Yoshi joins Helen in the EVA prep room as Helen is attempting to suction up fines from both the floor and her person.
“No, it’s too much,” Helen says, laughing, as she looks down at her filthy jumpsuit. “I can feel Mars everywhere. I am not spending my last week here in a dust bag. Let me get out of this thing.”
Helen unzips her compression suit. He’s never seen her do this; her method is different from his. She does not peel, allowing the fabric to roll inside out, but shrugs the fabric down off one shoulder, inches it down her arm, then grasps the cuff and pulls the sleeve out straight. After repeating this technique with the other arm, she hooks her thumbs into the torso of the suit and shimmies it down to her hips, then joggles the legs down until she can step out. Yoshi can see the sense of this technique. The appendages of the suit are cut so narrowly that turning them outside in takes quite a time. He realizes that he is staring.
“Yoshi, will you grab me one of the spares? Before I get dressed, I’m taking the ten seconds of shower I am allotted.” Yoshi turns to a supply locker.
“Woosh,” says Helen. He hears the sound of skin on skin. “That’s always such a relief. This is crazy.” When he turns around with the spare jumpsuit, she is rubbing her legs, sending out more little puffs of dust. “I’m electric! Every speck of Mars flies off my suit and onto my skin. Why am I always ten times dirtier than you or Sergei?” She picks up a vacuum nozzle. “Let’s try to get as much off me as we can.”
Helen is now wearing only her Solox bra and underpants. Yoshi has seen Helen in shorts and a T-shirt. He has seen discrete portions of her bare flesh when they practiced medical procedures. This is the most he has seen of Helen all at once and they are very close together. In the athletic locker room in Utah, Yoshi and Sergei had conversed comfortably while naked. Naturally, Helen had not been present during those times. Yoshi thinks that his brain has not accurately recorded her physique; he does not know it. Her thighs are red where she has rubbed them. She hands a vacuum tube to Yoshi and turns one on herself. He doesn’t quite know where to aim his, so points it at her feet.
“I’m jealous,” Yoshi says. “I didn’t get to experience the sim.” Something has happened to both his crewmates. Sergei had come back unnaturally blank of expression, and Helen is the reverse: elated, lit up. Her voice is different, lighter. Something other than clothes has been removed from her body.
“It was very quick. I would have been okay with it going on for much longer, to take it all in. I’ll admit it, for a second I thought I’d been electrocuted.” Helen takes a deep breath. “Wow. Really, the oddest sensation. Maybe I just became a superhero.”
The exposure of so much of Helen’s body, so much of her everything, makes Yoshi feel similarly naked.
She turns around and says, over her shoulder, “Can you do my back? These fines are very determined. Just don’t leave the nozzle on my skin too long or it will be hard to pull it off. Try a kind of scooping motion.”
Yoshi begins methodically suctioning Helen’s back. “Wait. Here,” she says, turning. “Wait, do here.” She laughs. “Oh, that was a good one. It’s kind of horrible in a great way. Get this section. Ow. Great.” Now they are both laughing. Helen thrusts out an elbow, a hip, holds up a knee. “Zap it. Get that! Wait. I have middle-aged-woman stuff here.” It is true. Helen is trim, but there is an unexpected soft fold of flesh just around her waist. She pulls the fold up. “It’s my Tharsis bulge! We’re getting very real here on Mars right now, and that’s just how it’s going to be.”
Helen is looking at him now and he is looking at her. She is allowing him, he sees, to truly look at her. Which either means she hasn’t allowed it before, or he never tried.
What a large thing it is to be Helen, what infinite space she is. And then to be seen by her. As if, just for once, the universe understood him, came up with a name for him, instead of the other way around.
“Okay, that’s pretty good, I think,” Helen says. “My feet are freezing.”
Helen has been obscuring large parts of herself. Helen must get dressed, must clothe not just her body but all of that vastness. He cannot travel for eight months with all of that, there is no room. She must pack herself back inside herself.
Yoshi realizes that he had wanted—still wants—to touch Helen. Not in the way he wants to touch his wife. Not to give pleasure, or receive it. He’d wanted—he wants—to feel that infinite space, to know what happens there.
LUKE
The big thing coming up is providing the crew with enough activity,” Luke says. “Meaningful occupations. Varied tasks. Challenges. The return trip is not going to be comfortable.”
“Right,” Mireille says. “The Venus fry-by.”
When the crew is on the planet for a year and a half, they will be able to return to Earth essentially the way they came, as Mars and Earth once again draw close. After only thirty days, however, Earth and Mars are hurtling away from each other, and enormous amounts of fuel would be needed to make up the distance. Orbital mechanics dictated a different route home after thirty days, with Red Dawn using Venus as a gravity assist, giving the craft an extra push.
“In all likelihood we won’t have to use the Venus fly-by return,” Luke says. “It’s only if we have to cut the mission short. But it made sense to incorporate it into Eidolon so the crew would have a chance to run it fully. And, you know, it fits with the Mars portion only being thirty days. It’s more realistic for the crew. Anyway, even if this happens for real, they will be exposed to a little more radiation, yes, but ‘fry-by’ is a little harsh. Red Dawn is up to the challenge.”