Thebes

Thebes is one of the six crew members aboard Aether, and the person who most consistently keeps the work and the people around him from coming apart. A skilled, attentive presence in the ship’s daily life, he supports his crewmates through Jovian wonder, prolonged silence from Earth, and the death of Devi. His steadiness is not presented as freedom from grief: he tells Sully that he is in pieces too, but has learned to keep them separate. That practical, moment-by-moment way of living becomes both his method of endurance and his principal gift to the crew.

Identity and Bearing

Thebes was recruited into the South African space program decades before the mission, when he was a young man and the program itself was only a few years old. He tells Sully that his family died in a car accident. By the time the crew travels through deep space, he has had a long time to live with their absence, though he does not pretend that time has made him whole. He describes himself as still having nowhere else to go, a statement that later gives added weight to his decision to remain aboard Aether.

His manner is defined by attentive routine rather than display. He reads when he is not working; at one quiet breakfast with Sully, he is reading The Left Hand of Darkness. The novel is not merely something to pass the time: he dog-ears his page and sets it aside when Sully asks about his family, giving her his full attention. His easy, gap-toothed smile and smooth South African accent recur as signs of familiarity, but his steadiness is active: he notices what people need and looks for a useful thing to do.

Wonder and the Fraying Crew

At Jupiter, Thebes shares in the crew’s altered sense of scale. He and Devi spend hours in the cupola, looking out through its clear dome at the surrounding depths. He calls their long stretches of stargazing “having a big picture moment.” The phrase gives a modest name to an experience that has made the crew feel small before the universe, while also marking the companionship they find in simply looking together.

The return journey brings a different kind of test. As contact with Earth fails and the crew’s spirits deteriorate, Thebes becomes a practical point of support. When Tal’s frustration spills into a violent gaming outburst and he spends the rest of the day trying to reassemble a shattered steering wheel, Thebes interrupts the futile repair with a request for help on the control deck. Tal accepts the redirection, if only temporarily. Thebes does not cure his distress; he gives him work and a way back into the shared life of the ship.

Devi’s withdrawal requires sustained care rather than one intervention. Thebes works alongside her even though doing so doubles his own workload, and tells her stories about his early years in the South African space program. Sully, meanwhile, tries to keep Devi exercising, eating, and sleeping. Thebes also coaxes Tal into the greenhouse corridor to harvest vegetables, visits Ivanov in the lab, asks about his work, and sets leftovers aside for him. He speaks quietly with Harper, after which Harper seems softer and holds his head a little higher. Thebes makes life easier for each of them, but understands the limits of that effort: the growing distance between Aether and Earth affects the entire crew, and he cannot save them from themselves.

A Practice of Staying Present

Sully eventually asks Thebes how he has managed not to fall apart after losing his family. He does not offer a promise that she will recover in the same way. Instead, he says, “I’m in pieces just like you, but I keep them separate.” He explains the method through ordinary tasks: brushing his teeth and thinking only about brushing his teeth, replacing an air filter and thinking only about replacing that filter, beginning a conversation when loneliness takes hold. In his account, attention is not a cure for grief or a denial of the people on Earth; it is a way to live in the only moment the crew can actually inhabit.

That approach becomes visible in his care for Sully after Devi’s death. During the spacewalk preparations, Thebes checks the suits while the crew rehearses the repair plan. When the new dish is being installed and Devi’s suit develops a carbon dioxide problem, he is inside Aether monitoring the oxygen level and asking whether she is all right. He cannot prevent the emergency. Afterward, Sully withdraws behind her compartment curtain and turns away visitors, telling them only “Tomorrow.” Harper and Thebes look in on her with mournful eyes; she is not ready to respond to their concern.

The next day, Thebes works alongside Sully in the communications pod without pressing her to talk about the spacewalk. Their shared concentration lets her return to the task without requiring her to pretend that she is no longer grieving. At lunch, all four surviving crew members gather around a saved dish of shepherd’s pie. Ivanov takes the others’ hands and says, “Aether has lost her youngest daughter. Protect her.” Thebes adds, “She was loved.” His words give the crew’s loss a simple, communal acknowledgment: Devi mattered to everyone at the table, and remembering that love does not undo her death.

Repair, Choice, and Significance

The restored communications system gives Thebes and Sully a concrete task after the spacewalk. When the probe signal returns, they check the equipment, preserve the incoming data, and work through the new system’s settings. Thebes stays with Sully as they calibrate reception, improving the signal as much as they can. For Sully, the work means they have done what they set out to do and that, if someone is trying to call, the crew can hear. Thebes’s contribution is characteristic: patient labor beside another person, with no assurance that the effort will bring the answer either of them wants.

His final major choice is to remain aboard Aether when the crew prepares to divide between the return journey and the station. He tells Sully plainly, “I’m staying here. On Aether. On the space station.” She asks if that means she should go instead, but the choice is his; he is not simply sending her away. At the entrance to the remaining Soyuz pod, he embraces her once more. She asks if he is sure, and he answers, “Positive,” before gently pushing her into the pod.

The departure completes a pattern present throughout Thebes’s story. He stays with people in the form available to him: by sharing a view, telling a story, finding work for a distressed crewmate, sitting quietly through grief, or keeping the communications system usable. His decision to remain aboard Aether extends that pattern into the crew’s separation. The man who once told Sully that he had nowhere else to go chooses to make the station the place where he will continue.