Helios 1.2

The rack room was still when Harvey got in. He thought for a moment that Reder and Atticus might have been out on an emergency repair until he got close enough to hear Reder's breath behind the curtain. He turned around to see Atticus was wide awake, his eyes on him.

 “Harv.” Harvey nodded, acknowledging Atticus' lukewarm greeting, and crawled into his rack. He slid the curtain down to the end of the cubby.

 Harvey was glad to be alone—as alone as he ever really seemed to be in this ship. He thought often of all those millions of miles of emptiness that surrounded them, and it was briefly comforting, until the realness of it all settled in on him with its muted terror. Harvey reached into his shirt and pulled out a second set of tags and hung them on a small metal protrusion from the rack above him. They clanked lightly and Harvey quieted them with his palm. The tags weren't his, and he knew that he would have to stop wearing them soon, or someone would eventually call him out on regulation. But not just yet. Harvey wasn't ready to let go.

As Harvey closed his eyes, he felt that same sensation he had felt for the last three months; that his pupils, which felt heavy, like two stones fixed in his head, had sunk all the way to the back of his skull. His eyes must have been open for a century. After all, he reasoned, watching was his job. Harvey, the night watchman, guardian of a vast, drifting space.

If only he could have been there to see her on that night. He imagined her body as it might be now, a careless array of limbs, somewhere, behind untold miles of space, three months of space, in fact (had it been that long?). Harvey wasn't sure. At least there was sleep, black and unmoving, as sightless as—and he stopped himself, because of the long knife of pain that drew through him. He crushed his eyelids together and wet his cheeks with tears. At least there is sleep.