“Oh, absolutely. I hang on your every word.”

  “Mrs. Magnussen told me Harry was pursuing some mining business, so they’re saying you two were working together, and maybe something went wrong,” she said. “Some of them think you’re his actual killer.”

  At that, Colman laughed, full-throated, like a bullfrog.

  “They’re right, of course. We were very much in bed together.” Colman winked. “In a manner of speaking.” He blew a ring of vapor toward the curtains, and then another one, as if to impress her. “As to the rest, well. My lips are sealed.”

  He took the ring off the tip of his finger and held it out to her.

  “That’s a novelty ring,” he said. “A replica of a ring from an old movie—can’t remember the name. Something and Something.”

  She took it, but before she could pull away, he wrapped his hand around hers.

  “So do you believe these rumors your friends are spreading about my character?” he said. “Or were you simply reporting the latest gossip?”

  Tertio was walking back with the elder Mr. Procyon now. She had to try the more direct route.

  “What were you doing in the Arboretum yesterday morning?” she said. At the moment she spoke, the tinkling of the piano disappeared, so her question came out too loud. All around the room, faces turned in her direction, like bats’ eyes glittering in the dark.

  “Killing Harry Magnussen, obviously,” Colman said with an arched eyebrow.

  “Colman,” the elder Mr. Procyon said, in a warning tone.

  “Please,” Colman said. “If the ship’s janitor wants to play detective, why not let her?” He reached into his pocket and took out a familiar golden object. He offered it to her.

  “Harry Magnussen’s illegal recording device,” he said. “I hope you find out more than I did.”

  She held it close to her face. It was shaped like a flower. A peony, maybe. Plush and round, with delicate petals rendered in metal. She had seen it in Harry Magnussen’s cabin, the day he died.

  When she sat down in the Upper Deck control room a half hour later, her hands were still shaking a little, and both she and Tertio were pretending not to notice.

  The room was right down the hall from the Arboretum, so the smell of pine and mineral solution and the faintest whiff of flowers was in the air, though the floors had gone from faux wood to metal grate, as they did in all maintenance areas. The greenish light above the door was flickering; the wiring in this part of the ship was deteriorating faster than elsewhere.

  Tertio had sent a summons out to the technical staff, and Birdie had answered, looking pale and sad eyed as usual. Not for the first time, Ace wondered what—or whom—she was mourning.

  Birdie had led them to the control room without asking questions, spinning her key ring around her finger as she walked. She hadn’t asked questions as she connected the recording device and pulled up the most recent file, either. In fact, the set of her mouth was grim, as if she’d seen it coming.

  “I could just go detain him,” Tertio offered.

  “He wouldn’t have handed this over if he was actually guilty.” Ace tilted her head. “Or if evidence of his guilt was still on it, I should say. He could have altered it.”

  The visual footage paired with the audio file was grainy and uninteresting, just a chest-high shot of the Arboretum. Dense, furred branches and the curve of a walking path. The trees had been sparser when they were first planted. Ace tried to remember how long she’d been on the Redundancy, in void time. Less than a decade? More? Enough time for a forest to fill in and for a man to grow old and die right under her nose, but what did that even mean out here?

  A man’s chest appeared in frame. She wouldn’t have recognized it as Colman’s if not for the way his shoulders rounded. Apart from that, the visual footage was unimportant, irrelevant, but the audio was crisp. She could hear the hum of the filtration system and the quiet bubbling of the mineral solution beneath the trees, and the voices of two men.

  Tertio sat beside her at the control panel. He reached across her to twist the volume knob, and the humming and bubbling got louder, but the voices did too.

  “. . . Now, as I told you before, I am meeting an old friend here and would prefer that meeting to remain private—” Ace would have recognized the voice anywhere as Harry Magnussen’s. Gentle and sweet, even when he was impatient, as he clearly was now.

  “Yes, I’m well aware of your ‘old friend’ on board this vessel. Is your wife?” She recognized this voice as Colman’s. Like his good looks, his voice was standard, neither high nor low, clear nor rough.

  “Is that a threat, my dear boy?”

  “It’s not yet, though it could become one if you don’t give me a better reason for screwing me over.”

  “I told you—”

  “You told me ‘personal matters necessitated a withdrawal.’ That’s really all you have to say?”

  “Oh, there are a great many things I could say. But they are, unfortunately, none of your business.”

  “Your ‘business’ became my business the moment you promised your support,” Colman replied. “The only reason we’re even on this journey is because of—”

  “Now that is simply not true, and you know it,” Harry said. “Your mother just told me the other night that you wanted to migrate for the good of your marriage—”

  “Shut up,” Colman snapped. “My mother doesn’t know the half of it. You’ve ruined me, old man. Ruined me, gone back on your promises, and all you can say is ‘personal reasons.’”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you,” Harry said, “to keep your promises between your teeth?”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Just content yourself with knowing that you’ll only have to bear your hatred of me for another few—”

  Colman came closer, so he filled the frame. Then: chaotic movement. A scuffling sound, and a cry of pain. The image turned sideways, the trees growing to the right—Harry Magnussen was on the ground, but only for a few seconds before he shifted and started to right himself. Colman’s polished shoes were walking out of frame. Tertio paused the footage, but Ace kept staring at the screen.

  “Keep your promises between your teeth,” she said, and then added: “. . . so you can bite them back as needed.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The ring was between Harry’s teeth,” she said. “Because the ring was a promise he didn’t keep—a promise he ‘bit back.’”

  “So . . . Colman did do it?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, it’s a Jovian phrase. An old one. Jovians love their little poems.” Ace leaned back in her seat. “A young Proximan like Colman wouldn’t have known it, and clearly he didn’t know it.”

  “Could he have asked someone about it?”

  “At 0600 hours, between having this conversation and committing a murder?” She shook her head. “No time. Is there anything else on there?”

  Tertio tapped the screen once, twice. “No, that’s the most recent file.”

  There was something tickling the back of her mind.

  “I don’t think he did this,” Ace said.

  She thought back to Colman in the smoking lounge. He had put the ring on his index finger. His knuckles—she had thought they were split from the dry air, but now it seemed clear that he had punched Harry Magnussen and walked away. That’s a novelty ring. A replica of a ring from an old movie.

  “Hey, Tertio,” she said, her voice sounding odd to her ears. “You know that movie poster you have on your wall?”

  “The space noir?”

  “Yeah, that one. What’s the title of it, again?”

  “Jovian and Jovial,” he said. “Why?”

  His eyes reminded her of the deep-brown ripples that wrapped around the ethereal blue of the Orion Nebula. She thought of his quick fingers buttoning his jacket and tried to imagine them wrapped around a knife. She couldn’t.

  Maybe it was stupid. But she just . . . couldn’t.

  “Why did you lie to me?” she asked him. “About being in the Arboretum when Mr. Magnussen was killed?”

  He stared at her.

  “Abdi told me he saw you,” she said. “Please don’t try to pretend he’s lying.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Tertio said softly. “I’m just . . .” He sighed. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” he said. “So sometimes I go to the Arboretum and sit on one of the benches. It’s peaceful there. The night Harry Magnussen died, I fell asleep on one—slept through the start of my shift.” He shook his head. “If I hadn’t been asleep . . . maybe I would have heard something. Seen something.”

  “He would still be dead, Tertio,” she said. “And maybe you would be too.”

  “I was irresponsible,” he said, his voice hardening.

  “You were human.” She shrugged. “Honestly, it’s nice to know you mess things up just like the rest of us.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said. “I just knew I didn’t do it, so there wasn’t any point in investigating me.”

  Maybe life in the void should have eradicated her faith in humanity. Separation from time tended to do that to people. All the little struggles of people’s lives—and the great ones—became meaningless. Empires fell and rose, governments rebuilt themselves and collapsed, borders shifted, power flowed in and out, and still the Redundancy flew its endless circuit between star systems. The one thing that was constant was people fucking up what they’d made.

  But they kept making things, didn’t they? They kept trying. And so did she.

  She looked over her shoulder, where a moment before, Birdie had been standing with her pale hands clasped in front of her. She was gone.

  “Uh,” Ace said. “Where’s Birdie?”

  Tertio shrugged. “She must have gone back to work. Want me to ping her?”

  Ace heard Colman Procyon’s voice in her ear again. Saw his eyes glinting as he held the ring up to look at it.

  Saturnine. Who told you that?

  Birdie’s eyes glinting as she held the ring up to look at it.

  Let me see it.

  “Go find Colman,” she said. “Just—keep an eye on him. In case I’m wrong.”

  “In case you’re wrong about what?”

  Everything, she thought. But all she said was “Just do it, Polaris.” And she broke into a run.

  Time in the void was relative. This had never been more true than on the elevator ride from the Upper Deck to the Maintenance Deck. Ace poked the button, already lit, as if that would speed things along. It didn’t.

  The doors opened to the smell of chemicals and the harsh overhead lights reflecting fuzzily off the metal wall panels. Everything here was familiar: the cool temperature of the light, the gush of water through the wall pipes, the sound her boots made when she ran on the metal grate floor . . . and the path from the elevator bank to the break room.

  Her legs burned. She was grateful for the mandatory hour of exercise, but it wasn’t quite enough—she hadn’t sprinted anywhere in months. Years. Since before the Redundancy.

  Georgina was dropping a cube of sweetener into her coffee when Ace opened the door. She was the only one in the break room.

  “Ace, what the hell are you—”

  “Birdie?” she asked.

  “You just missed her,” Georgina replied. “She said she was going for a swim. I told her she could borrow my suit.”

  Muscles protesting, Ace turned and ran again, this time hullward. She could have sworn she felt the contours of the metal grate floor under her feet, the chill of the air on her toes. She blinked tears from her eyes and rounded the corner, sprinting down the hall to the air lock. This felt too familiar.

  The door to the air lock was already closed. She threw herself at it, pounding on it with her fists, and looked through the window at the air lock chamber.

  Birdie was standing before the air lock door, which was still closed—for the moment. She was wearing her teal coveralls. No drift suit in sight. Clasped in Birdie’s right hand was what looked like a crumpled photograph.

  Ace tried to open the door, but when she looked down, she saw the end of the metal rod Birdie had shoved across the jamb to keep it from opening.

  “Birdie!” she called out. Birdie’s shoulders twitched, but she didn’t turn around. Ace tried again: “Callisto.”

  This time, Birdie looked over her shoulder at Ace. She wasn’t crying, but she didn’t look right either. She was so pale—so tired.

  “So you knew Harry,” Ace said. She had Birdie’s attention, but she didn’t know what to say, exactly. She just knew that she needed to keep Birdie from opening the hatch doors.

  “He seemed nice,” Ace said. “I mean—I guess that’s a dumb thing to say. You wouldn’t have hurt him if he was really that nice.”

  Birdie laughed, a thready little thing that almost didn’t register through the heavy door that separated them.

  “Maybe I would,” she said. “You don’t really know, do you?”

  “I could. If you’d explain.”

  “You only just started talking to me, you know.” Birdie’s fist tightened around the photograph she held. “This is my third turn, and you didn’t even remember that I had a fiancé, before. Nobody really did. Steve, maybe.” She tilted her head. “Tell Steve goodbye for me, would you?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you. You should talk to Steve yourself.”

  “I’m not mad.” Birdie didn’t sound mad. She sounded remote. “He used to call me a slip of a thing. Always quiet and always watching. I think . . . I think he thought it was mysterious, at first. He couldn’t get enough of me. But sometimes what you think is a shroud of mystery is just a fucking shroud.”

  “Harry? Are you talking about Harry?”

  “Of course I am!” Birdie’s yell was sudden and strange. Her eyes lit up with it. “Harry badgered me for weeks to run away with him. His parents had arranged some kind of . . . business-deal sham of a marriage. He wanted to escape it. I thought it was so romantic. He only had a small amount of money squirreled away, so he got me a job on this ship to pay my way. Then, when he found out I was knocked up, he bolted. I couldn’t bring myself to live on the same planet as the man who abandoned me. Harry Magnussen. Such a nice man.”

  Ace looked more carefully at the photograph in Birdie’s hand. No, not a photograph.

  A sonogram.

  “I lost it,” Birdie said softly. “It was my fault. Babies don’t develop right in space.”

  Ace had never been much good at science. She knew that ammonia combined with bleach made a toxic gas; that soap could mix with both oil and water. And she knew that, though space travel didn’t affect fertilization, it wasn’t good for fetuses. They needed full gravity. Protection from radiation.

  Ace felt heavy, looking at the sonogram.

  “And then he had the audacity,” Birdie went on, “to bring his new wife here. Like he’d forgotten all about me.”

  Ace leaned her head into the glass. Time was relative. Harry Magnussen must have been no older than twenty-two when he first boarded the Redundancy, and no younger than eighty-two when he boarded it again. Sixty years was an entire lifetime. More than a lifetime, depending on what you were allotted. Time enough for him to think fondly of his romantic adventure across solar systems, to let the hard edges of his memory wear down all soft and warm.

  “He was dying,” Ace said. “He was dying, and this was where he most wanted to go. Doesn’t sound like he forgot you.”

  A shiver passed through Birdie’s chin. Her chest.

  “Listen to me.” Ace pressed a palm to the glass, marking it with her fingerprints. “You don’t want to go out this way.”

  “You don’t actually know what I want.”

  “I know what you don’t,” Ace said, digging her forehead into the door. “Just . . . just listen to me. My parents died in a mining accident when I was a kid, out near Ganymede. They were in drift and something malfunctioned. Their suits stopped working. Do you know what happens in drift when your suit doesn’t do its job?”

  She was barefoot and running—

  “Little bubbles form in your blood—they inflate you to twice your original size.”

  She was staring into the void as they reeled her parents in.

  “You look like a nightmare version of you. That’s the way people remember you. What they see when they close their eyes.”

  She let her hand fall.

  “You lost people, Callisto,” she said. “Big losses. I know. I’ve felt them too. And I almost did this—what you want to do. It feels like . . . like there’s just no point, without them. Out in the void, you know more than most people how insignificant we are. What’s one more bloated body adrift? Just matter converting to matter. Stardust to stardust.”

  She met Birdie’s eyes, insistent.

  “Only—out here we’re also impossibly big,” she said. “Bigger than time. We watch kingdoms rise and fall. Names change. Fashions change. A thousand tiny cataclysms pass us by, and we see better than anybody, you know? That all things pass.”

  Birdie’s big, round eyes softened a little.

  “Don’t make me remember you that way,” Ace said. “Come back in, and—let it pass.”

  They waited for a long stretch of time. Like a tide receding, or a moon creeping across the sky by fractions too tiny to observe in the moment. An eternity, really, depending on how tiny you allowed time to be. A millisecond was nothing compared to an hour, and an hour was nothing compared to an eon. It was all relative in the void.

  Birdie’s fist relaxed, and the sonogram fell to the ground.

  Ace stood in the air lock chamber, later, with Georgina’s bright-orange suit in front of her. It was difficult, but not impossible, to get into a drift suit on your own. It fastened up the back, for one thing, but Ace was flexible enough to twist her arms behind her and do up the last few straps.

  She went through the checklist again: suit, boots, helmet, backup oxygen, tether, backup tether. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy—that was the mantra for space travel, the mantra for which the Redundancy was named. They thought it would be comforting to passengers. Soothing.