Vessel

Sagittarius I Mission ^{DAY 1134, THREE DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT TRAPPIST-1F, TWILIGHT LANDING AREA HABITAT}

“You have to stop beating yourself up, Wells.” Ava pushed a cup of what passed for tea into the air-lock slot. “None of this is your fault.”

“I knew he was acting weird, though.” Catherine waited until Ava had sealed the far side before extracting the molded plastic cup, cradling it in her hands, staring into it. The tea was murky and smelled only faintly of tannins, like a memory of real tea from the ancient tea bags they’d brought with them. “I should have been paying attention.”

“By that logic, I’m the one at fault,” Ava said. “I’m the commander; it’s my job to keep track of each of you, and Tom slipped under my radar.”

“Do you really think he did all this?”

“We have him on video…” Ava paused, considering another possibility. “The only other alternative is that we’ve got someone else messing around with us, too.”

“The oxygenator was months ago…” Catherine could barely stand to look at all the pieces laid out in front of them.

“I know.” Ava sighed and lowered her forehead to her hands. “I should search his quarters, make sure he hasn’t managed to get his hands on anything dangerous.”

“Let me come with you and talk to him again.”

“Cath, you’re in quarantine.”

“I know. I’ll suit up, go through decontamination again.” Regardless of what Ava had to say about it, Catherine couldn’t help feeling guilty. “Come on. You know he might talk to me.”

“All right. I don’t like it, but all right.”

That was how Catherine wound up moving through the Habitat in a full decontamination suit as if she were going on an EVA. She knocked on Tom’s door. “Tom, it’s Catherine. I have Ava and Richie with me. I’m going to open the door, is that all right?”

“Yeah.” Tom’s reply was faint, sullen. When she opened the door, he looked up at them with dull eyes, giving a small snort at the sight of Catherine. “Whatever this is, it’s important enough to drag you out of quarantine, huh?”

“Tom, I’d like to search your quarters,” Ava said, without preamble. “I just want to make sure that everyone, including you, is safe.”

Richie stood by the door. He was the biggest guy on the crew, so if Tom tried to bolt or, God forbid, fight back…

Tom didn’t show any signs of fighting back. His shoulders slumped and he stood up, moving away from his bunk. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

While Ava searched, Catherine pulled him aside. “I’m sorry about all this,” she said. It was hard to radiate sympathy through a pressure suit, but she tried. And Tom looked so utterly lost that the sympathy wasn’t a lie.

“Catherine… I didn’t do this,” he said quietly. “I swear to you.”

“Son of a bitch,” Richie said. “You’re on video.”

Tom grew more agitated. “I don’t know why I’m on that tape! I didn’t do any of this! You have to believe me!”

The look Richie gave him was one of disgust. Ava looked resigned. Catherine… she didn’t know how she felt. He sounded so sincere it broke her heart.

“There’s nothing here that shouldn’t be,” Ava said. She’d collected a few items with sharp edges, anything that might possibly be used as a weapon. “Come on.”

“Catherine, please!”

Catherine followed Ava and Richie out, but the sound of Tom’s voice followed her down the hall. “Ava, hang on. Let me talk to him some more.”

“I don’t think going back in there is a good idea,” Richie said.

“I won’t go in. I’ll talk to him through the door.”

Ava sighed. “All right. Come to the mess when you’re done. I think we need to get the crew together and have a talk.”

Catherine went back to Tom’s door. “Tom, it’s Catherine. What’s going on, really? Can you tell me?”

Tom was silent for such a long time that Catherine didn’t think he was going to answer. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, so quietly she barely heard him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I don’t know. Cath, something is wrong with me. Really, really wrong.” His voice got stronger, as if he moved over to the door but stayed quiet. “I… I don’t remember doing any of the things that are on the tape. I don’t remember messing with any equipment. But I… I guess I must have.”

Was he lying? Trying to cover his tracks somehow? Catherine didn’t think so, but how could she be sure? “I don’t understand.”

Tom laughed harshly. “Yeah, I don’t either.” There was a soft thump, as if he’d bumped his head on the other side of the door. “I don’t know what I did last night.”

“How do you not know?”

“I mean… I remember having dinner in the mess with everybody, then going back to my quarters, and then… nothing. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed this morning. It’s happened a few times. Like the night before the oxygenator failed.”

At first Catherine didn’t know what to say. What he was describing was terrifying, both from her perspective and imagining what it must feel like for him. “I-I’m going to have to tell Ava about this, you know that, right?”

“You can tell her, but she’s not going to believe me,” Tom said dully. “And I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, I swear,” she said. “I’ll come back when I can, okay?”

When she got to the mess, the others were already gathered.

“I’m just saying we can’t keep him in there forever,” Claire was saying.

Catherine leaned against the counter, and the other crew members looked at her with varying expressions: Ava looked troubled, Izzy and Richie looked skeptical, poor Claire just looked shaken.

“It’s too dangerous,” Richie argued. “How many times might he have tried to kill us already? And he nearly succeeded killing one of us this last time. You wanna give him another chance to try again?”

“Did he say anything, Catherine?” Ava asked.

“He’s still saying he didn’t do anything.”

“How the hell does he expect us to believe that?” Izzy asked. “We’ve all seen the footage.”

“I know.” Catherine leaned her head back against one of the cabinets and closed her eyes. She sighed. “He says he doesn’t remember doing any of it. And that he’s… well, that he’s lost time. Waking up in his bed and not remembering how he got there. That sort of thing.”

“So which is it? Is he saying he didn’t do anything, or that he doesn’t remember doing anything?” Claire asked.

“He’s saying both,” Catherine said.

“Convenient amnesia.” Izzy folded his arms. “I’ve been doing medical workups on all of you regularly, and I haven’t found a single thing wrong with any of you.”

“Would some sort of trauma-based amnesia show up on an exam, though?” Ava asked. “Are there any tests you can give him?”

“We don’t exactly have the facilities for a full diagnostic battery of tests,” Izzy said. “I mean, I can test him for a few things, but… the thing about amnesia and fugue states—which are what he’s describing—is that they’re really fucking easy to fake. How am I supposed to say, ‘Yes you do so remember what happened’?”

“Ava,” Claire said quietly, “don’t you think it’s time we stopped trying to deal with this ourselves and got NASA involved?”

“I tried.” Ava ran her fingers through her cropped hair. “The comms are now completely down. I couldn’t send a message of any sort.”

“The comms are down? What, did Tom sabotage them, too?” Richie said.

“Shit.” Izzy looked around the table. “What if he’s been doing that all along? What if NASA’s been sending us messages and he’s just… not sharing them?”

The five of them fell silent.

“We don’t know for sure that he did anything to them,” Catherine protested. “What he’s done is worrisome, yeah, but… maybe we shouldn’t start blaming him for everything.” Not yet.

“Oh, of course. Of course you’re going to stick up for him,” Izzy said with an eye roll.

“What do you mean?” Catherine had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what he meant.

“Sagittarius is a small ship, Catherine. You think we didn’t know the two of you were sleeping together on the trip out?”

“Look,” Catherine said, then paused, realizing she was about to defend the indefensible. “Yeah, okay. We did. Once! It was New Year’s Eve and I was drunk. Then I told him it couldn’t happen again. I know it was a mistake, and it never should have happened.”

“Wait a minute,” Richie interrupted. “That’s when he started acting distant and grouchy. And it got worse when we landed. Are you saying that all of this happened because you screwed him?”

“No!” That couldn’t be it. Catherine refused to believe that. “The thing is, no matter what he did, and no matter what happened between the two of us, if we’re going to get a message to NASA, we’re going to have to let him out at some point. We need him.”

“Maybe you need him,” Izzy sneered.

“Doc, come on,” Claire tried to interject.

“No, I mean it.” He turned to Catherine. “Your boyfriend might be trying to kill us because you felt guilty and now you’re feeling guilty about that, so you’re trying to believe he’s innocent. And you expect us to just trust you. To trust him.”

“It’s not like that!” Catherine’s temper was quickly fraying. “If you had talked to him, you would have seen how rattled he is by this. I don’t believe he’s lying.”

“And I’m supposed to just trust my ass with him because he gave you a big sad puppy-dog look?”

“Enough.” Ava cut them both off. “Catherine isn’t wrong. We don’t know for sure that he’s deliberately and consciously done anything to hurt us. But more important, he’s the only one who can get us back in touch with NASA. As long as the comms are down, we can’t tell them anything.”

Richie spoke up. “And if he’s the one who sabotaged the comms in the first place?”

“Well, if he was,” Ava said, “then he’ll know better than anybody else how to fix them. It’s in his interest, too. He agrees to fix the comms, we let him out—for a little while at least.” She looked around at all of them. “Look, we need to get in touch. This is the sort of thing NASA ends missions over. But it’s too big for me to make the call alone. I’m not calling an abort until I’ve heard from Mission Control. Are we clear?”

The four of them nodded, the men grudgingly.

“All right,” Ava said. “Richie, Catherine, come with me. We’re gonna see if Tom is in the mood to bargain.”

“You’re gonna fucking get us all killed,” Izzy muttered. “Just watch.”