With her ship tumbling to its death, Felcia is sealed into a life-support bubble and towed off the Barbapiccola to the Israel — reaching her father's glove through the window one last time before the freighter burns.
Felcia Merton, aboard the doomed, tumbling Barbapiccola, is saved by the plan Basia and Naomi devise: her ship's crew and colonists seal into ten plastic 'life-support bubbles' — paired emergency airlocks — and are pushed out of the cargo bay to be towed up to the Edward Israel. Hers is the last bubble Basia catches and tethers; through the airlock window she sees him, his helmet lit so she can see his face, and mouths 'Papa,' pressing her small clever fingers to the glass against his big gloved ones. Delighted, she points past him at the wonder of a dozen people drifting through vacuum in envelopes of air, mouthing 'wow,' as her line reels her gently up to safety — temporary, but as her father reflects, 'all safety was.' She is off the freighter before it enters the atmosphere and burns to fiery fragments, alive on the Israel with its four remaining days.
A teenage Belter girl with a long gangly frame and large head, dark olive skin, black hair in loose waves; here a delighted young face pressed to a small airlock window inside a translucent air bubble.
The Mertons' daughter; the child saved from the burning Barbapiccola in a makeshift life bubble, reunited with her father across a windowpane.