Work

DATE: Year 308-B, Sol 515

LOCATION: Io Logistics Processing Center #4

Clara shoved a crate of hydraulic fluid onto the conveyor belt. Her arms ached. The dust of Io had worked its way into her pores, turning her skin a faint, sickly gold.

-Hey, runt, the foreman shouted over the roar of a thruster test. Less dreaming, more stacking! Bay 6 needs clearing!

Clara gritted her teeth. She grabbed the next crate. It was heavy, but she hefted it. Being small had its perks; she could scramble up the stacks to secure the netting faster than the adults.

She liked Bay 6. It had a viewport.

Every time she secured a net, she glanced out the thick, reinforced glass.

Jupiter filled the sky.

He’s out there, she thought. Don't you dare die, Phoenix, you’ve got my brother.

Up in the traffic control annex, Dr. Murray had found a different kind of hell.

She sat in a cramped cubicle, surrounded by screens of scrolling text. She was supposed to record, to manually verify the transponder codes of every hauler entering the sector against the billing logs.

Mind-numbing data entry.

But Dr. Murray was an archivist, and she looked for patterns.

She logged a freighter from Ganymede. She logged a smugglers' runner from the Belt using a spoofed ID.

She had a subroutine running in the background of her terminal. It was a passive search script she had coded during her first lunch break. It was looking for the Sparrow.

-Hey, Teach, a supervisor called out, leaning over her cubicle. You logging those helium tanks?

-Processing now, Murray said, quickly minimizing her search script with a practiced keystroke.

-Keep it moving. The JLF rep checks the quotas at the top of the hour.

Murray went back to typing.

She looked at the clock

If Phoenix had done the sun-skim like the math suggested, he should be entering the Jovian gravity well any day now.

She tapped the small, hard screen of the radar scope.

-Come on, you stubborn idiot, she whispered. Clara is waiting for you guys.

Down in the loading bay, the shift whistle blew. Clara wiped the sweat from her forehead. She walked to the viewport again, pressing her hand against the cold glass.

The Great Red Spot churned silently above.

-I’m here, she whispered to the dark. We’re right here.