“So, you’ve made your choice then, haven’t you, Benoit Chase?”
Benny looked across the suit bay to Jack who, at his boss’s formal name, had stopped suiting up mid-boot. Jack nodded with a you-don’t-gotta-tell-me-twice look and left the boot on a bench on his way out.
“Hun, I-”
“Don’t you hun me. How many times have I begged you not to do this?” Ellie asked.
“Every time,” he replied. Then, seeing the red growing in her cheeks, quickly added, “and I’m always fine when I come back.”
“Fine?” she wailed, then whipped Jack’s left-behind boot at Benny. He cowered out of reflex as the boot bounced meagerly off his spacesuit. “There’s nothing fine about waking up in the night screaming about the leaky suit you had on Delta 7. Nothing fine about the left side of your body numb as Novocain whenever we land any place with halfway decent gravity.”
“It’s my job, Ellie. It comes with the chintzy P.I. badge.”
Truth was, he’d always been drawn to the allure of a mystery unsolved, even as a kid. The only thing that changed with age was the danger, and he’d found that in spades. Benny couldn’t stop chasing it if he tried, he wanted to explain that to her, but he couldn’t explain something so crazy.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“I want you to say you’re done, damn it. I want you to turn back and choose me.”
Her eyes glinted in the cold lights like slivered emeralds. A year ago, he’d have gone straight over to her, wiped those tears away, and kissed her like it was their last time. Instead, Benny pulled on his helmet, framing Ellie in its window as she cried into her hands. The hiss of the suit adjusting its internal compression drowned her out, and when it stopped, he radioed Jack to return.
Jack entered and put on the rest of his suit with the help of Benny, who handed him the thrown boot. Ellie wiped away the tears, holding back the rest until the two men were gone. Their ship wouldn’t disembark until he and Jack returned, and that gave Benny a strange sort of comfort knowing he’d have an opportunity to reconnect with her.
“Ready, Benny,” Jack radioed, lining up beside the room’s exiting airlock.
Benny punched a code into the door’s panel, and the men stepped into the airlock transition between the two ships, unaware of what lay in the derelict halls of the Dream Titan beyond. The emergency broadcast, sent before the frigate’s final re-entry, led Benny to believe the crew had engaged the Riesler drive and skipped through time like a stone across the glassy surface of a pond. Except, when the Titan stopped skipping, it returned crewless and gone dark.
One thing was clear, whatever the Titan had tried running from it had not outrun.
“I will not open this door for you again, Benoit Chase,” she cried on her side of the airlock door. “Not even if there’s a black hole, flesh-hungry aliens, or the Holy Ghost itself waiting for you on the other side.”
And he knew, this time she meant it.
He forced a smile, knowing it was over. It was all he could do to keep from crying. “I’ll be back soon, El.”
The door swept shut between them, and the airlock cycled around Benny and Jack. Somewhere ahead of them, the crew of the Dream Titan were scattered in time, caught paradoxically like flies in a web. If Benny could find where, and more importantly when, they had gone, there might be a way for him to go back and fix things with El.