the TV’s voice commands. “That was Vanhi.”
She tossed little Ryan upright, holding him snugly to her chest. “That was my what?” she called.
“Your face.”
Unsure she’d heard correctly, she repositioned the boy on her hip and rounded the corner.
Her parents’ house was large—thankfully, since Vanhi had grown up with five siblings. But the living room had never been spacious. The normally curtainless windows now sported bright purple-and-orange scarves from her mother’s collection to keep the midday Arizona sun from glaring off the television screen. The three well-worn brocade couches were filled to bursting with relatives—relatives who’d all turned away from the screen to gape over their shoulders at Vanhi.
“What—?” She pulled up short of coming fully into the room, a question caught in her throat. Her brother Parth had his pointer finger outstretched, wavering over the holographic pause button floating above the end table.
Just as Divit had said, Vanhi’s face took up the screen. They’d landed on some news channel, and below her mouth—which hung wide, mid-sentence—was the headline:—entific Shakeup of Our Time; Twelfth Planet United Mission Canceled. New Mission to be Assig—
“What is this?” her father asked. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going to be on the news?”
Where on Earth did they get—? The cogs in her brain slowly rolled into place. It took her a moment, but eventually she recognized the clip. This wasn’t one of the recent interviews she’d given in Dubai. Her clothes, her hairstyle—they were from years ago.
I’m going to murder him. They won’t send me into space if I murder him.
It was a portion of a vid she’d help make in grad school. Some informational such-and-such they used in U of O recruiting.
She’d signed a waiver; the university could do whatever they wanted with the footage.
Apparently they wanted to hand it over to Dr. Kaufman to use as academic propaganda.
“What new mission?” asked Swara, inching up to take her son. She was Vanhi’s closest sibling, and not just in age. “They’re canceling the mission to TRAPPIST-One? But I thought that was our best bet for finding multicellular life. That was my favorite mission.”
It was the world’s favorite mission.
Dozens of expectant eyes tracked Vanhi’s every twitch. She hadn’t meant for this to come up now. Didn’t really need it to come up for years. Because she knew as soon as she tried to explain—
There would be so many different reactions. So many questions to field. She didn’t want to deal with them now. She got to come home so rarely; this was her first visit back in two years. She wanted to talk about Leah’s college applications, and Divit’s promotion, and Swara’s new engineering company. She wanted to play with little Hannah and give Ryan his bath.
She wanted to go fishing with her father and simply watch the river. She wanted to endure her mother’s never-ending attempt to clean out her closet by forcing Vanhi to take every pair of churidaar she owned—no matter how threadbare.
She wanted to casually mention her involvement in the new Convoy Twelve, to ease everyone into it, to reassure them.
She knew if her brother pressed Play that her face would swiftly disappear, followed close by Kaufman’s. Damn Kaufman and his need to make everything about him.
Behind her, Vanhi’s ma gasped. “You’re not—you’re not leaving are you?”
Vanhi’s heart constricted. Her mother sounded so pained. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not like the others—”
“So, you’re not going to space?” asked Parth.
“No, I am, but—”
Her mother clutched at her chest, spoon still in hand. “Arey!”
“It’s not like the others,” she insisted.
“Vanhi,” her father said sternly. “May we see you in my office?”
“Papa,” she groaned.
“Now,” he insisted, hoisting himself off the sagging couch.
The double doors closed heavily behind her papa, but they sat high off the wood floor, and the juncture between the two had no seal. There was nothing airtight—or, more importantly, soundproof—about the room. Her parents had long used this room when they wanted to “privately” chastise one of their children. It was part of how they kept the Kapoor pack in line.
But none of their children were children anymore. And yet old habits had a way of clinging, unnoticed, like mites.
The office was warm, the lights dim. Papa’s heavy oak desk took up the majority of the space, leaving only a cramped pocket for guest chairs. No one sat.
“I will let you explain,” her papa said. “But you must answer me this first: Why did you not think to discuss this with your family?”
Her ma’s eyes were wide, expectant.
But not patient.
“I was going to, soon. I’ve been under a gag order, though, and the consortium just lifted it. I wasn’t allowed to until now, and I was waiting for a good moment to tell everyone. But you need to understand, this new convoy isn’t like the others. It’ll be close enough for Earth-to-convoy supply runs. I’ll be up there for two years at a time, with six-month breaks back here. It’ll be no different than my living in Dubai. You won’t see me for a few years, but I only get to visit every few years now.
“We’ll be just outside the Oort cloud. I know that sounds far away, I know. But it’s not, and that’s what’s—what’s amazing about being alive now, working now, studying now. Distance doesn’t matter, it never has. Only time. It’s the time it takes to reach a place that makes it seem close or far away.
“They’re going to allow visitors, too. I get special passes. You won’t have to worry about the price of tickets or anything. So really, it’ll be better than now. We can see each other more often.” Maybe. Hopefully.
Tears cradled her mother’s eyes, but did not fall. She was difficult to read: Were these happy tears, scared tears?
Her papa’s face was blank, his gaze turned inward. “Isn’t space dangerous?” he asked.
Suddenly overwhelmed, Vanhi flung her arms around both her parents, and they squeezed her back. “Life is dangerous,” she said, with a laugh that covered a sniffle. “But you’d never expect me not to live it.”
DECEMBER 14, 2124 CE
The path from outside observer to Head of the “Littlest Convoy” (a nickname used both as an endearment and slight these days), felt longer than it had been, but by most measures was still shorter than it had the right to be.
All of the other mission leaders were gray by now, having devoted nearly the whole of their life’s work to this. Many were retired, and all but a couple had watched their ships disappear into the night.
Vanhi was still fresh, though. Not young by most standards, but nowhere near the end of her professional endeavors. For others, the P.U.M.s had been the entire book, but for her, the convoy was just a chapter, and an opening one at that. She’d taken up the reins as an outsider, not building from the ground up, but reassembling, reusing. It gave her a perspective the other heads didn’t have; she could be more objective, in a sense, as the convoy was not the only legacy she