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Although Eva Stratt is used to being labeled a “control freak,” she is actually very good at delegating. Some things absolutely require her attention—most do not. She creates processes, puts them in place, and leaves them to function on their own. Her direct reports know not to bother her unless it’s important.
So, when she gets an encrypted e-mail from Carl, she knows it’s important.
Dr. Grace has been on the Gansu for a few days and has been begrudgingly settling in. The state-of-the-art lab and small army of lab assistants are helping. She had him put together a list of items he wants from his apartment, and Carl is in San Francisco now, retrieving them.
These lists also work within a process. Some requests are ignored, if the items can be found easily on the ship. More importantly, whichever operative is doing the collecting is under orders to do some subtle snooping. It is an invasion of privacy. It’s also an opportunity to find things the background checks have missed. If her scientists have stashes of ecstasy or child pornography, Stratt would prefer to know sooner rather than later.
Carl’s e-mail has no subject. The body is just two sentences: These weren’t on the list. Seems important.
Attached is a picture Carl has taken of Grace’s medicine cabinet. Stratt braces herself for a bottle of party drugs, and instead finds, front and center… a bottle of progesterone tablets and a box containing estradiol gel. Both have prescription labels with Dr. Grace’s name on them.
Stratt thinks. It wouldn’t be surprising if the people who recommended Dr. Grace to her had out-of-date information. However, she distinctly remembers the woman at the front desk of Grover Cleveland Middle School referring to Mr. Grace, because she thought it was strange she didn’t say Dr. In addition, nothing about Dr. Grace’s appearance, dress, speech or mannerisms suggest anything feminine. This means nothing in reality, but it is a clue. Nothing unusual has come up in the clearance background check, either—she did have one done after the fact, thank you Minister Voigt. No name changes, specifically.
It seems the current crisis has caught Grace very early in a very tender process.
It’s an invasion of privacy. It also changes nothing about their material reality. Stratt e-mails back a simple pack them. thx. and adds a task to the Gansu’s medical director to find an endocrinologist well-versed in gender-affirming care to make available to the crew. Then, she moves on to the next item on her to-do list.
Stratt makes a conscious decision not to change her internal monologue unless and until Grace brings it up. A slip-up at this stage would be catastrophic. Grace knows someone knows about the medication, because they’re in his things unasked-for, but he doesn’t know who is responsible, and Stratt is going to keep it that way. She needs him focused.
Mostly, she doesn’t think about it. Very occasionally, when she’s looking at him, she searches for any noticeable changes. This is probably incredibly impolite, but he will never know. She never finds anything, and declines to speculate on that. Over the months, his hair grows shaggy and unruly, but he cuts it before it gets close to what one might call feminine. Even the facial hair stays. The biggest difference she ever sees in his face is the bags under his eyes when he’s stayed up too late in the lab.
Six months into Grace’s appearance on the Gansu, Stratt’s medical director alerts her to a shortage caused by a manufacturing issue with their pharmaceutical company of choice. This e-mail comes with a spreadsheet listing each medication they currently order, highlighting which drugs are affected and an alternate company they can be purchased from. Stratt signs off on it and sends it to the quartermaster. Then, she notices an absence.
There are no forms of estradiol or progesterone on the list. She checks previous orders from the last six months. Nothing.
Stratt knows Grace completed a mandatory intake physical and was assigned a primary care physician on the ship. Whatever happens with his medical care is between the two of them. Still, she wonders.
A team of Stratt’s scientists travel to a conference in Japan focused on astrophage, and Stratt comes along to attend some of the presentations and then spend the rest of her time in meetings with southeast Asian heads of state and diplomats. While the Petrova Taskforce has teams all over the world, there are also individual scientists and teams at countless universities and private businesses that have received incredibly small samples to test with. Breakthroughs can come from anywhere, and this is nothing if not a global effort. This conference is a way for everyone to share their work with the greater scientific community.
It’s more Petrova Taskforce work than Project Hail Mary work, but Grace is the world’s leading scientist on astrophage, so he is in attendance. He was asked to present, and had declined.
This turns out to be a good thing, as he is currently discovering a number of new and exciting environmental allergies.
“Oh my gosh. I think I’m going to die,” he complains after blowing his nose for the sixth time in the last hour. Stratt mostly suppresses her grimace. The team from the Gansu has their own conference room in the hotel, and she and Grace are the last ones left after the day’s evening tag-up. Stratt has dismissed him twice, but it seems he doesn’t feel like he can actually leave until she does. “Can you overdose on Claritin?”
His eyes are red and watery, and every word he speaks resonates through his congested sinuses. She wishes he would stop—just the sight of him is making her itchy. Her fingers keep finding her scalp and digging in. “Please don’t attempt it,” she frowns.
He shakes his head morosely at his laptop screen. “This is crazy. I didn’t even know allergies could be this bad,” he says. “Do you think I can take Claritin and Nyquil together?”
Stratt sends a message to the on-call medical team on the Gansu to ask. “Maybe it’s time to consider seeing an allergist,” she suggests idly.
Grace huffs. “Yeah, right,” he says. “Where am I going to do that?”
“On the ship, probably,” Stratt says. “The Chinese navy may have one we can borrow. If not, Dr. Hsu will either find someone to bring in as a consult, or make a special appointment for you with someone at their facility, depending on how much medical equipment and travel is required. For most specialties, a medical team has already been picked out and background checked. I’m sure an allergist is on that list.”
It takes her about 15 seconds to realize Grace is staring blankly at her. She meets his eye, raising her brows to prompt him.
“Huh?” is what he comes up with.
“I can’t afford to lose anyone on this project because I can’t accommodate their medical needs,” Stratt says.
Grace gapes at her.
A notification pops up on her laptop screen. “When was your last dose of Claritin?” she asks.
Grace’s eyes flick down to the corner of his own screen. “Two hours ago,” he says, not looking any less flabbergasted. Stratt passes it along.
“You can see any medical specialist you need,” she says, finishing her thought. “Elective surgery that would impede your ability to work is another matter.”
“Any specialist?” he asks weakly.
Is this the problem? He just doesn’t know? This conversation should have happened with his doctor at the intake physical. It seems impossible that it could have been missed. “Any,” she emphasizes, looking at him directly.
Maybe she looks too long. After a few seconds, his whole body jerks, and he sits ramrod straight in his chair. “I. Um,” he says. “You—do you—“
A new message pops up, and she decides to spare him. “You shouldn’t take Nyquil now. If you’d like, the medical team can set up an appointment for you to get an allergy injection tomorrow.”
“That’s okay,” Grace rushes. Finally, he shuts his laptop and gathers up his things. “I’ll power through. Hey, don’t stay up too late.”
It’s fascinating, that he thinks he can say this to her after less than a year of knowing her. She had colleagues for years at ESA who wouldn’t have dreamed of talking to her this informally. “Goodnight, Dr. Grace,” she says to his back.
“Night,” he manages, voice strained.
He does power through, if powering through involves being reduced to a miserable pile of mucous. Stratt sends someone out for allergen-filtering masks, and they help some. At the end of the conference, Grace is relieved to get back to the Gansu with its distinct lack of pollen, and Stratt is relieved to not have to sit next to someone constantly blowing their nose.
She assumes that will be it. Grace can talk to his doctor and the matter will be solved. She even instructs Dr. Hsu to send Grace an e-mail inviting him in for a 6 month visit.
A week later, Stratt has Grace in her office to accompany her to a conference call. At the end of it, he stands to leave, but then putters around, making smalltalk and stalling.
“Is there something you need, Dr. Grace? I have another meeting in 15 minutes,” Stratt asks, carefully keeping any hint of exhaustion out of her voice. She is tired. She has never slept well, but lately it’s been much worse. Stress, almost certainly.
“Yeah, your calendar is gnarly this week,” he grimaces. Stratt chooses not to comment on that descriptor. “Uh. So…”
She looks at him when he fails to continue. “Yes?”
He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and stares at the wall half a meter to her left. Stratt likes this about Grace. He doesn’t often look her in the eye, which gives her the freedom to follow suit. It’s nice to have a break sometimes. “Who—who packed my bag? From my apartment?”
Stratt can predict where this is going. She also doesn’t have any real reason to keep the information from him. “Carl.”
Grace flinches. “Carl?” he yelps. “He didn’t say anything!”
For now, Carl spends most of his time on assignment in the United States, working Taskforce business there. Sometimes he makes the journey to the Gansu. Grace always treats these reunions like he’s seeing a long-lost brother. “Of course not,” she says. “He’s a professional.”
Grace points a finger at her, accusing. “So you do know!” he says, tone and expression the picture of righteous indignation. Very quickly his face crumples into despair, and his hand drops to his side. “Oh, no. Okay.”
He stumbles to a chair, shoved against the wall of the office to be out of the way unless needed, and sits, resting his face in his hands. His glasses dangle precariously from his ear.
“Dr. Grace,” Stratt says, forcing gentleness into her voice. It does not come naturally to her.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice strained.
She thinks on how to approach this. “You aren’t in any danger,” she settles on.
“Who else knows?” he asks, his voice muffled by his hands.
“Your doctor on the Gansu received your previous medical records,” she says. “That’s it.”
He laughs, sounding slightly hysterical. “So that’s why she didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t on any medication.”
Stratt cocks her head at him in confusion—not that he can see it—but it isn’t her place to ask. After a moment, he rights himself, rubbing at his eyes and then settling his hands in his lap. His leg jiggles, and he looks straight ahead, again at the wall. “I’m—I’m not, okay? I mean. I did the appointments, I picked it up, but. I never started. Taking it,” he says, halting. “Just never felt like the right time? So you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she says. She can see why Grace would be, though. Maybe she approached this the wrong way, originally. Maybe she shouldn’t have left him to wonder. There is a lot to unpack in Grace’s words, she suspects, but she isn’t a psychologist. “When is the right time?”
He sags back, resting his head against the wall. “I don’t know. A month or two before summer break? During a sabbatical? Maybe with a new job in a different school district lined up after,” he says. “Definitely not on an aircraft carrier where all of my colleagues are living on top of each other while we try to save the sun, I’ll tell you that.”
“No one would bother you about it,” Stratt says.
“You don’t know that,” Grace says. This is incorrect—Stratt will make sure no one bothers Grace about it. He laughs weakly, shaking his head. “Anyway, what’s the point now? With the upcoming climate disaster and famine and all, I’m sure elective hormones are going to be the first thing to go. Maybe it’s a good thing I chickened out.”
Stratt considers her words carefully. She isn’t the right person to be having this conversation with Grace, for a number of reasons, but she is the one who is here right now. She is ill-suited to this sort of thing. More than that, she is tired. But she forced him to leave his old life behind. Who else could he talk to?
Eva owes it to someone very far away to at least try.
She folds her hands together on her desk. “Dr. Grace. This is a medical decision, and not one that affects the project in any way, so you’re free to do as you wish. At the risk of overstepping, I will say this,” she says. He looks over at her now, eyes wide, and she meets his gaze. “It may be 30 years before we have a solution to the Petrova Line, if we’re lucky. Even then, it will take time for the Earth to recover.” She pauses for dramatic effect, a holdover from many public speaking classes, and he leans almost imperceptibly toward her. “You may not have your current resources later. You do have them now. In 30 years, will you be happier knowing you never tried?”
His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Stratt thinks it’s an automatic reflex—Grace is always talking, so his body will be forgiven for assuming he is about to speak. He sits back again, staring at his hands folded in his lap now. “Wow,” he finally says. “That was really profound, Stratt.”
“I’m capable of it,” she says. He snorts, which she decides is encouraging. “Would you like me to do anything differently now?”
Immediately he is shaking his head. “No,” he says. “No, not—not yet.”
She nods. “If that changes, tell me,” she says. “Now, my meeting is coming up. Please leave.”
He laughs again, a little stronger, and stands, brushing nonexistent dust off his pants. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He hesitates at the door, looking back at her. “Uh. By the way, the cafeteria is having those little cheesecakes you like at dinner tonight. Maybe come eat a full meal for once?”
Stratt does like those cheesecakes. She didn’t know this was information about her other people had. Regardless, she probably won’t make it while the dinner service is going. “No promises,” she says.
“Right. Well,” Grace says. He looks like he might want to say something more, but then changes his mind. He slips out, shutting her office door quietly behind him.
The next time Stratt has a reason to look at the prescription invoice, estradiol and progesterone are on it.
One of the worst parts of Stratt’s job is the number of important politicians and business partners who insist on getting tours.
She staves them off where she can—reminds them of the danger inherent to the project, the reason they’re in the middle of the ocean in the first place, and offers plenty of virtual updates—but eventually, some small number wiggle their way past all that. Two or three times a year, she ends up with a small group aboard the Gansu, excited to catch a glimpse of scientific advances they won’t understand in the slightest. Ministers, congressmen, delegates—everyone is eager to see the Project for themselves. They will be duly impressed, and they will go home and report on what they’ve seen, and money will continue to flow with little resistance. Stratt may not like it, but she knows how the game is played.
Today, Eva wills away a recurring morning muscle ache to lead a group through the bays of labs and work areas, each one carefully divided to provide teams with a small amount of privacy, ultimately reaching the main astrophage lab. Stratt always tries not to linger here—while it is the most important piece of the puzzle, it’s also one of the least interesting to look at for an outside observer. Engineering has machinery and clean rooms to show off. Astrophage has microscope slides.
That’s normally how it goes, anyway.
Now, the floor is littered with pipes, some lined up to be connected and some in haphazard piles. At either end of the lab are plywood boxes in various states of assembly, and more wood cut to different sizes waiting to be used. A handful of lab technicians are at their normal posts, but the rest are working on… whatever this is. Stratt doesn’t immediately see Dr. Grace, but she does see a pair of suspiciously Dr. Grace-shaped legs sticking out from inside one of the plywood boxes.
She leaves her tour group clustered by the door, taking in the scene, to walk over to the box. She bends over until she can see inside through a gap in the wood. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” Dr. Grace asks automatically. He tilts his head up and to the side so he can see through the gap. Now that she has his attention, she shoots him her most unimpressed look. “What’s up?”
“The tour,” she prompts.
He sucks in a breath. “The tour!” he grimaces. “Sorry… I’m kinda stuck, it’s a nightmare getting in and out of this thing. But Manolo can show them around. Hey, Manolo!”
The lab technician jumps in to walk the group through the different parts of the lab. Eva watches from beside the box, shaking out her legs and rolling her shoulders in search of relief for her muscles as the politicians ooh and ah over the astrophage cells displayed on the microscope screen, no different than the pictures they’ve been receiving in reports for months.
“What are you doing?” Stratt asks the plywood box, as neutral as she can manage.
“Oh, we’re testing how travel distance and gravity affect astrophage breeding,” Grace says, voice muffled from inside. Stratt doesn’t ask how the pipes and wooden boxes serve this purpose—she suspects she doesn’t have time for the answer. Through the gap, she can see him on his hands and knees with an electric drill in hand and a pile of screws and L brackets on the floor. Evidently, you can take the woman out of the hardware store, but you cannot take the hardware store out of the woman.
Every time Stratt glances down, Grace is ineffectively pushing hair out of his face. It isn’t yet long, but it’s longer than Stratt has ever seen it—he crossed over into mullet territory some time ago. He’s clean-shaves now, too, and has been for weeks.
She hooks a finger into the black hair elastic she keeps on her wrist and slips it off, then reaches in and taps Grace’s shoulder. When he looks up again, she holds it in front of his face.
“Oh,” he says. He sits back on his heels as much as he can—there’s a cross-beam keeping him from straightening up entirely—and takes it, expression unsure. He runs his fingers through his bangs and the hair at the sides of his face, pulling it all back, and carefully ties it up into a tiny but secure half ponytail.
“Hey!” he grins, peering up at her. “Thanks. I’ll get this back to you later.”
“Don’t bother. I have plenty,” Stratt says. She pats the edge of the plywood before returning to the group. She can feel a tension headache coming on, and the sooner she can get this wrapped up, the sooner she can take something for it.
Stratt would like to say that she had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Unfortunately, she hadn’t really woken up.
The sleeping issues are starting to concern her. Taking a long time to fall asleep is one thing, but now, no matter what time she falls asleep, she always wakes up at 3:09 AM on the dot—it even follows her into new timezones. Last night, she hadn’t managed any sleep at all, and gave up after four hours of staring at the ceiling of her hotel room. She isn’t stupid—Stratt knows her body is a machine, and if it doesn’t get what it needs, it will break down. The timelines for this project is too long to get by on repeated all-nighters and copious amounts of coffee.
It makes her so angry. Eva is aware of the weight of the world on her shoulders at every moment. She cannot afford to slip up because her own body is failing her. That anger at herself has followed her throughout her day. She barely stops herself from venting her frustration onto a room full of American politicians and NASA personnel that morning.
She does snap at the driver taking her and Dr. Grace to the tarmac at Kennedy Space Center, where they are expected to stand around in the Florida sun for a demonstration, for dropping them off so far away from the meeting place.
“This is perfect, actually,” Grace butts in before the driver can answer. “Thanks for everything, you’ve been great.” He shoots Stratt a pointed look before hopping out of the SUV, taking his clipboard, closed laptop, and a stack of papers Stratt had handed him after the meeting along.
She kind of wants to wring his neck. The last thing she needs right now is a grade school teacher’s performative disappointment pointed in her direction. She gets out, saying nothing else to the driver.
“What is your problem?” Grace hisses as they start the long walk to the designated observation area.
“Half of the people in that meeting had no business speaking,” she says.
“Yeah, that’s not the driver’s fault,” Grace says. “You know, I bet you’ve never worked a service job in your life.”
“I worked at a grocery store in secondary school.”
“Must have been about a million years ago, because you’ve clearly forgotten what it’s like to be on that end of things!”
She whirls on him. “You’re calling me old?” she demands, this close to stomping on his foot and leaving him behind. If only she didn’t need all the papers he’s carrying.
“Director Stratt, right this way,” calls one of the aides sent to facilitate this visit, and he waves them over to a cordoned off area of the blacktop. Behind her, Grace mumbles to himself, but she chooses to ignore it for fear of irreversibly blowing up at him. That’s the last thing the director of Kennedy Space Center needs to see.
They stand there with the rest of the group, mostly made up of the morning’s meetings attendees that Stratt has already run out of patience with, waiting for the demonstration to begin. She pretends to listen to them talk amongst themselves and takes deep breaths. She cannot afford anger like this. Other than her sleepless night, there isn’t even any reason for it, and that frustrates her even more.
A wave of heat engulfs her, sudden and uncomfortable, and Eva steps away from the group and slips off her jacket on auto-pilot. In spite of the bright sun, it’s a fairly temperate September day. She continues to breathe, willing it away.
Grace, cell phone in hand, turns to her. “Hey, Lokken—” he starts, then looks at her. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she says, staring out at the horizon.
“You’re really red,” Grace says.
“I’m just warm,” she says. Another wave hits her, and she scrambles to push up her sleeves. Are her hands shaking? Surely not.
Grace squints at her. The coming loss of global warmth aside, Eva has been cold all her life, always bringing multiple layers with her everywhere in case she needs them, always with her hands in her pockets to warm up her fingers. She has a reputation among her colleagues, now.
“You need something to drink?” Grace asks.
“No,” Stratt says. She pulls her hair over her shoulder to one side and fans herself for a moment. It will go away. She is not sick, and her will is stronger than whatever this is.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Grace frown, consider, and then look down at the stack in his arms. He shifts some things around until he’s separated the clipboard from the stack, and starts to fan her with it.
Eva wants to snap at him, because she’s still annoyed, but the truth is it does help. After a few minutes of standing there, breathing and sweating while he fans her, she feels the tide of heat ebb. Seconds after that, she shivers—but this is something she is familiar with. She rolls her sleeves back down and slips her jacket back on, and Grace stops with the clipboard.
“What about Lokken?” she asks, ready to move past this moment.
They watch the demonstration, talk to more people, and attend yet another meeting before being released. It doesn’t escape Stratt’s notice that Grace shoots her suspicious looks all day, as if waiting for her to fall apart.
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” he suggests once they’re on their way back to the hotel.
“I will if needed,” she says, leaving no room for argument. Sometimes Grace finds room anyway, but today he leaves her be.
It happens again, when she’s already in her pajamas and in bed, alone. For a few minutes, she sits on the edge of the bed, a cold bottle of water pressed to her forehead. Then it’s gone.
Fine. She is fine.
Stratt finds Grace in one of the smaller conference rooms on the Gansu, his favorite for late-night hideaways. Stratt suspects two reasons for this—the chairs are more comfortable than the ones in the labs, and one of the long walls is covered in whiteboards.
She doesn’t need him urgently, but she has just received a new report from a team of astrophysicists in Mumbai, and she sees his work computer is active, and she needs to walk off some of the ache in her legs before she settles in for a meeting with another team with an inconvenient time difference. So, she stops by.
Truth be told, Eva should be able to make her way through this one on her own—she’s familiar with the topic now. But, when she opened the document and started to skim through, she found she couldn’t grasp any of the words. They fell away from her, and the harder she tried, the faster they fell. It scares her. She cannot lose herself like this while the world is at stake. Before she can think about solving that problem, though, she needs to finish what’s immediately in front of her.
Stratt knocks first, but she doesn’t wait before opening the door. It is her aircraft carrier for the duration, and this is a public room. Grace, the room’s only occupant, yelps in surprise and whirls around to face the door, one hand clenching a dry erase markers to his chest. The board is covered in mathematical scribbles Stratt only barely glances at.
“Alright?” she asks.
“I’m fine—” he starts, but something is off—his voice is different, aside from being strained by surprise. Higher-pitched. Red-faced, he coughs and clears his throat urgently, then speaks more normally. “Fine. Sorry, you just startled me. What do you need?”
Stratt shuts the door behind her—not everyone on this ship has a high enough clearance to be allowed to overhear meetings like this. “The Mumbai team just sent their latest results. I wanted to go over them,” she says, setting her open laptop down on the table.
Grace is still clearing his throat, and has turned away to grab the eraser and wipe away a section of the whiteboards that isn’t numbers. Stratt catches a glimpse of words before Grace can erase them, and takes a closer look. He has lab reports spread out on his side of the conference table, but Grace’s laptop is sitting open by the whiteboards where he was standing, open to a paused video of a woman.
“Were you practicing changing your voice?” she asks.
Grace whirls around. “How do you always know?” he demands, actually sounding annoyed.
Stratt just tilts her head at him and sits, redirecting her attention to her laptop screen. “Is it going well?”
“No,” Grace says. He sinks into his chair—across from hers and over one, just an extra little bit of distance. “It’s so hard.”
“Most things worth having are,” Stratt comments idly.
Grace sighs. “I wish I could just walk through a machine and be…” he trails, then waves aimlessly into the air. “Completely different.”
This is exactly the wish that drives hoards of women to weight loss drugs, Stratt doesn’t say. She knows the desire comes from a sympathetic place. “Would you like to practice while we go over these results?”
“Definitely not,” Grace says, scrunching his face up in displeasure. “I don’t… I don’t have it yet. I don’t know. I don’t sound like… like me yet.”
Stratt shrugs, forwarding the email with the research report attached to him. “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she says. “But you’ll never feel comfortable until you get used to hearing yourself sound differently.”
Grace is suspiciously silent at that. Eva glances up to find him staring at his keyboard. She waits.
“You really don’t mind?” he finally asks. “You won’t laugh at me or anything?”
Stratt raises her eyebrows at him. “Dr. Grace.”
He bites his lip at that, which does nothing to stop the corners of his mouth from turning up. “Stupid question,” he mutters in agreement.
“It’s up to you,” Stratt says. “We’re talking through this paper either way.”
So, they do. At first, Grace is so quiet, Stratt can barely hear him. As they go, he starts making adjustments, gradually gaining volume as he reads through passages and explains them in broad strokes, answering Stratt’s questions. By the time they’ve reached the conclusion and are talking through the significance of the results, Stratt can clearly hear—and see—the woman Grace is becoming.
She stands at the whiteboard again, hair that is now long enough to put into a full ponytail falling out where she has twisted her fingers in it while thinking. Her right hand draws pictures and her left hand motions aimlessly in the air as she breaks a complex scientific concept into its component parts. Her shoulders hunch in slightly, unable to escape an air of self-consciousness even as her voice has settled into the confidence of someone who knows she’s right—someone who enjoys being right. Eva sees her, and for just a moment, her heart aches along with the rest of her muscles.
“This is actually really complementary to the stuff they’re doing in… gosh, where was it,” Grace says, tapping the dry erase marker against her chin. “Budapest.”
“I’ll arrange a meeting between their project heads so they can collaborate,” Stratt says. Another wave of heat hits her, and she quickly sheds her outer layers. Grace’s eyes go wide just before she looks away entirely, for good reason—Stratt doesn’t ever show off her bare shoulders, but lately she is either shivering or burning, and she has had to alter the way she dresses to survive. The flashes have happened enough times in front of Grace now that she doesn’t comment on it, but she does grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge in the corner of the room and hands it over wordlessly. Eva drinks it while Grace keeps talking.
She’s back to shivering in six minutes. She’s been timing it.
“I think that’s enough for tonight,” Stratt says, slipping back into her cardigan, coat and scarf. “Thank you, Dr. Grace.”
“Yeah, well… Thank you, too,” he says. He’s reverted back to his “normal” voice, and his shoulders are even more hunched than they were.
Stratt is about to leave, but something in his expression stops her. She looks at him, and tries to intuit what it is—in spite of what he says, she doesn’t always know. His hair is down now, a colorful hair elastic around his wrist, and he worries his bottom lip with his teeth as he looks blankly at the mess of papers on his side of the table.
“Dr. Grace,” she settles on, “would you like me to refer to you any differently?”
“No, not yet,” Grace says, shaking his head. He gives her a crooked smile. “When I’m a little farther along, I’ll… I’ll do the whole coming out thing.”
Stratt nods and bids him goodnight. But, she thinks, maybe she will anyway. Only sometimes, only to herself. The only way to get used to it, after all, is to practice.
Komorov is in the middle of showing off a new prototype for the spin drives when Stratt has to excuse herself. She has put it off for as long as she can, and when she finally gives up, she tries to make it look like she’s received a more urgent task. Still, she feels eyes on her as she lets herself out of the lab and makes a beeline for the nearest bathroom.
After relieving herself, Stratt stares at her exhausted reflection in the mirror while washing her hands. In half an hour, she will feel the need to run back here again. It wakes her up at night, on the off chance she’s managed to fall asleep in the first place. Even when she cuts down on her fluid intake—her coffee intake, which had been a miserable week-long experiment—it doesn’t ease up. By this point, she’s given up.
When she returns to the engineering lab, the demonstration is finished. She’ll get a summary from Komorov and Dr. Grace later. The next item on her calendar is a meeting with Dr. Lamai and the team building the coma care robot, and she heads for Dr. Lamai’s lab on the other end of the ship. Grace, also scheduled to be present for that meeting, breaks away from conversation with Komorov and jogs after her.
“Everything okay?” he asks, voice quiet in the din of the long metal hallway.
“Fine,” Stratt says, voice clipped. They walk the rest of the way in silence.
Things are going well with the coma care robot. Stratt has never been in the medical field, but she admits she had a hard time imagining a robot that could place an IV or draw blood with any accuracy. She is happy to be proven wrong—the team even has a video they share, demonstrating a successful blood draw on a human patient. Grace looks away for the duration.
After that meeting, she stops in on Hatch, then supervises a virtual meeting between the Hail Mary’s engineering team and others at CNSA and JAXA that are working on the navigation unit. Grace follows her to each stop, then accompanies her back to her office. Twice, Stratt has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom again, and orders Grace to go on ahead.
Once they’re back in the safety of Stratt’s office with the door closed, Grace turns to her.
“What’s wrong with you?” he blurts out. It seems to hit him how that sounds a moment later, and he grimaces. “I mean—are you sick?”
Stratt suppresses a sigh as she sits down at her desk with her laptop. She knows others have noticed the hot flashes and the way she’s been disappearing more frequently lately, but Grace is seeing the most of it. More than anything, he seems baffled by her odd symptoms, like this couldn’t possibly be happening to her. “I’m not sick,” she says.
“Have you been to the doctor?” Grace prods.
“Yes,” Stratt says, which is all Grace will be getting. Yes, she has been, multiple times now. Her bloodwork hasn’t shown anything alarming. She never has a fever, even during the waves of heat. She doesn’t have the flu, or strep throat, or a UTI. She isn’t pregnant—impossible, but her doctor insisted on testing anyway. At the moment, their strategy is vitamin supplements, melatonin, and prayers while they continue to monitor.
“Okay, good,” Grace huffs.
He takes a seat across from her with his own laptop, and they work in silence for a while.
Grace doesn’t actually need to be here, but for the times Stratt has a question for him, it’s easier to ask when he’s right there than to call him up or hunt him down. Her impossible task this month is whittling down the list of astronaut candidates down to the six she needs. Most of the applicants are wholly unqualified, but even with a small handful of possibilities, the pressure to make the correct choice is daunting.
Grace fidgets, always. Usually, Stratt is able to ignore it. Now, it keeps catching her eye.
He keeps pulling at the collar of his lab coat. His sleeves are rolled up above his elbows. Now that Stratt really looks at him, she realizes underneath the lab coat he’s wearing a sweatshirt.
“You aren’t hot?” she asks. It’s a warm summer day, even out on the ocean, and Grace does not share Stratt’s chronic chill.
Grace tenses, then forces himself to relax. “I mean. Yeah, a little,” he says. “It’s no big deal, though.”
Stratt looks at him, waiting. Usually, that is all that’s needed to keep Grace talking. Today is no different.
“It’s just… I’m kind of in a weird spot,” he says, and gestures awkwardly to his upper body. “With. All this.”
Stratt does not look at Grace’s chest, but she can intuit what she means. Now that she thinks about it, Grace has been wearing the lab coat everywhere lately.
“I mean, the next time I wear a t-shirt I think it’ll be kind of obvious something is going on,” she finishes awkwardly.
Stratt nods. “Congratulations.”
Grace snorts. “Thanks,” she says, ducking her head a little. “It’s good, it’s just… a big step. And honestly, I think I need to go shopping first? Don’t want to accidentally end up with an HR violation. Do we have HR?”
“Technically,” Stratt says. In a situation where she is forcibly relocating key people to the middle of the ocean, there’s a limit to how useful a human resources complaint can be. “Go shopping when we’re in London.”
“Yeah... I’ll try to find some time to slip away," she nods. Which means Stratt will have to personally block off free time on Grace’s calendar or it isn’t going to happen. The climate conference they’re attending is only two weeks away—she needs to get to it soon, or they will both be taken up with other things. “Honestly, I like my wardrobe, I don’t think I’m going to need that much new stuff. I just don’t really know how to shop for the things I do need.”
A moment later, she stiffens. “Uh, that’s probably not—let’s talk about something else,” she says, perhaps thinking better of discussing buying undergarments with her boss. “I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
“I’m sure you will,” Stratt agrees.
Privately, she is doubtful.
Grace is incredibly intelligent. She is no doubt capable of figuring out how to buy a bra. At the same time, Eva knows that buying women’s clothing is stressful, and can be overwhelming. If Grace didn’t live on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, it wouldn’t matter. As it is, she has a deadline. After this conference, she may not get another chance for months.
This isn’t any of Stratt’s business. She is Grace’s superior, and even if they were friends, Stratt doesn’t have the time to take her on a shopping spree. And even then, if they were friends, and she did have time… Eva isn’t good at that sort of thing. She wasn’t born with the gift of female camaraderie. She has suffered through many awkward, failed attempts at bonding this way throughout girlhood. It has never come easy to her.
She thinks on it at 3:10 AM, drenched in sweat, after spending most of the night getting up every hour to pee. She thinks on it at 3:22, while she showers off, and at 3:39 as she curls up against her pillows with her laptop, knowing it won’t do any good to keep trying sleep. Eva is hollowed out. She is losing control of her body. Her entire life is being spent doggedly pursuing a goal that has every chance of failing. She is sore and tender and lonely. She yearns for something good—something small, any sort of win. Something she can hold onto. She blocks off time in Grace’s calendar.
In the darkness, it seems like the obvious right choice. It’s different in the light of day, when she is on dry land, walking among regular people. But, Stratt has made a decision. She does not make a habit of second-guessing her decisions.
One afternoon, early in the week of the conference, she takes Grace out with her. He doesn’t question her anymore—she tells him to follow, and he follows. Carl drives them to a little shopping district she sent him, parked, and the three of them emerge from the car. He’s on the Gansu most of the time, now, save for when she or one of the head scientists are out in the world. She has already informed him that he will not want to follow them into the store, and has given him leave to explore.
It’s a picturesque little area, small shops in old buildings along cobblestone sidewalks, plenty of trees, and a square blocked off from cars. Stratt can tell Grace is more focused on the view than where they’re going, because he doesn’t notice until they’re both inside the store with the door closed behind them that there is nothing but undergarments on display.
A woman older than Stratt greets them cheerfully from a checkout counter tucked into the corner of the store. Behind Stratt, Grace freezes. “Don’t panic,” she instructs.
“Anything I can help you with?” the woman at the counter asks.
“Yes. This is Grace, she has an appointment for a fitting,” Stratt says. Behind her, Grace makes a tiny squeak of surprise.
“Perfect. You’ll be with Mona today, I’ll have her right out,” the older woman says. She turns away to page Mona, and Stratt turns back to Grace.
“Stratt,” Grace says, sounding strained.
“A well-fitting bra makes a world of difference,” Stratt tells her. Better to learn this now, and skip the finding out. She lets her eyes wander, taking in the decor of the shop—couches by the window, walls painted warm colors, art on the walls. A rainbow flag and a transgender flag are prominently displayed in the window. It’s all very cozy. It isn’t the sort of place Stratt would pick for herself, but it has very good reviews. She looks back to the woman at the counter. “Can I wait over here?” she asks, gesturing to the couches.
“Of course, love, make yourself comfortable,” the woman says.
“Stratt,” Grace says again, pleading.
Stratt looks at her. She doesn’t think Grace is a flight risk, but if there is something she can do to put her at ease in the moment, she should. This is her fault.
“You’re helping save millions of lives,” Stratt says, quiet and serious. “You will need the support.”
Grace freezes, wires crossed—half of her wants to laugh, half of her is already flushing in embarrassment.
From the hidden back area of the store, a girl appears—truly, she must be in her early twenties. Still practically a child. She is tall, sharp-jawed, with piercings and tattoos. One side of her head is shaved, and the rest of her hair is dyed pink. She has kind eyes and a gentle tenor voice. “Right this way, Ms. Grace! I’m Mona, I promise I’ll take good care of you,” she says.
Grace looks between Mona and Stratt helplessly for a moment, but to her credit, she does follow Mona back, awkwardness writ into every line of her body. Stratt settles on the couch and pulls out her tablet to power through as many e-mails as she can while she waits. Around ten minutes in, she gets a text.
Carl
Think you’ll be hungry after? There’s a French bakery around the corner.
Stratt just barely hears the sound of two sets of laughter carrying up from the back. This has worked out better than expected—Stratt suspects Mona is young enough that Grace’s responsible adult senses are tingling.
Stratt
send a picture of their coffee menu?
After a while, she hears Grace’s voice grow louder as she returns—her girl voice, as she referred to it once. “Oh, no, she’s… actually my boss.”
Mona laughs beside her. “Cool boss.”
Stratt puts her tablet away as the two of them reappear. Grace is smiling, genuinely, her glasses doing nothing to hide the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The turn of her mouth still carries a twinge of embarrassment, but her shoulders are relaxed. She looks as at ease as she ever does. She looks happy.
“How did it go?” asks the woman at the checkout counter as Stratt rejoins them.
“We found the perfect thing!” Mona answers for Grace. “Question is, how many do you want?”
This puts a furrow in Grace’s brow. “Oh, I don’t know. How many do I need?” she wonders, and as if by instinct, turns to Stratt. “How many do you—” she starts, and then catches herself, realizing she was about to ask her boss how many bras she owns. “Uh—I shouldn’t ask you that, nevermind.”
Mona laughs kindly. “I’ll tell you, when I got my first bras I bought seven, which was way overkill,” she says. “I thought you had to wash them after every wear.”
“Oh, you don’t?” Grace asks, genuinely surprised.
Mona shakes her head. “Nah, as long as they pass the sniff test, just rotate them and wash every two or three wears.”
“Well…” Grace trails off, and she gets a look on her face that Stratt is incredibly familiar with—she is doing math. “Four? Is that too many?” She looks to Stratt for confirmation, and it has been a big day, so Stratt takes pity on her.
“It’s a good start,” she says. Grace will probably have to do this again before too long anyway, she doesn’t say.
Mona grabs what Grace needs, and Eva turns away as she checks out so she won’t know what Grace’s bras look like. She may have already overstepped, but there are some lines she would not like to cross. Grace thanks both employees profusely, and Stratt gives them a polite nod as they leave.
“Ooooooh my gosh,” Grace says, once they’re away from the store and out in the little square. She lets all of the air out of her body with the words, her shoulders sagging, her paper shopping bag clutched in her hand. A small smile never leaves her face.
“Alright?” Stratt asks, even though she knows the answer.
“Yeah,” Grace says, standing up straighter. “Wow. No one has ever called me Ms. before. Or… or she.”
It's strange, to think that Stratt would be the first person to refer to Grace as 'she' out loud. She doesn’t need to ask how Grace felt about it. It’s written all over her. “They would if you asked them to,” Stratt says. A reminder, not a lecture.
“Yeah,” Grace says quietly. “Well… maybe soon.”
This time, Stratt does believe her. “We’re meeting Carl at a bakery. This way,” she says, leading Grace away from the store.
Grace hesitates. “I’m not buying all my clothes today, am I?”
“No. You have Friday afternoon and evening blocked off while I’m meeting with the foreign minister,” Stratt says.
“Oh, good,” Grace says, relieved.
They find Carl waiting for them outside the bakery. He shoots Grace a smile and doesn’t bring up the appointment at all. Stratt is glad he’s here—he puts Grace at ease, and the two of them make running commentary on all the pastries they see before picking out practically half the display case. Americans. The coffee is good. By the time they’re on their way back to the hotel, Stratt feels relaxed at having done something normal for the first time in months. Even with all the calls she needs to make and reports she needs to review before bed, she thinks she might manage to sleep some tonight.
Grace stops her before they split off into their own hotel rooms. “Hey, Stratt?” she starts, and Stratt stops, giving Grace her full attention. “Thanks. That was… kind of insane, actually, but. You know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Stratt says. A small win. “Remember we’re meeting with Dr. Siddig for breakfast tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there,” Grace promises.
Eva sleeps for four hours before she wakes up with a drenched sleep shirt.
At 4 AM, long before sunrise, Eva finds herself pacing the length of the flight deck, back and forth. In the dark, lit only by lamps along the edge of the ship, she doesn’t pass many crew members—just the occasional Chinese shipman, all of whom give her a wide berth. She wonders what this job is like for them. Is it considered cushy, an easy gig? Does it scare them, the reason they’re out here in the first place?
Eva is not a crier, but right now, she wants to. This, more than anything, is a sign that something is very wrong. She has already resolved to stop by the medical station as soon as her doctor is in this morning, to beg for another test, anything that might uncover what is wrong with her. She hasn’t slept through the night in months. She’s either overheating or freezing. Every time she gets out of bed, her muscles seize in pain. Just last week, she had to excuse herself from a meeting with several heads of state to run to the bathroom. There is so much work to be done, but even with small power naps throughout the day she can hardly focus focus. Her head feels clouded, like she’s watching everything through a shroud. It scares her.
She can’t keep going like this. The world is out of time. It cannot wait for Eva Stratt to be human.
Eva wants to go home. There is no such place.
At the far end of the flight deck, she stands by the railing, looking off into inky darkness, and does timezone math in her head. She always knows it, even though she can’t often make use of it. Early evening is acceptable—she pulls out her satellite phone and makes a call.
As usual, her sister does not answer. She calls back 3 minutes later. Eva hears soft music in the background, a group laughing.
“Eva,” her sister says. “Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Eva says. These days, this is how all their phone calls start. “Where are you?”
Her sister talks. She’s visiting a friend out of town for the weekend, and they’re having a potluck. She talks about her friend’s cat, about the neighbor’s new baby that everyone has been passing around all evening, about the book she just finished.
She can’t stay, Eva knows this. A few minutes make a world of difference. Eva releases her, inventing an upcoming meeting.
“Are you taking care of yourself?” her sister asks, before Eva can hang up.
She takes stock of herself—all her aches, all her sleepless nights, her skipped meals. Either way, the world is ending. Eva, at least, is one of the few out of billions who can say she is not helpless. “A little,” she says.
“Do a little more,” her sister says, as if she is now the older one. She’s only repeating what Eva has told her in years gone by.
“Yes ma’am,” Eva says, a smile tugging at her lips, the first in a long, long time.
She makes her way back to her room—sister’s orders. She still doesn’t sleep, but she does lay with her eyes closed, trying desperately to think of nothing. Then, when the first light of dawn breaks, Stratt sends the medical team a message, warning them she is on her way.
Stratt dismisses her team leads from their weekly meeting early. It’s been a slow week, news-wise—for once, everything is going according to plan, with no surprises. She is relieved, once they’ve mostly filed out, to be able to scratch the itch at the base of her skull that has been driving her crazy. The relief is enormous, so much so that she doesn’t immediately notice Grace waiting for her with her face scrunched up in an exaggerated wince.
“Don’t say it,” Stratt orders. It’s truly staggering, how many discomforts she has now been informed are symptoms. But she has been feeling better. She has fewer hot flashes, she’s getting more sleep, and the fog clouding her thinking has lifted. She experiences what she considers a normal amount of despair, now, consistent with the impending apocalypse. In the end, the answer was so human she’d needed a moment to compose herself. She is still working with her doctor to find appropriate dosing, but for now, she has a patch on her arm and she is out of the darkness.
Grace raises her hands in surrender.
“What do you want?” Stratt asks.
“Well,” Grace says. She clears her throat. “I was hoping you’d help me with something.”
This is interesting. Grace doesn’t often ask for help outright—if she has a work-related problem, she complains and Stratt fixes it. Stratt studies her for a moment, taking in the way she fidgets with her notepad and pen, seeing the ways she’s changed. Her hair is past her shoulders now, although it’s practically always tied up. All her hair ties are colorful, a rainbow of elastic, which means that Stratt notices the odd time when the one she’d gifted Grace makes it into the rotation. Her face is softer. She smiles more now, and it reaches her eyes.
She’s trying to smile now, but Stratt can see it for the nervous cover-up it is.
“With?” she asks.
“I think I need to,” Grace starts, and trips only slightly over the words, “come out. And there are a lot of people on this ship. So…”
Stratt nods, thoughtful. “I could have it put in the daily newsletter.”
Grace laughs. “Seems a little impersonal?”
“Would you prefer to tell each person individually?”
“I was hoping for something in between those two extremes,” Grace says, folding her hands together on top of the notepad.
Yes, she would, wouldn’t she. “Announce it at next week’s department head meeting,” Stratt suggests. “Then everyone can handle telling their departments.”
Grace nods slowly. “…Yeah. That’s probably best,” she says. She does a good job mostly hiding the tremor in her voice. This meeting is full of the people on the ship she is closest with, both personally and professionally. The only exception might be the astronauts themselves, but surely Grace can handle telling Dubois and Shapiro during the many training sessions they have together.
Stratt adds the item to her notes for next week’s agenda. “Are you changing your name?” she asks, because it will be relevant information to share.
Grace shrugs halfheartedly. “Honestly? I haven’t really thought much about that part of it,” she says. “Maybe later? I mean, no one here calls me by my first name anyway.”
“Alright,” Stratt says. It strikes her, how comfortable Grace is talking about this with her now. Which is to say, while she isn’t completely at ease, the words come, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to clench herself into a ball. “Have you told Carl?”
Grace furrows her brow. “I thought he knew,” she says.
“Not officially,” Stratt says. “You should tell him. It will be good practice.” It’s the only way to get comfortable.
“Yeah. Alright,” Grace says, her smile a little more real now.
“You will tell me before the meeting if you change your mind,” Stratt instructs, saving and closing the agenda notes.
Grace nods. “Yeah, sure. But… don’t let me change my mind, okay?”
Stratt doesn’t understand how she can look at her so openly like that. So trusting. It must be the American in her. Stratt nods once in acknowledgment.
“You know,” Grace says suddenly, “I never asked you how you know about all this stuff.”
Stratt looks at Grace, brow arched, until she explains. It doesn’t take long. “You know. All the transgender stuff,” she says. “You ask all the right questions, you’ve never said anything insensitive. You’ve just… been really good with it all. In a way I wasn’t expecting. No offense.”
“None taken,” Stratt says, to give herself a moment to weigh possible responses. In the end, she thinks, the truth will not harm anyone. Grace has put so much in her hands, here.
“My sister is like you,” Eva says.
Grace goes through a number of expressions in quick succession, and Stratt doesn’t try to catalog them, just waits. She settles on something wide-eyed, with the smallest, most fragile smile. “You have a sister?”
“She’s eight years younger,” Eva says. She has never told anyone about this before, not the full story. But she thinks Grace can be trusted. “Just when she was becoming her own person, I moved away for university and never went back. But we grew closer when she was in secondary school. Actually, she lived with me for a few months while she started to transition, so I saw some of it up close.”
Grace’s smile widens as Eva speaks. She rests her chin in her hand, propped up on the table. “I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to have you as a big sister,” she says.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” Eva says. She hadn’t been very kind before moving out, she can see that now. At eight years old, Eva had not been thrilled with her world turning upside down. A younger sibling is nothing if not chaos, and she’d had little tolerance for it.
“I always wanted a big sister,” Grace says. “In middle school, my friend’s older sister got her license and she took her everywhere. They were always going out shopping or getting ice cream or going to the arcade… They fought like cats and dogs, but, I don’t know. It seemed nice.”
“Spoken like a true only child,” Eva says, and Grace chuckles. That is enough, she decides, and checks her schedule. “You have a training session with Dubois and Shapiro in 5 minutes.”
“I get it, I’ll get out of your hair,” Grace says, standing and collecting her things. “Are you coming to dinner? The little cheesecakes are back.”
Stratt has plenty to get done today, but it’s a rare meeting-free evening. “I’ll try to make it,” she says. Even if all she manages is to grab food and take it back to her desk.
“I’ll save a couple if I don’t see you,” Grace says on her way out. She gives Stratt a thumbs up at the door. Stratt shakes her head at Grace’s back. Knowing her, they’ll probably end up in the Astrophage department’s sample fridge.
The next week goes by quickly. Everyone works hard. Stratt sleeps, mostly. She goes a full day without a hot flash, twice. Grace sees her plenty, and doesn’t say she’s changed her mind.
But, the morning of the meeting with all her scientific department heads, Stratt arrives and Grace is not there. Normally she’s early, still spooked from when when she first arrived on the Gansu, where Stratt stressed to her that all her meetings will start on time. Her response was to over-correct and arrive 20 minutes early. Now, the rest of the team filters in and Grace is nowhere to be seen.
Stratt frowns at the clock on the wall. She saw Grace the previous evening, and nothing seemed amiss. The clock strikes nine. Stratt makes an executive decision. She isn’t going to let one person’s absence derail her meeting agenda.
“Before we begin, I have a personnel announcement to make,” she says to the room. “Dr. Grace has been in the process of transitioning for some time, and she has chosen to now make this public to her colleagues on the project. From now on, she is a woman, and we will all refer to her as such. Those of you with labs or departments you manage are responsible for sharing this information with them. I am stressing this to you, and you are expected to make it clear to your departments, that any disrespect toward Dr. Grace will absolutely not be tolerated. Understood?”
She looks at each person in turn, really looks, so she can catch any potential problems early. What she sees is a table of nodding heads, most with expressions showing varying levels of surprise. In the back corner, Leclerc is smiling. Stratt files that away. He had described himself as a hippie.
“Good,” she says, and continues with the next point on her agenda.
Fifteen minutes in, Grace finally appears, slipping in and making a beeline for her chair at Stratt’s side. Her eyes are wide but downcast.
“Kind of you to join us,” Stratt says.
Grace looks up at her, somewhat panicked. She leans in and whispers. “Do I need to…”
“It’s done,” Stratt says.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Grace sighs, sinking onto her elbows on the tabletop. Komorov, sitting on Grace’s other side, reaches over and gives her a hearty pat on the shoulder. Grace looks over and sees the grin he’s shooting her, and ducks her head, hiding a smile of her own.
She’s going to be just fine. They continue with the meeting.
Stratt had nothing to do with Grace’s portable being next to hers in Baikonur. If she’d really been thinking about it, she would have put Grace farther away intentionally, but she has a lot on her mind at the moment. Equipment and supplies are moving 24/7, and there is always some small crisis to manage or fire to put out. Stratt barely spends any time in her portable at all—unpacking and putting her own things away is not on her list of priorities.
One morning, in their second week, Grace comes over with coffee and a daily update from the ISS. “Hi, neighbor,” she says at the door, looking inordinately pleased at her joke. Stratt takes the coffee and lets it slide.
“Oh, this is weird,” Grace says as soon as she steps inside Stratt’s temporary home. “Yours is mirrored. Did you know they were different?”
“No,” Stratt says. This is not something she will ever care about.
“I don’t like that,” Grace says, sounding genuinely uneasy. It doesn’t stop her from plopping down on Stratt’s couch. Stratt sits next to her, just close enough to see what Grace has pulled up on her laptop screen, and lets herself enjoy the warmth seeping through the coffee cup into her fingers. She is back to the familiarity of always being cold, which is especially biting on the Kazakh steppe. Eva never thought she would ever miss it.
Things are going well on the Hail Mary. The ship has been assembled for some time, and rigorous testing without astrophage has recently completed. Now, the fuel tanks are being loaded, and even more testing is taking place. This project has affected every area of space operations—a new ISS team was launched two months ago, with a full slate of engineering specialists to solve small problems on the fly. Regularly scheduled scientific experiments are at a standstill until the launch.
Grace goes to Stratt’s kitchen in search of a napkin while Stratt peers at the graph on the screen. She only looks up when she hear’s Grace’s startled, “what the—”
“What’s wrong?” Stratt asks.
“Um.” Grace hesitates, then picks something up from her barely-used kitchen counter—a cardboard box of estradiol patches that Stratt hadn’t bothered to put away. “Is this… yours?”
“My name is on it,” Stratt points out. Grace continues looking baffled, so Stratt throws her a bone. Even if it isn’t her business. “There’s more than one reason to need supplemental hormones.”
Grace’s brows draw together, and then suddenly shoot up. “Menopause?” she asks, shocked to the core. “No way you’re old enough for that!”
“I thought it was a million years since I was in secondary school,” Eva says, challenging.
Grace bites down on a snort. “Okay, you know I didn’t mean that,” she says.
Eva shrugs. She hadn’t meant a lot of the things she’d said that day, either. “It’s called perimenopause, actually. I could be in this stage for years,” she says. “Be grateful you don’t have this part to look forward to.”
“I’m counting my blessings,” Grace says dryly. She sets the box down and rejoins Eva on the couch. “It’s helping, though?”
“No more hot flashes,” Eva says. And she can get a full night’s sleep—or at least, now when she can’t sleep she knows she can safely blame the immense stress of the project. She doesn’t have to pee every hour. Her body doesn’t ache. The difference, now, is night and day.
Eva can practically see Grace mentally recontextualize years’ worth of observed oddities. “That’s great,” she grins, excited on Eva’s behalf. “You know, I think my students would say we’re twinning!”
Eva shakes her head, allowing a small smile to slip out. She nods to the screen. “Focus, please.”
Dr. Grace has been very brave. Eva knows this. She has seen it firsthand. She hopes, with every fiber of her being, that Grace can hold onto that bravery, to apply it where Stratt and humanity need her to.
She doesn’t.
The day after the launch, Eva stands at the portable’s kitchen counter with her phone and a small cardboard box. Lost in a sea of notifications, she is ignoring a congratulatory text message from her sister. She is not ignoring a medication reminder.
Carefully, Eva peels off and discards the old patch. Her vision swims with tears as she opens the new one. Pressing it to the bare skin of her arm, she says a prayer for the peace and protection of the crew, and wills away the memory of the betrayal in Grace’s eyes.