like buildings. A city. And there was a nebula around them, towering clouds of gas."

He huffed. "Now that I'm describing it, it doesn't sound like anything. But it felt empty. Like total emptiness, a complete feeling of desolation. And that was terrifying." Antony stared into the desert. Kendra followed his gaze to where the cliffs lay, far out of sight. "You were isolated, weren't you? In your last expedition."

"Yeah, that's right," Kendra said. "Underwater. I'd never do that again. Couldn't stop imagining the glass cracking. I spent too much time checking it or staring into the water, thinking I saw something out there."

"But what did you do to keep yourself together? Or are you just better at that than I am?"

"I don't know that I am. I fell back on old memories a lot. Holidays with my family. With my husband. Drank a lot of this, pretending it was my mom making it, and that it didn't come out of a bag," she said, holding up the mug.

"Did it help?"

"I don't know. It kept me sane, but it felt like I was treading water. Not moving forward." Kendra hugged her knees, resting her chin on her arms. "I wanted an expedition, not to be trapped in a room. I need to see new things. Learn new things."

"I admire that about you, y'know. I like this work, but you find wonder in it. Not just in the ruins, but in all of this," he said, gesturing to the empty sand.

She leaned back, angling her head toward him. "I want to see as much—to experience as much as I possibly can. I love coming out to places like this."

"It makes you feel alive, doesn't it?"

"It does," she said.