FADE IN:
A red star, sullen and enormous, alone in the black. Hold. Then we MOVE — slow at first — toward a speck of reflected light. The speck becomes a station: HELIOGRAPH · 7749-B, solar arrays spread like moth wings.
Amber monitor light. MAREN VALE (40s, practical, tired around the eyes) sits at the console taking measurements. Three monitors; on the left one, a mostly flat line. A small recording light glows.
A short laugh. It dies.
She ends the recording.
Darker. Maren has nodded off, slumped back in her chair, lit amber by the monitors. Two unobtrusive BEEPS. She stirs; a few seconds; sits up. Leans forward.
On the left monitor: the flat line has begun to CLIMB.
She types. Glances to the middle monitor, then the right, then back to the left — the line still climbing.
She trails off. Frowns. More typing. A couple of seconds later, two more URGENT beeps.
The most urgent TONE yet. A calm female voice:
Maren flips the lid on the RETRACTOR SWITCH and activates it.
The solar arrays begin folding inward. Moth wings closing.
Maren grabs her half-empty cup — cold coffee — takes a gulp, screws up her face. Snags a packet of CRACKERS and exits frame. The camera stays put. Receding footsteps.
Dim. She stops at the RADIATION SHELTER — a pocket door. She slides it open with a little effort.
Inside: a padded two-person bench — buried in stowage. She makes room for herself, stacking things from one side of the bench on top of the things on the other side. Moves a couple of mops and brooms. Bolted to the back wall, half-buried: a sealed med case, stencilled ANTI-RAD.
Last thing: an old crate of FOOD BRICKS. She lifts it, coughs at the dust, and drops it a little carelessly in the corridor — the crate BREAKS OPEN, bricks skidding across the deck.
She looks at them a beat. Leaves them. Gets in, pulls the door closed.
Green strip light. Maren on the cleared half of the bench, crackers in her lap, the piled junk beside her on the other half.
INSERT — the DOSE RATE READOUT: coarse amber dot-matrix digits climbing. 0.4 ... 2.1 ... 11.8 mSv/h ...
The flare arrives — a slow tide of light crawling across the hull, hard shadows bending and moving. (Effects per look book.)
The readout receding: 6.2 ... 1.9 ... 0.3. A soft tone.
She slides the door open and leans out.
She walks back toward the observation deck. Then — somewhere, hollow but unmistakable:
BANG. BANG. BANG. Slow. Rhythmic.
She stops mid-step. Listens. Nothing. She resumes walking —
BANG. BANG. BANG.
She stops and waits again. A few seconds.
She settles at the console. As her gaze shifts between monitors and she starts typing —
BANG. BANG. BANG.
She pauses, a little bewildered. Then it changes:
BANG-BANG-BANG. BANG — BANG — BANG. BANG-BANG-BANG.
On screen, letter by letter as each is banged out, SUPER: S ... O ... S
Full attention now, eyes wide.
She gets up, hits a wall switch — the lights come up, the station waking dimly around her (ambience intact; nothing bright). The banging starts again.
She moves down the corridor, casting around at each burst of banging — and passes the large window onto the airlock interior.
Through the small viewport in the EXTERIOR hatch: a SPACESUIT HELMET.
She recoils, badly startled. Her voice breaks; her lips quiver.
Her hand hovers at the palm button in its welded steel ring — PUSH / OPEN. She hits it. The sound of a heavy LOCK unlocking.
The exterior door opens. An ASTRONAUT steps in — the suit scorched down one entire side, char on bone-white. The astronaut hauls the door closed. Sits heavily. Begins taking off the helmet — metal sliding over metal.
The helmet lifts off.
Maren is staring into her own face.
The other woman — FUTURE MAREN — hair longer, face thinner, something scraped-out around the eyes — looks back with an expression that is somehow both apology and homecoming.
A long moment. Maren's voice, breaking, one word:
Future Maren answers by leaning over and vomiting on the airlock floor.
— Maren yanks the ANTI-RAD med case off the shelter's back wall, blows off dust, cracks the seal.
— Crew quarters: an injector against Future Maren's arm; Future Maren grey-faced in Maren's bunk.
— Maren holding Future Maren's hair back over a basin.
— Maren asleep in a chair pulled to the bedside, one hand resting on the blanket.
Future Maren, better — sitting up, some color back. Two mugs. Mid-conversation.
Maren turns her mug in her hands.
A long pause.
Maren laughs — and the laugh cracks in the middle and folds, and suddenly she's crying, one hand over her mouth, completely broken. Future Maren sets her mug down and gathers her in, her own eyes swollen.
Nobody has ever meant that literally before.
Seventies bones: burnt-orange seat pads, wood-grain laminate, a coffee unit that belongs in a museum. The two at the table, easy now, mid-laughter over coffee.
Something in the tone. The laughter drains.
Silence.
Maren goes very still. Something assembling itself behind her eyes.
Future Maren says nothing. Maren gets up —
— opens a drawer. Beneath folded clothes: a coiled length of bone-white UMBILICAL LINE, charcoal band, quick-disconnect at one end. The other end —
She sets it on the table between them. Future Maren picks it up gently. Turns the cut end to the light: a clean perpendicular face, hundreds of filament ends — and around the rim, a hair-thin ring of amber. Like a singe.
Maren looks at the cut end of the tether for a long time.
Future Maren steadies the rear-entry hatch of the bone-white suit as Maren climbs in and pulls the internal lanyard. Ordinary, practiced movements — both of them crying and pretending not to.
Maren in the chamber, helmet under her arm. Future Maren before her. The goodbye is wordless until it isn't —
Maren suddenly grabs Future Maren and KISSES her, hard, on the mouth. Pulls back.
She puts the helmet on. Seals it. Future Maren steps out, closes and secures the inner door. A last look through the window. Then, crying, she hits the palm button.
Future Maren turns away from the window — she cannot watch — and comes apart. Hand pressed over her mouth, shoulders heaving. It goes on. (Hold as long as it will bear.)
Finally she turns back —
Maren is still there. The exterior door unopened. Helmet on. Unmoving. Watching her.
Future Maren lunges for the INTERCOM, thumbs the bar.
In answer, Maren releases the seals and lifts the helmet off. Drops it. It rolls.
Future Maren wrenches the inner door open, steps in, right up to her.
A pause. Maren — teary, trembling, and completely certain:
Green light. The alert tone, muffled, winding down outside. The two of them side by side on the bench — the junk long gone; room for both. The dose readout climbs. Neither looks at it.
Maren holds out the packet of crackers. Future Maren takes one.
A laugh — small, real. Future Maren leans her head onto Maren's shoulder. The readout crests. Recedes.
— Galley: the two of them laughing hard at something we don't hear.
— Observation deck: coffee, both chairs occupied now, pointing at the monitors, talking with their hands.
— Crew lounge: a couch, the flicker-glow of a movie on their faces, one's arm around the other, a blanket over both.
Maren at the console, recording. Behind her, soft galley sounds — someone else moving through the station. She smiles at something off-screen, turns back to the lens.
She ends the recording.
The station, arrays spread again, windows warm. We PULL BACK — the station shrinks to a speck against the red star. Hold on the red star, alone in the black.
FADE OUT.
THE END