“Now, are you sure you’re ready?” Lan asked, double checking the seals and sensors of both his suit and Tess’ as they readied to exit the airlock.

“Yes, Lan,” Tess replied patiently, but her voice had a sharp tinge to it, and she batted away his hands with a bit more force than necessary to reach for her helmet. Lan grabbed it before she could.

“Because I can handle it,” he insisted. “It’s just some light propagating. You can keep working from the lab, rest some more, wait for the last of the soreness to go away.”

Tess snatched her helmet out of Lan’s hands. “I’ve rested plenty,” she said, slipping the helmet on and muffling her next words. “It was a minor hip fracture, practically a right of passage at our age. I can do this, Lan.”

“I know you can, but you don’t have—”

Tess cut him off with a fierce glare. “I haven’t been to the astro-garden for weeks,” she said, her voice now coming crisply through the comms of Lan’s own helmet. “I miss it! I miss my work, my time with our babies!”

“They’re just flowers—”

Tess slapped the wall console to depressurize the airlock and gave Lan a look that he knew from decades of experience meant there was nothing he could say or do to stop her. 

And she was right about her hip; it truly wasn’t a big deal. She’d merely tripped, injuring it in a way every doctor in Medical assured them was consistent with cases of osteopenia seen in astronauts (particularly senior astronauts) and easily fixed with a penetrative stem-gel cast and laser therapy. Which it was—Tess passed her final evaluation with flying colors and met every approval needed for spacewalks. Besides, it was certainly not the first time she or Lan had ever been injured and had to take care of each other.

But that was the thing: Lan hadn’t been able to take care of Tess this time. Thirty years ago, he’d have picked her up and carried her all the way to Medical himself. Now, at sixty-three with a bad back that neither love nor science could ease, Lan couldn’t even get her moved to the couch after she frantically called for him. Mission wasn’t going to slow down the centrifuge on their hab for a non-emergency and certainly not for one crew member’s pride. He had to watch Tess sit in one-G in great pain and wait for someone else to help her, someone who wasn’t Lan.

It was a stark wake up to the reality of getting older, and Lan didn’t like it. He needed to be better, for the mission and for Tess.

“It’s my job to keep you safe,” Lan grumbled finally as the airlock finished depressurizing. “I’m your support out there, there’s no one else…” he trailed off as Tess pressed the palm of her gloved hand to the glass of Lan’s helmet.

“I am safe because I have you,” she said. “I wouldn’t go out there with anyone else.” She gave his helmet a pat. “We’re family, me…you…”

Lan smiled. 

“…the flowers.”

He groaned. But she was already opening the airlock and pushing forward into the astro-garden.

The only habitat on the entire station to exist entirely in the cold of space, the astro-garden contained no pressurized enclosure, no UV lights, and no soil beds or watering systems. Instead, it was an open space on the outer hull with tall arches supporting flood lights shining down on patches of flowers.

Stella florae. Star flowers. Tiny, luminescent buds growing on the hull of the station as if by magic. No stems, no roots, stella florae were seemingly made up of millions of little spores, like swirling dust in a shaft of sunlight, packed tightly together to form a spiral of spongy, plump petals. 

Today, they were in clumps to form six patches, scattered haphazardly around the astro-garden. Lan held up his wrist display to log the formation, knowing the flowers would be laid out differently tomorrow. Stella florae liked to move, drifting together and apart, adaptively rolling with the station’s movements, always open to change and never staying in one spot for long. Even as Tess and Lan entered the garden, a few of the closest flowers shimmied toward them.

“Oh,” Tess whispered at the sight, clasping her hands to her chest. “My babies, I’ve missed you!” She released her mag-boots to spring forward, gait slightly uneven in a way that had Lan frowning.

“Careful!” he called. Tess ignored him, giving all her attention to the flowers before her.

“Hello, my darlings!” she crooned, kneeling down to the patch before her. She reached out a hand slowly, fingers curling toward the nearest bud in a gentle caress.

The sparkling petals scattered, disintegrating into a small, shimmering cloud that first spread out and then abruptly swooped back together, winding up into a spiral once again. When it reformed, there were now two buds in its place, the flower reproducing at the delight of human touch.

Their scientists had discovered any efforts to traditionally propagate, transplant, or otherwise force the flowers to thrive were met with static resistance. But the more time a person spent working with the flowers, spent physically handling them, the happier they became until, at a single touch, the flowers would split and grow. The more they grew, the more samples the scientists had. Tess had volunteered to be one of those regular workers, and Lan, as always, had followed.

 Tess hummed happily, again disengaging her boots to thrust herself in a giant leap to the next patch.

“Tess!” Lan chided loudly. “Mag-boots on!”

“Sorry!” Tess replied tersely, but she re-engaged her boots, and, Lan noted, knelt more slowly toward the next patch.

Lan sighed, looking down to see some of the flowers had trailed to his boot, climbing over the toe. He stepped back, switching off his mic to scold,

“None of that. Wait your turn.” He diligently counted them and made notes, grumbling under his breath, “Just like Tess you are. Always so eager to act. She just doesn’t get it. We’re not twenty anymore. We’re not even fifty anymore! She needs my support. I’m all she’s got!” 

A clump of flowers twirled into Lan’s outstretched hand, quietly bursting and coming back together doubled, as though refuting his claim.

Tess had always called the stella florae their family, their children, something that confused others and even Lan himself a little. But that was just Tess…being Tess. She didn’t always make sense, but neither did Lan and Tess themselves. They’d always been together, but never together. They weren’t registered as spouses or partners or dependents. They were just Lan and Tess. It made sense to them just as taking up space gardening in their retirement made sense to Tess. If Tess was happy, Lan was happy.

Usually.

“Ow!”

Lan snapped out of his thoughts at Tess’ pain-filled cry, standing abruptly to find she’d clipped on horizontally to one of the arches spanning over the garden and was now clinging to it with one hand, the other pressed to her hip.

Lan clumped across the hull in his mag-boots and reached up for her, but she was too high. “What are you doing up there?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, too quick to be convincing. But she was already reaching for a trailing line of stella florae working their way up the arch. “Just wanted to give these little adventurers some attention. Isn’t it neat how they started climbing up here? Maybe we should ask the station architects to have more framework installed.”

Lan did not think it was neat. Lan thought it was highly dangerous, and he knew Tess knew that, too. “Tess, your hip! You’re approved for spacewalks, not spaceclimbing! The doctors can suspend you for this.” 

Tess paused, the radio hissing between them. She glanced briefly from the flowers to Lan, and then back again, concentrating. “Just one more,” she muttered, reaching for the petals. Lan watched her stretch her fingers the final few inches, breaking apart a cluster to reform into a bouquet of half a dozen more now swirling up higher on the archway.

“Okay, down, now,” Lan ordered. Tess frowned at him.

“There’s no need to be like that,” she snapped angrily. Lan flinched.

“I—”

“You’ve been treating me like a child ever since the accident, and I do not appreciate it! I just wanted to work in the garden with you, like we’d done a thousand times before, to celebrate getting better. I don’t know why that is too much to ask of you all of a sudden!” She disengaged her boots. 

“Tess, wait—”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

Anger adding force to her movements, Tess pushed her legs hard off the arch, swinging and stretching farther than a newly healed fracture would accommodate. 

“Ow!” 

Lan watched in growing horror as, on reflex, Tess let go of the arch to grasp her hip, while her legs were still swinging, their momentum now taking the rest of Tess’ body with them. Instead of pushing down, toward the hull, Tess pushed off sideways. 

Out into space.

Lan saw the lights of her boots activate, but she was too far away for the magnet to catch. 

She was trapped.

“Lan!”

Tess’ voice, frantic and scared, crackled over his comm, the same way it had weeks before when she called him for help after falling, when he had failed to take care of her. 

He would not fail again.

“Lan, call for—”

“I’m coming!”

Lan pushed himself forward, taking heavy footsteps that fought against the magnetic pull of his boots, moving as fast as he could to get underneath Tess, gauging the distance between her, the hull, the arches all around them.

He took one more step and then disengaged his boots, pushing up.

“What are—wait! Don’t!”

He collided with her, sending them spinning, his hands scrambling to find purchase on her suit even as he whipped his head around to find the location of the nearest arch. He saw it, another one with stella florae trailing it, shining brightly against the dark of space.

“You idiot!” Tess cried. “Now we’re both—oof!”

Lan shoved Tess down hard, sending her back toward the hull. Her mag-boots still active, it was only a second later they latched onto the plating, anchoring her down sharply. She wrenched to the side from the force, crying out in pain.

“Tess!” Lan yelled, “are you okay?”

But Tess was waving frantically at him. “Look out!”

Lan turned. The arch he had been aiming to anchor on was coming up fast, too fast. His visor filled with bright light, a million glowing spores, and then he hit.

A whip-like snap assaulted Lan’s ears as his helmet smacked off the arch, and the dull thunk of the mag-boots catching followed on its heels. He pitched ninety degrees, vision spinning dizzily into a kaleidoscopic blur of black space and shining, white light. He screamed, or thought he did; Lan didn’t know. He couldn’t hear anything over a rapid, persistent hissing seeming to come from all around him.

And then, quite suddenly, Lan couldn’t breathe.

He saw the large crack splitting his visor at the same time the alarms in his suit started blaring.

The sealant tape, Lan thought, recalling his training. But where was it? Clipped somewhere on his suit, ostensibly within reach. He pawed at his waist, but no, not there. He could hear Tess radioing to someone in the lab, her voice becoming drowned by a sudden pounding in his head. He fumbled around his belt for… for the pouch that held… the emergency tape? 

The light from the flowers was getting brighter, and Lan couldn’t see beyond it anymore, gloved hands diving in and out of pouches by feel and–there! He yanked the tape free, but his hands felt thick and heavy, fingers spasming awkwardly, and he lost his grip. He watched by the light of the stella florae as the little roll of sealant tape, his only chance at survival, floated away.

“Tess—” Lan only had a few seconds left. He flailed, trying to turn to see Tess one last time, his arm disrupting a few stella florae, creating a dust cloud of spores. Tess was limping slowly over to the arch, waving her arms.

“Lan, stop moving! The flowers, I think they’re—”

“I love you,” Lan tried to choke out, throat closing. “I’m sorry.”

Tess kept shouting at him through the comm, but Lan couldn’t hear her over the clang of alarms, the roar in his own ears. His head ached. A pressure built behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut, waiting for the end. Everything went silent.

Silent? 

The beeping of his suit had stopped, the hiss of escaping air gone. Lan sucked in a breath. It came easily. He opened his eyes–

“Ah!”

–and snapped them shut against the glare that greeted him. 

“Lan, can you hear me? Don’t move your arms.”

Lan cautiously opened his eyes again, blinking hard to get used to the light.

And saw flowers. Dozens of them, undulating across his helmet and down his body, covering the entirety of his suit. Lan poked at one on his belly and watched as it poofed into two more. Stella florae. He reached up to brush aside the ones across his helmet so he could see better.

“No!” Lan stilled instinctively at the sound of Tess’ panicked reprimand. “I alerted Medical. Help is coming. Just…don’t move, okay.”

“Tess?” Lan croaked. He turned to where he thought she was, seeing a human-shaped shadow behind the light and standing directly below him.

“You okay?” Lan asked.

Tess laughed mirthlessly. “Am I okay? Of course, I’m okay. You saved me you great, stupid—” She broke off and took a stuttering breath. “I’m sorry!” she suddenly cried. “This is all my fault!”

“No!” Lan refuted automatically, alarmed to hear her tears.

“It is! I was so distracted—”

“So was I!”

“—pretending nothing’s changed, that what happened with my hip wasn’t scary—”

“I was scared, too!”

“—and not listening to you when I should have—”

“I should’ve listened to you and called for help.”

“Damn it, Lan! I’m trying to apologize,” Tess snapped, not unkindly. He heard her take a deep breath. “I…we’re family,” she said awkwardly, but Lan knew what she meant.

He nodded, sucking in his own breath, still marveling that he was able to do so. Didn’t his visor breach…He grasped again for the helmet to feel out the damage.

“No!” Tess chided. “Stop! Moving!”

“But, the crack,” Lan stammered. “How—”

“Stay still and just…keep looking,” Tess said quietly. And Lan did.

The crack across his helmet face was gone. Instead, a line of stella florae filled the space inside and around the fissure, packing and sealing it shut with billions and billions of tiny particles. 

Lan squinted to the side, following the luminous trail down his body and to the arch. Stella florae spiraled down from there, coalescing into a single large patch on the hull directly beneath him, every single flower and bud, twining around Tess and bunching up as close as they could get to Lan, keeping them both tethered to the station and Lan’s suit sealed.

“Oh,” Lan whispered, feeling his chest tighten and his eyes water. “Oh.” And then he was bowing his head, gasping out sudden sobs as the strain of what had almost happened and what did happen became too much.

The barest pressure caressed Lan’s cheek, familiar and surprisingly warm. He saw the stella florae had reproduced some more, recognizing the sound of Lan’s cries to instinctively seek out his shaking movements. But as they seeped through the crack in his helmet to crowd around his face, Lan thought it almost seemed like they were acting on the prompting of something more.

“I think they like you,” Tess whispered.

Lan let out a watery chuckle. “Of course they do,” he said. “We’re family.” 

Lan closed his eyes, letting the flowers envelope him in a cocoon of white light. There was nothing Lan could do as they waited for help to arrive. But that was okay. He needn’t worry or fear. He and Tess could rest in the embrace of the stella florae, safe with their family.