The Warm Square
Nils pushed off the cold handrail and floated down the long curved hall. His socks had slipped off somewhere near the storage bay, and the floor was cool under his toes. He was going to the garden module, and he was going fast. Every ninety minutes the sun came around the edge of the Earth, and when it did, a square of light fell through the round window and lay down on the garden floor like a dropped blanket. It was the warmest spot on Space Station Nine. Nils had timed it twice with the counting of his own breath. He turned the corner just as the window began to glow.
The light arrived the way it always did, all at once. The square landed on the floor between the lemon tree and the bean rail, and Nils landed in it. He lay flat on his back with his arms out wide. Warmth pressed into his cheek and his elbows and the backs of his knees. Outside the round window, Earth turned slowly, blue and white and patient. Nils closed one eye. The square was exactly as long as he was, if he pointed his toes. He stayed very still so as not to spill any of it.
Something small bumped his ankle. It was the little sweeper, a round grey machine the size of a dinner plate, with two soft brushes underneath and a hum like a bee in a jar. Nils called it Tock, because of the sound it made when it changed direction. Tock lived in the cold end of the garden, near the vents, where the dust gathered and the air was always chilly. Its brushes had gone stiff. It bumped his ankle again, then stopped at the very edge of the light, as if the edge were a step it could not climb.
Nils reached out and pulled Tock in beside him. The little machine was cold as a spoon. He set it belly-up in the middle of the square, where the sun was thickest, and shuffled over to make room. That meant his own shoulder slid out into the cool air, but he did not mind. Tock's hum dropped lower and slower. Its brushes softened and began to turn, just a little, the way a cat's tail moves when it is nearly asleep. Nils put one finger on its warm grey lid. They lay there together and said nothing at all.
The square began to move. It always did. It slid off Nils's legs and climbed the wall, going thin and orange, stretching itself into a stripe. Nils sat up and pushed Tock gently along the floor to stay with it. They followed the light past the bean rail, past the water pipes, until the stripe was high above their heads and no wider than a ribbon. Nils floated up and held his palm flat against the last of it. Warm. Then warm. Then only almost warm. Tock bumped his foot once, softly, which was its way of saying something.
The stripe narrowed to a thread. Outside, the blue edge of the Earth came up like a closing eyelid, and the garden filled with the deep soft dark that Nils liked. He put his hand on Tock's lid and spoke into the quiet. "Goodbye, warm square. See you round again." The thread thinned, flickered along the pipe, and was gone. The window held nothing but stars and the slow turning world. Nils counted on his fingers, the way he always did. Ninety minutes. One sleep's worth of counting, maybe less. The sun was already on its way back.
Tock hummed and rolled toward the cold end of the garden, to the little nook where it rested. Nils went with it, pushing off the bean rail. He watched the brushes slow and the hum go small. Before it settled, Tock turned once in place and bumped his toe, and Nils bumped it back with the side of his foot. "Goodbye, warm square. See you round again," he said, though he was not only talking about the light. Then he yawned so wide his eyes watered, and the lemon tree gave off its thin green smell, and the garden hummed around him.
Nils let go of the rail. The slow air of Space Station Nine took him, the way water takes a leaf, and carried him down the long hall toward his bunk. He went past the storage bay. He found one sock and did not bother with the other. His blanket had a strap to keep him from drifting, and he slid under it and felt the hum of the station in his back, steady as a heartbeat. At the round window, the dark was already thinning at one blue edge. "Goodbye, warm square," he murmured. "See you round again." The light came on quietly while he slept.
