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NICK LAKE ALFRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK this is a borzoi book published by alfred a. knopf This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Text copyright © 2017 by Nick Lake Jacket art copyright © 2017 by Jason Heatherly/liondsgn
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. “i thank You God for most this amazing” copyright © 1950, 1978, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems: 1904—1962 by E. E. Cummings edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-1-5247-1353 (trade) — ISBN 978-1-5247-1354-6 (lib. Bdg.) — ISBN 978-1-5247-1355-3 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-5247-7076 (intl. ed.) Printed in the United States of America October 2017 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Excerpt 1, 987 words: (pages 67-70; when Leo’s mom and another astronaut are making a repair outside the ship and a container vessel sideswipes them, sending the other astronaut hurtling into space…) my mother selects a different function on her wrench & uses the workstation stanchion to lean over the exposed workings, legs floating in space.
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“ready?” she says. “when this powers down, u’re going to need to compensate.” Virginia brings up several screens of code. “boosters & alternate gyros ready,” she says. “10-4,” says my mother. “Brown, hold on. this is going to jerk the arm, most likely.” Brown is clipped on but he grips a truss rail anyway, as my mother lowers the wrench. then . . . she twists . . . &... it works. the shuddering on the image, which has been like a motion blur the whole time, disappears, as the gyro shuts off, & the spiking g graph that is running on 1 of the screens flattens to 0. Virginia types furiously, telling every other torque generator on the station to work overtime, keeping the station steady. my mother & Brown twitch, like marionettes, then get their equilibrium. they high-five each other. “job done,” says my mother. which is when i c something from the corner of my eye. i turn. a flame is spouting from the rear of the cargo container, & i say to Virginia, “Virginia,” & Orion says, “oh my god,” & Singh is suddenly on the intercom saying, “what is that, what the hell is that?”
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& u have to imagine that all of this is happening at the same time, & also simultaneously the cargo container is powering forward, unstoppable, & it was less than 700 feet from us anyway, almost co-orbiting, held at bay by Virginia’s codes & commands that are totally useless at this point because that’s a rocket flaming, burning pure fuel, & the massive unmanned cargo container is now a 500-ton bullet heading tow — crash! the station rocks—Libra is thrown into me & i catch her & she buries her head in my chest, as Orion hits the table & clings on to it. Virginia’s face slams into the desk & she lifts it again, nose & mouth bleeding, but she doesn’t seem to notice. she taps & taps & taps but 2 screens are gone & on 1 of them we c the cargo container rotate about its own axis where it has hit the lower y arm of the station, bits of panel & hull & god knows what else scattering into black space like confetti, the huge metal cylinder turning like a lever, inevitably, & then spinning toward the x arm. toward my mother & Brown. broken pieces of the space station, small & large, float silently. inside, alarms start to go off. “Moon 2, please come in. Moon 2, please come in,” says Singh, over the intercom, but no one is listening to him. somehow, Virginia is still focusing tho. she is watching all the screens. monitoring what is going on. “Leo!” she says. “i think it’s just the end of the arm. shut the secondary air-lock doors. we have to contain this.” “Duncan!” says my mother.
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“yes, so listen—” Virginia starts to speak to the astronauts & waves a hand at me, to say, u do ur bit. “ok,” i say. i’m stunned, reeling, in a kind of world where air has been replaced by something thicker & harder to navigate, but her instruction finally breaks thru it. i bring up the pressure & atmosphere system, & initiate the protocol to close off 1 of the station’s 4 arms, the 1 the cargo container hit, which i think is 1 of the infrared array sensors pointing at deep space. “done,” i say. “pressure normalizing in the rest of the ship?” i watch the screen. 12 lb/sq-in. 12.5 lb/sq-in. 13 lb/sq-in. “yes,” i say. words are linear but events don’t work like that, so what u have to imagine is that everything that follows is happening simultaneously, all the words superimposed on each other, overlapping, interleaving like playing cards. from multiple angles, from multiple cameras, a feed comes in of the cargo container, which, now subject to massive rotational force due to the full firing of 1 of its rockets & the fact of hitting the space station, like a pole planted in earth, spins thru the gap in the plus sign of Moon 2, &— the part that i c when i look up from the pressure management system— bears down on the place where Mother & Brown are clipped on—
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“unclip from the station & grab the RCV!” says Virginia into the intercom— Mother & Brown grab it— Virginia leans on the joystick & the vehicle slides down the arm, pulling my mother with it, quickly down toward the middle of the plus sign where we are, inside the heart of the station, & Brown’s hand is yanked from it because he left himself clipped to the truss, next to the gyro— the cargo container scrapes against the truss, with its long end, trailing broken pieces of metal & insulation foam as it goes, & spins on into empty space, & Brown just isn’t there anymore, from 1 split second to the next, he’s gone. the g-force goes crazy as action & opposite reaction do their thing, & we spin, & for once, as something—a rail?— collides with my back, i feel the truth of our situation: that this is a very very heavy thing that we’re in, lunged by air & buoyed by 0 g but fundamentally, deep down, where the rules are, the rules that keep things together: massive. the rules that keep things together, & apart. & then Virginia pulls up another screen & there’s the cargo container, rapidly moving away from us, still flipping around & around like a juggler’s baton. & the tiny figure of Brown, arms & legs outstretched, drifting away into blackness, pierced with bright stars. “Brown!” says Virginia into the intercom. “Brown!” no answer.
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