Losers in Space

by John Barnes

  Almost under the Christmas tree, Wychee, crying hard, is holding Fleeta’s body gently down on the turf, by the shoulders, so she won’t float and tumble. Glisters is sitting on the grass a few feet away.

  “You checked everything, I know,” I say softly.

  Wychee sniffles. “Yeah. She’s, um, she’s cooling off. The first aid gadgets detect no heartbeat, no breath, and the only brain activity is prion conversions. Even those are slowing down; not enough energy.”

  I take over holding her down; in the milligravity, there’s always a risk that a thruster might fire for a second and set her floating in midair again, and I don’t want any of the crew to see her flopping around lifelessly; somehow that would seem more dead than her being still.

  It’s much too soon for her to stiffen; her face is slack and blank—as it was the last few weeks anyway, when she wasn’t smiling and giggling vacantly.

  “I guess she came back here to take one more look at the Christmas tree, and some last critical brain cells died somewhere. She probably just turned off; even if it took a few seconds, all she could feel was happy.”

  “Good that it didn’t happen during the Christmas show,” Glisters says.

  “Yeah.”

  Then F.B., Marioschke, and Fwuffy arrive, and we spend the rest of Christmas comforting each other. It’s many hours before we resume our regular watches; meanwhile, we dress and clean Fleeta—the body—and seal it in a body bag in a freezer locker.

  We use pretty much the same script that we did for Stack. Glisters shoots it for our next Life on Virgo.

  I keep looking down at the body, and losing my place in the text on my pad. I’m not really seeing the body, or the pad; I’m seeing a brainy, beautiful little girl bouncing up and down on the acceleration couch next to mine as we get ready to go up to orbit. And I’m hearing her mother’s voice: oh, god, the waste, the waste, the waste.

  Later that night, when I’m on watch by myself, I remember Fleeta’s young face on the screen of my wristcomp; Can you come over? Let’s play! I’ve got all this ultra ultra zoomed stuff I have to show you! It’s a good thing the ship mostly runs itself, because I can’t see any screen, tonight, through the wet blur.

  23

  THE WAY THINGS AWE

  May 24, 2130. On board Virgo, upbound from periareon to aphelion. 347 million kilometers from the sun, 332 million kilometers from Mars, and 493 million kilometers from Earth.

  WYCHEE AND I are sitting in the Forest, quietly; it’s a habit that has developed in the long months since that awful Christmas, part of just being friends that can count on each other. I’m enjoying the brightness of Jupiter, and trying not to compare it with how small and dim the sun has grown; we’re so far from home.

  On breaks like this, I make it a rule to never think about ship’s business, but that’s no longer a difficult rule to follow. People know their jobs so well, and do them so well, that truly there hasn’t been much to think about for the last five months.

  After a while, Wychee says, “I have sort of an idea. I need to work it out, out loud, in front of you, Commander.”

  “Susan,” I say. “Call me Susan. We’re alone. I promise I won’t take it as a sign of a mutiny.”

  “See, that’s kind of what the matter is. I think maybe I’ve seen so much of the commander, since Fleeta died, that I keep wishing I could ask if Susan could come out and play.”

  I’m surprised at how good it is to hear her say that. “Well, I’m listening. What do you have in mind?”

  She’s looking at me closely. “Do you know what tomorrow is?”

  “Uh, hum. Nobody’s birthday, I kept track of that, no big holiday, hum… it’s a little bit more than thirteen months since we got on the ship—”

  “Almost there.” Did she ever have that puckish little smile when we were moes back on Earth? Would I have noticed then, whether it was there or not? “You really do let Glisters do most of the flying, don’t you? Where are we, Susan? Where are we?”

  “We’re—” Then I know, and I feel dumb. “We’re at aphelion! Or we will be tomorrow!”

  “And if that’s not time for a party I don’t know what is,” she says. “Here’s another thought for you: Gliss is only sending out an episode of Life on Virgo every couple of weeks, instead of daily like when we started. If he’s right and the signal is still reaching Mars and the Earth-moon system, and we just can’t hear anything back because no one’s using a directional beam toward us, then I can’t imagine anyone back home except our families are still watching Life on Virgo—and even them only out of loyalty. It must be dull as the drag races at the snail festival; it doesn’t matter if Gliss is right and the big ground-based antennas are picking up everything we send, if what we send is too dull for anyone to pirate or sue about. Even if we had a huge fan base originally, after a few months where the most exciting things we did was routine maintenance, growing plants, and little nerd-education moments, we can’t possibly have much of an audience left.

  “So what I’m thinking, Susan, is that we need something to liven things up, for Life on Virgo, the meed, but also for life on Virgo, the painful reality.

  “Here’s the idea I’ve been working my way around. It’s time to come out of mourning for all the terrible things that happened from July to December last year—it’s nearly June, after all—and what better time than aphelion? We’re turning around; we’re all the way out at the highest, outermost, farthest point away from the sun in our orbit, starting to fall back around the sun, chasing down the Earth—it’s something to celebrate, and maybe we can all quit acting so depressed about Fleeta, and about being stuck on the ship, and about Derlock getting away with murder.”

  “This sounds more like a prepared speech than like thinking aloud,” I point out, but I’m grinning as I do.

  Wychee nods. “I’m thinking aloud in a very well rehearsed kind of way, okay? Anyway, I want to celebrate, and I want to do it in a way that the media idiots, instead of ‘still on their long journey outward’ will start to say that we are ‘inward bound at an ever-increasing speed,’ because it will remind everyone that we’re coming home and they’d better be ready to deal with us—and do something about Derlock. Now, come on, Susan, say yes, and let’s have a party!”

  I’m nodding. “You’d already won the argument when you said too much commander and too little Susan. I really have been pretty grim and stuffy, haven’t I?”

  “Well, two murders, a death, and a psychopath trying to keep us from being rescued is grim, and that might entitle you to some stuffiness. But now it’s time to throw a party, kick back a little, and feel more like life is worth living. Nobody’s going to want to save us if we’d just depress them, you know?”

  “I do know. Thanks, Wychee, you’re right.”

  As soon as we announce the party, everyone gets behind the plan so quickly and eagerly that I suspect I was the last, rather than the first, person Wychee talked to.

  May 25, 2130. On board Virgo, at aphelion. 347 million kilometers from the sun, 333 million kilometers from Mars, and 493 million kilometers from Earth.

  Because of what happened at Christmas, no one wants to ever hold another party in the Forest. Instead, we set up on the cargo handling deck of the Pressurized Cargo Section. In celebration of our swinging back toward the sun, Marioschke doodles up a big bright sun with a sort of Tarot-card face, and Glisters machines a bas-relief of it out of some yellow plastic, two meters across. We hang that right at the center of the party space, from the lower edge of Cargo Wall 50.

  By smearing paint in pastel bands on an empty foamed-cellulose liner from a spherical crate, we make a Jupiter-piñata, which we smash to celebrate our months out here passing close to it, if close can mean several years away at our peak speed. Still, the bright blaze of Jupiter has been the only visually distinct feature out here, and we are pulling away from it from now on, plunging ahead of it in orbit and dropping back down sunward.

  And besides, inventing milligrav ru
les for piñatas is fun; everyone has to spot, so that when they miss, the people leaping blindfolded at the piñata don’t bash the wall with their heads, or the spotters with the stick. After everyone’s had a couple of tries, Wychee gets lucky; the piñata flies to bits and we chase all the little souvenirs and pieces of candy around in the air, catching most of them, we think, though I suspect we’ll be finding them here and there around the Pressurized Cargo Section for months.

  Glisters keeps trying to point out that perijove—the point where we were closest to Jupiter—was actually about a month ago. Fwuffy playfully gags him with his trunk, declaring, “Accuwacy is ova-wated, we’ah cwose enough to cewebwate,” and everyone laughs, Glisters loudest and longest of all.

  Sheer relief of tension, and release from mourning, has us all giddy. We sing silly songs. We give long roaming and rambling speeches that dissolve into giggles in honor of the sun. We put music on and do milligravity dancing. (We’re only moderately impressive, but watching Fwuffy try to imitate us is splycterable if anything ever was.)

  “Wychee,” I say, “this was one of your most brilliant ideas ever, and I say that with the full knowledge that I’m speaking to the inventor of the spherical chocolate pie.”

  “Thanks, Susan.” She sighs. “It was good that we toasted absent friends, too, and reminded everyone about the ones we lost—and about what Derlock did. Can we drink another toast to them?”

  “Stack, Emerald, and Fleeta,” I say, holding up my squeezebulb. “Never forgotten.”

  We all drink, and F.B. holds his squeezebulb up and says, “Derlock. Never forgiven.” He’s lost that hunted look he used to have, of fearing someone might hit him at any moment.

  We drink again; I’m watching F.B. I’m not even sure he was ever really slow; so much of what we thought of as being dumb must have just been having no faith in his answers, even when they were right, or maybe especially when they were right.

  We do a couple more milligravity dances, and some singing—Glisters has found us some songs about the long long trail a-winding along the long way homeward bound, and keeping the lights burning, and green grass and yellow ribbons and so endlessly sentimentally on until we’re practically having to scrape sloppy sentiment off the windows.

  I keep in mind Pop’s injunction that for some shows there’s no such thing as too corny, and try to style it big and fun, but even I choke up when we do a song from Little Johnny Jones—one of Pop’s big revival roles. Of course it’s all rebuilt, now, more than two hundred years later, and the actual place is now a seawater-filled crater, but “Give My Regards to Broadway” apparently still works on theatrical, or half-theatrical, blood. I’m not sure that more than a year is the same thing as “will soon be there,” but still it feels disgracefully wonderful.

  When we’re tired of singing, five people and one horton subside around the window. It seems like a good time for a fade, so we all wave bye-bye to Glisters’s camera, and force him to hand it to Wychee so we can show him waving bye-bye, and then sign off. Glisters says, “All right, it’s a wrap, I’ll edit all that into a special to send out tomorrow. At least we’ll have a Life on Virgo ep that features something more exciting than the miracle of fresh carrots and the excitement of checking pressure seals.”

  The music goes soft and sentimental and we all stretch out on windows, alternately gazing down into the stars and enjoying the warm orange flash of sunlight through our closed eyelids. I’m about half awake when I notice Marioschke and F.B. slipping away together. Later, when I awake, Glisters and Wychee are gone, too, and Fwuffy is rolled over on his back on the window, stretching and enjoying the sun, like a two-tonne pink house cat with a trunk. I check the time. “Hunh. I guess I’ll be an hour and a half early to my watch.”

  “Actuawawy I think Gwistas and Wychee would pwefuh you wate.”

  “They’d want me to wai—I mean, be late?”

  “You being wate is the simpwest way faw them to have some pwivacy.”

  I kind of thought that vibe was in the air. “Thanks for the note, Fwuff.” I look around. No party cleanup to be done; the area is spotless. “Gee, they picked up after themselves, too.”

  “They awe both the soul of wesponsibiwity.”

  “Your vocabulary’s coming along so well since you’ve started reading all the time.”

  “Awso you gave puhmission faw me to devewop beyond smaw-child communication, which activated a wot of devewopment in my bwain.”

  “Is there a command or something we could use to turn your speech defect off? You really deserve more dignity than having to talk like that.”

  “I don’t weawy know my own specifications. And I’m iwegal, so theah’s no documentation.”

  “It seems kind of unfair. As far as anyone can tell you’re at least as intelligent as a lot of human beings, and you’ve got better empathy and you’re a nicer person. Glisters has been pushing that pretty hard in Life on Virgo, I know—”

  “He’s afwaid of what may happen when you awe wescued, so he wants to make sure I have a”—he slows down and speaks carefully—“a consti-tu-ency faw keeping me awive.”

  “Well, he’s right. I don’t know what we’d have done without you; you’re a real part of the team.”

  He rolls on the window again, stretching and turning in pure pleasure. “Thank you, Commanda.”

  “You can call me Susan.”

  “I’d wather have compwiments fwom the Commanda; it seems gwanda.”

  I laugh, rub my face on his trunk, curl up against his side, and pull out a tablet reader. I’ve been carrying it everywhere with me lately; there were a dozen of them in the ship’s stores, and while it’s not as convenient as the guys’ wristcomps, it’s way better than always looking for a terminal.

  Lately I’ve developed a taste for South American poetry from the last pre-PermaPaxPerity generation, but today is not my day to read, because a thought pesters at me: after the voyage is over, since all of us humans have taken our calcium retention shots and our anti-dystrophy pills with religious regularity, we’ll be able to go down and start Earth-retraining right away (though we’ll have the standard couple weeks of bruises as we re-learn that you can’t just park objects in the air, or slow down going downstairs by waving your hands). We’ll ace our PotEvals, get talent-eenie training if we want it, do something or other with our lives.

  But what about Fwuffy?

  Probably right now he doesn’t have the bones or the muscles for anything much more than milligravity, so he’ll have to stay in space somewhere.

  If they let him live.

  After we’re rescued, what if their media statement is just: Horton? What horton? They could just turn off the power and let out the air, and it might be years before they even had to issue the stock statement—Oh, too bad, yes, it may have been unjust, but it’s too late to undo it now.

  One of the principles of PermaPaxPerity is supposed to be “the discreet and efficient elimination of settled questions,” but another principle is “a measure of tolerance for variance, especially in light of popularity.” So which one will they apply to Fwuffy?

  “Fwuff,” I ask, “what would you like to do when the voyage is over?”

  He rubs his forehead slowly with his trunk. “I don’t weawy want it to be ovah, evah. I know it’s what my fwiends need, but faw me, I wike it the way things awe. But I wike gwowing things, and I wike fwying. I think I would like anywheah with fwiends, miwwigwavity, and pwants.”

  I have no idea how to get that for him, but it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable, so I leave the issue for later.

  After I’ve read the same poem four times without remembering a word, Fwuffy asks, “Susan, what awe you gonna do when you get home?”

  “Oh, take a long bath, hug Pop, work out, eat in restaurants, all that, at first. Take the PotEvals. After that… you know, Fwuffy, you’ve got more idea than I do.”

  “I think you should awways be commanda. Yaw vewwy good at it.”

  “Thanks,”
I say, slapping his thick pink hide hard; it’s the only way he can feel it. I look back at the same poem and decide that today’s not my day for reading.

  DOWN-LEG:

  APHELION

  TOWARD

  EARTHPASS

  MAY 25, 2130–JANUARY 9, 2131

  POSITIONS OF THE EARTH, MARS, AND VIRGO—MAY 25, 2030–JANUARY 9, 2031

  Without course corrections (which require around 10 million cubic meters of water, or about three full iceballs, as reaction mass), Virgo gets more and more out of phase with Earth and Mars, so when they come back for Earthpass (also called perigee), they’re going to be very, very far away from home (they’ll cross Earth’s orbit more than two whole months behind Earth—and the Earth moves through space at about 19 miles per second). And in future orbits, the situation will only get worse. If the Virgo survivors are going to solve their problem, they’d better do it soon.

  24

  BRILLIANT, WITH AN 80% CHANCE OF DEAD

  May 25–November 29, 2130. On board Virgo, downbound from aphelion to perihelion. Descending from 347 million to 289 million kilometers above the sun. Mars begins at 333 million kilometers away and moves out to 449 million kilometers away as it continues around the far side of the sun. Earth begins at 493 kilometers, far behind the sun, but as it comes back around closes to within 165 million kilometers.

  SO THEN, FOR about six months, we fall. So far away from the sun, we don’t fall very fast, by space standards, which means we fall a lot faster than any bullet ever fired. Identical weeks crawl by, and Earth and Mars curve back, pass behind the sun, and pop out on the far side; we’re still coming slowly down-system, well above what the ship’s ephemeris tells us should be the orbit of Mars. Not that you can see an orbit, of course; it’s an imaginary line in a vacuum that marks where the planet would be if this were some other time—you can’t be more ephemeral.