They became ungroomed and unshaven in unison and thus were unaware of the degree to which their appearances were altering. They introduced into the cyclers whatever they could and without thought or complaint re-ingested what the cyclers gave back. Sometimes Capa dreamed, waking or asleep, of tall glasses of clear water. He never again dreamed of the sun.

He counted to himself, worked through equations in his mind. He filled his head with numbers. He helped Pilot with Trey and Mace. He slept without realizing it; he awoke thinking he was still asleep.

Four terrible days later, after ninety-six hours in which Trey moaned and shouted and screamed at them from his delirium of pain and drugs, things went quiet. "I'll do that," Mace had heard Capa say: Trey's blood was all over the deck, all over all of them. After the surgery, Capa had toweled Mace's face for him while both of them shook, a quaking that passed between them like shared hypothermia.

"No," Pilot had said, that time later, flatly, and Mace had listened to her for what had to have been nearly three hours, scrubbing at the decking, a hypnotic rasping of the meshed cloth on metal, until Capa said "Pilot: stop," and Mace could hear plainly another sound: quiet sobbing.

Ninety-six hours. Then, finally, quiet. Trey had exhausted himself; he muttered to himself; his muttering gave way to rough snoring. He slept; Mace slept, too.

Then, an unmeasured time later, he woke. Something was wrong. He heard Capa:

"I need to leave."

"Well, you can't," Pilot replied. She was hoarse; she sounded tired.

Mace tensed. He was a fighting man by nature: he could sense violence in the air like the smell of ozone around a thunderstorm. He was tuned in on a primitive level, an acid tightening through his gut; consequently, what happened next didn't really surprise him.

He heard a thud, a grunt of pain. Pilot. His ears had told him: she and Capa were on the upper deck. Another thud, then the sound of a body hitting the deck. Then a harsh rustling and Capa, panting--

Mace shook himself. Shit. He's raping her--

"Capa-- Capa, no--" He scrambled toward the sound, catching his knee on the grated steps, his head on a railing.

"She has to stay quiet," Capa said evenly.

What was he-- "Capa, don't, man." Mace caught his temple on the sharp corner of a console. Somewhere in the blackish-purple darkness ahead of him, Pilot was wheezing and choking. Then she went quiet.

Mace's heart thudded in his chest. "Capa, what are you doing?"

"It's okay. She's okay. I just have to leave. She wouldn't let me leave."

Mace grasped the console on which he'd struck his head, pulled himself up. "Leave what--?"

No reply. Just Capa's footsteps, heading away. Then a klaxon sounded. Mace knew all the ship's warning sounds: the outer airlock door, their miserable jerry-rigged hatch with no safety overrides, was opening.

He forced himself to speak calmly: "Come on, Capa. Come on back."

"I forgot something."

"Can't go back, man. Not like that."

"I forgot--"

"You'll kill us all, Capa. You wanna kill me, man?"

"You're already dead, Mace. We all are."

"The fuck." Mace paused. Jesus, Pilot: wake up. "You wanna kill me, you come over here and kill me. You don't fucking flush me into space." He eased away from the console, turned directly toward the airlock. The inner door was still closed, or they'd be dead already. "Come on, you little shit. You come here, you pick up a screwdriver, and you stick it in me. I'm not dying because you opened a goddamn door."

Wake up, Pilot.

The air didn't explode around him, didn't lift and pitch him into the only blackness deeper than the blackness filling his eyes. He could sense Capa hesitating. The klaxon whooped on.

From directly in front of him, Capa said: "There's no screwdriver, Mace."

Mace shuddered. "Use a fucking knife, then."

"Alright."

Then came a fleshy thump, and two grunts, one of anger from Pilot and one of pain from Capa, and Capa stumbled against him. Mace had willed that part of it-- certainly he had: Pilot coming to and aborting the danger. What he hadn't willed came next: once Capa had dropped, pitching down Mace to a weakly flailing tangle of limbs on the deck, Pilot kept hitting him with-- whatever she'd picked up: a wrench, some other tool. It whisked past Mace's skull as he grabbed for her. He stepped on Capa and nearly fell; he caught Pilot clumsily in his arms and held on. He held her until her weapon fell with a metallic clang to the deck, and then he continued to hold her, and for a second she allowed it. Then she pushed away from him and went to re-seal the outer hatch. The klaxon died. He called to her: "Are you okay?"

No reply. Then his boot again bumped Capa--

"Shit."

Mace dropped to his knees, groped his way up and across Capa's chest, desperately felt his neck for a pulse. He found it: erratic but there--

And Pilot shoved him aside. Mace lost his balance, toppled onto the deck.

"The hell--"

"I'm tying him," she said, her voice shaking and harsh. "That's all."

He couldn't remember any of it. Not strangling her, not releasing the outer hatch, not Mace goading him. He told them so: he wished they believed him. But Mace was silent but alert behind his scarred lids, and Pilot was quiet. She didn't fear him; he knew that. Nor did she exactly mistrust him. She simply treated him with an extra degree of guarded contempt.

The binding helped. For a day she kept him tied hand and foot. She fed him and gave him his allotment of water; she helped him with his sanitary needs and his cleaning, much as she was helping Trey. Nothing erotic in her touch, nothing more than marginally above inorganic, in fact. On the second day she tied his hands at the front and tethered his right ankle to a railing well away from the airlock and equally distant from the pod's navigational systems. He left briefly on that second day-- he knew for exactly how long because he'd been looking at the chronometer just before he fell. One hour and eleven minutes later he came to with a bruised and aching right temple (he'd hit the railing on his way down) and the vague sense that he'd come that close to dislocating his left shoulder. Pilot was watching him, coldly, from the navigational console.

"Are you alright now?" she asked.

"Yes."

She untied him. She had about her wrist the anchoring strap of the wrench with which she'd knocked him out two days earlier. His blood was still matted on the wrench's head.

Mace was sitting on the steps. She called to him: "Mace, I've untied him."

Mace turned his scarred face their way. His tracking of them was becoming more precise: obviously he was becoming more adept at distinguishing their sounds from those of the pod.

"Got it," he said. He seemed about to say something else; he frowned slightly and kept silent. He turned away.

Capa looked from him to Pilot. Her face was still; her expression said Try something. Please.

Capa rubbed his wrists, hating her, hating himself. "Thank you," he said quietly.

He left her before the temptation to hit her-- it was just a dust mote in the back of his mind, but it was there-- became unbearable; he crossed to the medical bay to check on Trey. Trey was breathing heavily but evenly; his left forearm lay across his chest. His eyes were half open: he was half-blinking, slowly. The bandaging over the stump at his right shoulder was clean. She was doing that correctly at any rate, the psychotic bitch.

"Trey," Capa said, softly.

Trey's breathing sped up slightly; his lips twitched-- whether in a smile or a frown, Capa couldn't tell. He said: "Hey, Capa."

"Are you in pain?"

"No." For a moment, the twitch nearly solidified into a smile. Trey focused up at him, and the smile went away. "You tell me it was necessary."

"It was necessary, Trey."

"Okay." He licked his lips. "I wanted to-- I wanted to believe her, but I didn't. Now I can. See-- I don't trust her. Do you trust her, Capa?"

"Yes." He wasn't one for touching. But Capa put his hand over Trey's. "Not planning on dying on us, are you, Trey?"

"But we are dead. I heard you telling Mace."

Capa pressed his hand more firmly over Trey's knuckles. "We're not dead, Trey. I was talking off my head."

"Crazy man, huh?"

"Yes."

"Always thought so." He licked his lips again, shifted against the foam of the bunk. "You can handle navs until I'm on my feet, can't you?"

"Sure."

"Can I have a drink?"

"Yeah. Hold on."

Capa left him. Pilot didn't say a word as he went to the cycler. By the time he returned to Trey's bunk, the navigator was asleep again. Capa looked down at him, at the cup of water in his own hand. Then he looked back at Pilot. She was still watching him. Her expression was unaccusing, without challenge.

He walked back to the cycler and poured the water into the reservoir.

The gas cycler was straining. They realized it a day later: the machine was overworking for too little output. Pilot and Capa knelt by it, eyeing its gauges and readings like scholars huddling around a holy book whose translation was still open to question.

"There's not enough oxygen reaching it," she said. She cocked an eyebrow at him, as if seeking a debate.

But Capa simply said: "Which means what?"

"Which means we'll end up with about half the air we need."

"How do we fix it?"

She sat back on her haunches, her face thoughtful. "All of the emergency tanks locked in place when we broke away. One must not have unsealed. Or--"

"Or--?"

"Or it leaked," Mace called over.

Pilot briefly looked his way. She straightened. "Let's hope it's the first one."

They had two suits. One was currently not spaceworthy; the other was spaceworthy but mute. The comms on it had cooked in a burst of feedback from the Icarus' dying primary mainframe. Pilot, with Capa's help, twisted and struggled into the second suit-- suiting up being, even under ideal conditions, that is to say, with lifts and slings, a difficult task. As a two-person mechanically unaided job it was nearly comical.

"Jesus Christ--" -- as Mace helped blindly with the lifting of the frontplate-- "-- maybe we should just wrap you in handipatch and send you out."

Pilot said something to him from inside the helmet. Capa, watching her lips move, translated loosely: "She says, 'Thank you, but no, Mr. Mace.'"

Mace grinned for the first time in weeks.

They tested the suit's environmental systems; Mace and Capa staggered her to the outer hatch, where she stood, armed with a tether line, a torch, a cutter, and sealant while they retreated down the corridor segment, the "tube," and closed the inner hatch. While they couldn't hear her, she could hear them. Capa siphoned air from the tube back into the living area of the pod and said to her, over the comm: "Tube flushed. Green light, Pilot."

She was out with less than a full tank of air: she took just what she would need, only what they could afford to lose. Capa programmed the time on the pod's chronometer: twenty-two minutes, green numbers descending.

"There's an alarm on it, right?" Mace said.

"Yes," Capa replied.

He waited in his purple-black darkness, Mace did. He counted backwards in his head, a rocking patience of seconds. She'd have to let herself back in the outer hatch; they had control of the inner. Capa did. Mace pictured in his head the walk to the emergency module on their underbelly, the shielded square locked up against them. Four minutes out. Then six bolts, two minutes, maybe, to clear the hatch, to access the shiny tanks sub-locked inside. A second to note which of the tanks was red-lighted or no-lighted, indicating damage or depletion or-- as they hoped-- an unbroken seal between the the tank's contents and the pod's systems. Possibly six minutes for repairs. Another two minutes replacing the hatch and the bolts. Four minutes back. Then opening the outer hatch and coming inside. Repressurizing the tube: just under a minute. Then she'd be safe. They'd be safe.

He didn't realize how hard his heart was beating until the alarm sounded, a quick hard beeping from the console in front of him. He jumped; he caught himself.

"Okay, that's it," he said. "Get her inside, man."

Beside him, Capa didn't move.

"Capa--?" Mace touched his arm. No response. "This is no time to--"

Capa slumped to the deck, gone. Gone.

"Holy shit," Mace whispered. "Not now, man. Not fucking now--"

The problem-- the most immediate, terrible problem-- was that he didn't know the controls. Pilot had rigged the pressurization on the tube while Mace was not only blind but useless, shortly after they'd broken away. Further, not only did he not know how to re-air the tube, he had no way of knowing if she were actually in it. She could still be outside, or the outer hatch might still be open, and he'd do nothing but blast oxygen into the black vacuum outside.

"Capa!" he shouted, toward the floor. He fought the urge to kick; he stumbled to the inner hatch, pressed his ear to it. Stupid: if it were airless, he'd hear nothing. Which was exactly what he heard. "Capa, wake up!" he shouted again.

She could be right there, right on the other side of the inner hatch. Right there, starting to gasp as her air ran out. Inches away from oxygen, suffocating--

"Capa, God damn it--!"

"Mace--?"

Not Capa's voice. Trey's. Wavering, weak--

"Trey, can you get up? You gotta get up, man--"

"What's happening?"

"Capa's collapsed. Pilot's outside. She's out of air. We've gotta get her inside--"

"How--?"

"Green light. I'm assuming it's a green light. Oh-two-outer-tube on the primary console. Where Capa is. Jesus, man, hurry--"

He heard Trey trying to rise, heard him gasp with pain and dizziness as he lurched toward the console and Capa. Too slowly--

"Jesus, his eyes are open," Trey panted. "Mace, is he--"

"It happens like that, Trey. Never mind him. You can't help him. Gotta help Pilot. Oh-two in the tube: now."

For a moment, Trey said nothing; in that moment, Mace had an awful thought: Why would he want to help her? She cut his fucking arm off.

But a moment later, Trey spoke: "Got it. Tube pressurizing--" -- a pause: "Green light, Mace."

Mace threw the hatch lock, stepped into the tube. Hard sterile cold, air. His boot kicked something heavy and immobile. A helmet. Pilot had fallen. She wasn't moving.

"Trey, get in here!"

It was almost like the start of a bad joke. A one-armed man, a blind man, and a suffocating woman trapped in a spacesuit. Not the way in which Trey would have chosen to re-start his life as a useful member of their tiny society.

Pilot was face-down on the deck. She couldn't right herself: bad enough that the suit weighed over a hundred pounds: worse still, she'd been out of air for over two minutes.

"We gotta flip her," Mace was saying. "I can't reach the helmet release."

Just then-- even more nightmarish or ludicrous or both-- Capa went past them, heading for the outer hatch.

For a split second, Trey thought he was hallucinating. Then he realized-- "Mace, grab-- Behind you!"

Mace threw himself up and backwards and collided with Capa. They commenced grappling there in the cramped corridor, Capa flailing for the door controls, Mace holding him back blindly.

"I have to open the door--" Capa was saying. Trey kept his eyes on Pilot, pawed underneath her for the helmet release, nearly tipped onto her.

"Fuck it, man, we're in the tube--" Mace grunted as he caught a blow; he got Capa in a bear hug. "You can't open the outer door--"

"Pilot's out there."

"Pilot's right here!" Trey shouted. He was going clammy; he felt nauseous. "God damn it, Capa--!"

Capa froze. He looked from Trey and Pilot to the outer door and back again. He stopped straining against Mace. "Jesus Christ."

He crossed to Pilot, Mace still holding on to him, and dropped to his knees.

"Gotta flip her," Mace panted. "Show me--"

Capa grabbed his hands, positioned them on the suit, got his own grip. "Okay-- now."

They grunted, lifting her. Trey sat back, out of the way. He saw, though, through the helmet's view-slit: Pilot's eyes were rolled back in her skull. Capa hit the helmet release, and Trey had his left hand in there, helping with the lifting away. Capa threw the locks on the chest panel, and the three of them pulled her clear.

"What--?" Mace gasped. "What is she--"

"She's not breathing--" Capa said.

Mace shoved him aside. He felt his way quickly, preternaturally, up her sweated, t-shirted torso; he felt his way to her face and tipped her head back and locked his mouth over hers and blew air into her. "Chest, Capa. Compressions."

Breath. Compression. Breath breath. Compression. Pilot came to with a ragged gasp. She caught Mace by the shoulders.

"I'm okay, Mace," she said to him.

"Okay," he said back.

She sat up. She looked at Trey, smiled shakily. "Hey, there."

"Hey."

Capa stood. He offered her a hand. She ignored it. She got up off the deck and punched him square in the jaw. She followed him as he stumbled backward, shocked; she bowled into him, swinging and kicking. "You fucking bastard--!"

A melee followed, right there in the tube. Mace grabbed randomly, missed limbs, caught blows. Someone bumped Trey's stump, and he shouted in pain.

"Stop it--!" Mace yelled. "Goddammit, stop!" He felt his way along the tube, found his way to the inner hatch, found on the pod's bulkhead a switch he knew. A light switch. He hit it.

Inside the tube, the struggling ceased. "Pilot?" Mace called.

"Y--yeah."

"Are we okay?"

A pause from the darkness outside his. He picked Pilot's panting out from Capa's and Trey's. "Yeah," she said, finally. "It was the seal. There wasn't a leak. We've got the air; we're okay."

Mace breathed out. "Guys--? Trey? Capa? You hear that? We're okay."

He switched on the lights.