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There’s something I need to prepare myself for, and I’ve been putting it off long enough. I’m only a day away from the haystack of space where his needle should be, so I think it’s officially the eleventh hour.
I have to plan it, now. I have to decide it, now. Because if I don’t before I’m not sure that I’ll be brave enough after.
I start with math, because math is the easiest. First, the food rations. The journey to Erid is roughly the same as the journey to Earth would have been, so I already know most of it. The schedule, the calories, the depletion rate of real food, the likelihood of malnutrition. What will affect me most and in what order.
The trajectory is next. I’ll have to alter it a bit, depending on where the Blip-A is, but not by much. I punch numbers into the computer, I quadruple check the results. I tell Mary when to expect to initiate it.
I won’t have an engineer, but I think I can manage to make something that will at least contain the Taumoeba so I can hand it off to the scientists on Erid, let them figure out how to get it to Threeworld. I can’t trust I’ll be able to do that by myself properly and it’s too precious and important a task to entrust to whatever Grace is left after four years of malnourishment and loneliness.
The translator on the computer can be reversed from English to Eridian easily enough, and we have enough words that I know I can finagle a reasonably well understood message once I’m in the hailing range of their space elevator. I’ll have plenty of time to work on that, anyway.
There’s a part of me that thinks it might be bad luck to think about the possibility. But I know myself well enough to know I need to make the decision while there’s still hope in me, before it’s overtaken by grief.
I want, more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, to find him here alive. I hope, more strongly than I’ve ever experienced the emotion before, that I won’t be making the journey to Erid alone. I love, more than I loved Earth and all the people on it, and the love is what makes the decision easier than I ever thought it could be.
I know what I’m going to do. The thought settles in me with perfect clarity, with my full commitment. It’s what I’ve known since the beginning.
That this is a one way trip for me.
I guess that’s what Yao meant. About finding someone to be brave for. I’m glad I finally did. Better late than never.
I flash the engines, a few degrees at a time, scanning everywhere in every direction for a blip. The wanting, the hoping, the love is there in every second, but underneath that is the knowing. There’s a level of comfort to that, in having a mission, a goal, a motivation.
I see the burst of light, I mark my course. I want, I hope, I love.
I know I’m one step farther from Earth, but that much closer to home.
I pull up beside the dark splotch outside my window, the only evidence anything is there is the negative space that blocks the stars. I want, I hope, I love.
I know what the worst case scenario is, and I know what I’ll do if it comes true.
I suit up, I tether myself to the airlock.
I want to see Rocky again, want to hear his excited trills and I want to tell him I’m taking him back to Erid.
I hope I never have to spend another day of my life without him, however long that life ends up being.
I love, so fully and so completely, that the fact I’m going to save Erid with or without him always existed as an irrefutable fact, I just had to discover it.
I know I only have one thing left to do now, before the look of the next four years of my life shifts into focus, cements into fact.
So I jump forward, and take the only transportation available to me.
A leap of faith.