“Heads up. Camp-out time at eight hours, five minutes and thirteen seconds. Supplementary prebreathing complete. …Vitals confirmed, nitrogen blood content sitting at 1mL/L. Propulsion unit functional. Dr. Takamatsu, you are cleared for extravehicular activity. Check your suit and prepare the tether. Over.”

I opened my eyes.

I was floating inside a narrow cylindrical room made of plastic and metal. In my right hand, at the end of a long, winding tube, was a mask, which I was holding firmly against my nose and mouth. For the past five minutes it had been feeding pure oxygen into my lungs, to acclimate my body to the low pressure outside.

This was the primary airlock for Rumina, the joint ESA/JAXA Jovian space station, where I had been living there for the past six months, alone. I had been working routine maintenance and making preparations for the second round of personnel to arrive, whereupon the research and exploration proper could begin.

…Back then, I don’t think I could have withstood this much solitude. But now it felt like the only place I could stay sane.

“…Copy.” I spoke into my radio, let go of the oxygen mask, and began sealing my suit. I took the coiled-up tether rope, latched one end of it to myself, and moved towards the outer door.

“I-In position, over.”

“Copy. Unsealing outer airlock door.”

A violent hissing flooded the compartment, making me wince. The air around me steadily drained away through the gaps in the structure, stolen away by the infinite vacuum, until finally I was enveloped in a perfect silence.

The door slid open without a sound.

With a kick off the wall, I pushed myself outside. As I floated past the threshold I latched the other end of the tether to a fixture by the airlock.

“This is Takamatsu. Egress complete, over.”

“Loud and clear. Winch is deployed. Travel three hundred meters aft-starboard to intercept and retrieve orbiter Juno.”

“Copy. …Beginning cruise.”

I took the end of the winch cable and clamped it to my suit. After finding my heading, I switched on my AMU thrusters. I cut them off after a few seconds, letting the inertia carry me forward.

To my left, covering most of my view, was Jupiter.

It was so much more beautiful than in any pictures I had seen back on Earth. The sea of ammonia, sulfur and phosphorus gas mixed together into endless fractal swirls. The storms so massive they dwarfed the very planet I was born in. The colossal streaks of green lightning flaring up every few minutes. It was hypnotizing to look at.

I never got tired of it. I think I might have fallen in love with it.

…In high school, I was in a band.

It was the best two years of my life. The happiest I’d ever been before, or since. I was certain it would last for the rest of our lives.

But then she vanished.

Our lead guitarist. Forgive me if I don’t say her name; it still hurts even to let myself think it. She had… a mysterious air about her, beautiful, silver hair, and striking, odd-colored eyes.

She disappeared without a trace one day. The investigation turned up nothing. Not even a single clue, not the faintest sign of life.

We didn’t survive it. We tried, but it didn’t last.

I’d never… managed to really get to know her. To this day I wonder if it was somehow my fault. If things might have gone differently if I’d tried harder to… understand her. In hindsight, I think she was… trying to tell me something.

After the band broke up I poured myself into studying. It was the only thing I could think to do. I majored in astrophysics at Tokyo University and stayed there until I got a doctoral degree. I was hired by JAXA right out of school. There I insisted on joining the astronaut corps, despite my lacking qualifications. After a few years of training, I finally made it in.

And now there I was, drifting in the silent void.

I think this is… the only place I could possibly feel at peace.

“Dr. Takamatsu. Confirm you have visual on the target.”

“…Affirm. I… I have visual.”

I was about twenty meters away from it. Juno, the old NASA orbiter. It had long been asleep; its three solar arrays were completely caked with dust.

“Copy. Proceed with retrie–”

The voice coming through my radio receiver cut off, swallowed by a sudden rush of garbled static.

“Tsukuba?” I adjusted the receiver. “I-I can’t read you. Repeat last. …Tsukuba?”

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The static shifted into a pattern of pauses and rhythmic shrieks of noise.

“…E-excuse me?,” I spoke into the radio.

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The second time around, I picked up on it.

“How… how do you know my name?”

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I looked over at the probe; the inertia was still hurtling me towards it. The closer I got to it, the louder the static became.

“I… I…”

It felt as if the noise was about to tear my ears off.

“R-Raana…? R-Raana-chan?”

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I reached the probe; I grabbed onto it with one hand. With the other, I took the hook end of the winch.

I looked back at the space station; at the tether-line binding me to it.

I let go of the winch, and I cut my tether.