Nelson waited, chalk poised above the slate. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t …” She aimed the light inside. She rattled the container. Sweat trickled down her jaw and dripped from her chin. “I thought this was the control,” she said. She set the sample down and grabbed the next container, but it was full of soil. Her heart was pounding, her head spinning. None of this made sense. Unless she’d pulled the samples out in the wrong order. Had she screwed it all up?
“Yeah, that’s the control sample,” Nelson said. He tapped the canister she’d just checked with his length of pipe. “It’s marked right there.”
“Gimme a sec,” she said. Juliette took a few deep breaths. She peered inside the control sample once again, which had been collected inside the airlock. It should have captured nothing but argon. She handed the container to Nelson.
“Yeah, that’s not right,” he said. He shook the container. “Something’s not right.”
Juliette could barely hear. Her mind raced. Nelson peered inside the control sample.
“I think …” He hesitated. “I think maybe a seal fell out when you opened the lid. Which is no big deal. These things happen. Or maybe …”
“Impossible,” she said. She had been careful. She remembered seeing the seals in there. Nelson cleared his throat and placed the control sample on the workbench. He adjusted the worklight to point directly down into it. Both of them leaned over. Nothing had fallen out, she was sure of it. But then, she had made mistakes. Everyone was capable of them—
“There’s only one seal in there,” Nelson said. “I really think maybe it fell—”
“The heat tape,” Juliette said. She adjusted the light. There was a flash from the bottom of the container where a piece of tape was stuck. The other piece was gone. “Are you telling me that an adhered piece of tape fell out as well?”
“Well then, containers are out of order,” he said. “We have them backwards. This makes perfect sense if we got them all backwards. Because the one from the hill isn’t quite as worn as the ramp sample. That’s what it is.”
Juliette had thought of that, but it was an attempt to match what she thought she knew to what she was seeing. The whole point of going out was to confirm suspicions. What did it mean that she was seeing something completely different?
And then it hit her like a wrench to the skull. It hit her like a great betrayal. A betrayal by a machine that was always good to her, like a trusted pump that suddenly ran backwards for no apparent reason. It hit her like a loved one turning his back while she was falling, like some great bond that wasn’t simply taken away but never truly existed.
“Luke,” she said, hoping he was listening, that he had his radio on. She waited. Nelson coughed.
“I’m here,” he answered, his voice thin and distant. “I’ve been following.”
“The argon,” Juliette said, watching Nelson through both of their domes. “What do we know about it?”
Nelson blinked the sweat from his eyes.
“Know what?” Lukas said. “There’s a periodic table in there somewhere. Inside one of the cabinets, I think.”
“No,” Juliette said, raising her voice so she could be sure he heard. “I mean, where does it come from? Are we even sure what it is?”
Silo 1
25
There was a rattle in Donald’s chest, a flapping of some loosely connected thing, an internal alarm that his condition was deteriorating – that he was getting worse. He forced himself to cough, as much as he hated to, as much as his diaphragm was sore from the effort, as much as his throat burned and muscles ached. He leaned forward in his chair and hacked until something deep inside him tore loose and skittered across his tongue, was spat into his square of fetid cloth.
He folded the cloth rather than look and collapsed back into his chair, sweaty and exhausted. He took a deep, less-rattly breath. Another. A handful of cool gasps that didn’t quite torture him. Had anything ever felt so great as a painless breath?