Joe sat up suddenly. “I think I see something.” Helen squinted up. There did seem to have been a couple of very, very dim flickers. “I think so too.” “Please,” she heard him murmur, so quiet she suspected he didn’t intend it to be heard. “Don’t care about me, but…please have gotten there in time.” Helen refrained from pointing out that this also implied he didn’t care what happened to her; instead, she patted the shoulder of his suit. It was bad enough for her, sitting in the cold darkness of Zarathustra with no word from above (since neither Maddie nor Larry could afford the energy for the lights). She couldn’t easily imagine what it must be like for Joe. He’d kept sending pulses periodically up, maybe just to say “I’m here” to Maddie and Larry, keep them from being in utter blackness all the time. But as days wore on he’d checked the time more frequently, redone calculations, and she knew he had realized that the suits had to be running low, perhaps had already run out, of power.
