Devi dies during a spacewalk while helping install a replacement communications dish on Aether. The work is nearly complete when a failed scrubber in her suit deprives her of oxygen, leaving too little time to return to the airlock. Sully is beside her, but cannot save her; after Devi’s death, she secures the dish and watches her friend drift away. The episode binds a practical repair to an irreversible loss, and its aftermath shows grief interrupting the crew’s work even as that work gives them a way to continue.

The work outside Aether

Sully and Devi make the spacewalk to install a new communications dish. The scene’s unusual stillness initially feels reassuring to Sully: without ordinary divisions of day and night, the two women work in what seems like an unbroken moment. She has a plan, tools, a partner, and a team. The ship’s reflection moves across Devi’s visor as the women bring the dish to the installation site, tether it in place, and prepare to connect it to the hull.

The repair requires patience and coordination. Loose wires float from the connection point, and Devi sorts and splices them to fit the new system. Sully passes her tools and steadies the dish’s mast. After about an hour, the electrical connection is established. They lower the dish together, with Devi packing the wiring into the aperture while Sully guides the mast. The replacement is in place and ready to be bolted on. Sully puts a gloved hand on Devi’s shoulder to acknowledge their progress, but Devi does not respond. A routine check-in becomes an alarm.

The danger follows a quieter period of emotional strain. Before the spacewalk, Devi has grown increasingly withdrawn. In a conversation with Sully, she describes a recurring dream of eating with her parents and brothers in her mother’s kitchen in Kolkata. The family meal gives way to the knowledge that they are gone and she is alone. Sully cannot promise that everything will be all right, but she stays beside Devi and lets their feet touch in the dark. The shared vulnerability makes the later emergency more than the loss of a crewmate during a technical operation: Sully has also seen how much of Devi’s private grief she carried.

Scrubber failure and death

The first clear warning comes over Aether’s frequency. Thebes reports a carbon-dioxide problem in Devi’s suit and says its oxygen level has suddenly dropped. Sully moves closer to look through Devi’s visor. Devi appears dazed and has difficulty speaking. She identifies the cause as a failed lithium-hydroxide cartridge in the suit’s scrubber, and says she had not noticed the failure. The incident is thus not presented as a problem Sully can correct from where she is: by the time the danger is apparent, Devi is already struggling to remain alert.

Harper urges Devi to get back to the airlock. Devi judges that there is not enough time. Her movements become uncontrolled; a tool slips from her hand and spins away. She loses consciousness while still attached to her tether, and Sully freezes with her hands on the dish’s mast. The rest of the crew checks Devi’s vital signs from inside Aether. Thebes confirms that she is gone and that Sully could not have prevented it. The urgency of the repair has given way to death, but the unfinished installation remains physically in Sully’s hands.

Sully cannot take in the crew’s subsequent calls. She continues holding the mast while the voices from the ship recede from her awareness. When she cannot make herself move, Harper tells her to focus on one bolt at a time. She follows that instruction, completes the fastening, and then detaches Devi from the tether without waiting for permission. She believes it is what Devi would have wanted, and what any of them would want. In the vastness around the ship, Devi grows smaller until she disappears from view. Sully imagines her body continuing on an endless journey through space and silently hopes the emptiness will hold her close.

Immediate aftermath

The work does not end with Devi’s death. Sully returns to Aether after finishing the installation, but she is overwhelmed by what she has witnessed. The next morning she wakes screaming and repeatedly imagines alternative outcomes: reaching the airlock in time, or noticing the scrubber problem earlier. These imagined rescues bring no comfort. She knows Devi is gone, while the vacuum surrounding the ship remains a constant reminder of the danger the crew inhabits.

For a time, Sully withdraws behind the curtain of her compartment. The other crew members visit, but she can manage only to defer them until the next day. The date itself feels difficult to endure: it is inseparable from the moment she held the dish while Devi died. When she gets up again, she puts on a fresh jumpsuit and traces the stitching of her own monogram. She remembers the initials on Devi’s uniform and repeats her full name, Nisha Devi, as if naming her can preserve something of her friend beyond the loss.

Work, mourning, and reconnection

The following day, work offers Sully a narrow refuge. She and Thebes focus on bringing the new communications system online without discussing the spacewalk. Their silence is not indifference; it lets Sully keep her attention on the task when any gesture of sympathy might send her back into isolation. At lunch, she begins to recognize that the loss belongs to the whole crew. Thebes, Harper, Tal, and Ivanov have also watched Devi drift away through the helmet cameras. They gather around the last saved dish of shepherd’s pie, eat together in silence, and join hands when Ivanov reaches for the others.

Sully returns to the communications equipment with Thebes, testing the gain and adjusting the squelch as the signal becomes clearer. The system is calibrated as well as it can be; anyone trying to call Aether will be heard. After Thebes leaves, Sully stays to listen. She does not mistake a working receiver for contact with someone on the other end, but the act of having done what she could makes her feel less alone. The repair that occasioned Devi’s final spacewalk becomes a means of making the ship reachable, even though it cannot undo the loss that occurred during its installation. Grief remains present, but Sully begins to turn again toward the crew, the work, and whatever may come next.