by Adam Roberts
—The irony is, said Ostriker, temporarily distracted from her endless speculation about the nature and purpose of the Cygnics’ visit, the irony is that he had already called the voyage’s one unluck!
—He had, Ange agreed. The mislabelled ice.
—Turns out that wasn’t the voyage’s unluck. That was just a minor inconvenience, after all. He is the voyage’s unluck, poor soul.
In a less-than-rational way, Ange found herself darkly pleased by this turn of events. She had, she realised, never believed that the incident with the ice right at the start of the voyage had been enough to defang the possibility of later disaster. But this, a dead crewperson (the first in her entire career, in fact) was unmistakably unlucky. Nobody would argue with that.
They continued earthward, the long slow roll back down the sun’s gravitational slope. Ange and Ostriker had to rejig the shift patterns, but there wasn’t that much to do now that they were fully underway, and it wasn’t too onerous. Despite the death on board, or perhaps because of it (who knows how morbid human happiness truly is?) the mood lightened. Ange found Ostriker less annoying. Her obsessive over-and-over chatter about the alien visitation acquired the flavour of a harmless quirk. Ange found herself more cheerful, for every time she woke after another sleep she knew herself closer to her home.
She worked her shift, and roused Ostriker and went to sleep herself. As she slept she had an elaborate dream about two trees. In one, a pointillist blur of starlings pulsed and flushed around the bare branches, touching down and immediately taking off again, their wings abuzz like insects, like insects, like insects. A brown cloud. By contrast the other tree was bare: black branches like stretched out leather belts, a trunk with the bulgy, structural solidity of black rock. In this second tree there was a single bird, a magpie, and it was clutching the branch upon which it perched with such force, with such improbable strength that the wood was being wrung out like a damp cloth, and sap was dribbling to the ground.
Ange was woken abruptly by a cacophony of ship’s alarms. As she unhooked herself from her harness, scrabbling to regain full consciousness, she knew what had happened. A micrometeorite—dust, rock, ice, at these velocities it hardly mattered what—had struck.
Ange hauled herself through and made her way up the main corridor. The whole ship was shuddering: like a house during an earthquake, or a fat man shaking with fear. If Ange hung in space she was still, but as soon as she reached out and touched the fabric of the craft the vibration communicated itself to her, and her very teeth zizzed in her jaw. The corridor was a chimney, a borehole. It was the inside of a riflebarrel. The corridor flexed and groaned.
She silenced the alarm’s barbaric yawp. Then she checked the schematics.
The bulkheads had all sealed automatically. She worked as quickly as she could checking compartment after compartment and opening these. Each time she passed through a door she shut it behind her. Where there was one micrometeorite there were likely to be more. But she had to get to Ostriker.
She located the forward position where the pinhead meteor had hit. The ship schematic showed that it had come on a freak trajectory, from the side, avoiding the mass of bulked shielding the nose of the craft. Its speed had been its own, then; and not a function of the ship’s own velocity, although it had been going plenty fast enough to enter through the forward 2 hull plate and exit through the forward 7 hull plate. Ange checked the room beyond, found it stable at two thirds pressure, and overrode the bulkhead lock.
Inside was a mess. The air sucked gently in through the hatch Ange had just opened, blowing past her and swirling into the cabin, stirring a particulate soup of red blood droplets and blobs. Ostriker was by the left wall, her arm through a strap, unconscious. From the doorway Ange dialled up a filter scrub of the room’s air, and some of the fog of blood began to draw away. Ostriker’s right foot was missing, and blood was pulsing and glooping. Dark red strings of blood.
There was a bright yellow patch on the wall away to the right, and another similarly coloured blob on the wall near to where Ostriker dangled. Presumably she had had enough presence of mind to fix the leak before passing out. Presumably, too, the micrometeorite had passed not only through the wall of this room but also through her foot, turning it into blood and atoms.
Ange spent a moment checking the trajectory of the item. Ostriker had plugged both the holes in this room. The adjacent space (on the far side of the wall, and sealed away by the corridor bulkhead) must be vacuum now.
The cabin was full of blood droplets. Circulating the air to clean these was taking a long time, or perhaps the filter was getting clogged. Ange took off her shirt and wrapped it around the lower part of her face as a makeshift mask. Then she launched into the space, unhooked the unconscious Ostriker’s arm from the strap, and pulled her free out into the corridor. She sealed the room behind her. She transferred her shirt to Ostriker’s stump, wrapping it into a clumsy bandage. Then it was slow progress back down the corridor, opening and closing bulkheads one by one, until they were at the medical room.
She strapped Ostriker onto the medibench and uploaded some data on tackling amputation wounds. The first thing she did was to sprayject analgesics into the patient’s leg. This action seemed superfluous given Ostriker’s lack of consciousness, but (Ange reasoned) she might suddenly come-to at any time. She rubbed her hands thoroughly with antiseptic wash. Then she slapped two plasma bags onto Ostriker’s belly, under her shirt, and unpeeled the sodden makeshift shirt-bandage from her right leg. The raw stump was not pretty to look at. She was no wimp, but Ange’s stomach still shimmered with revulsion as she picked pieces of stray bone and gelid, stringy flesh from the sound site. Ange slathered the whole stump with the mud-like nano gunk, hooked a bag of medimesh about the whole thing to keep it sterile, and went away to check on the health of the ship as a whole.
The readouts were not good. The breach of the chamber in which Ostriker had lost her foot had contained nothing essential to the functioning of the ship as a whole; but the other chamber—the on the other side of the ship, through which the micrometeorite had exited—was one through which fed several key tubucules, and all of these were snapped and venting into space. The whole of the forward 7 hull plate had been ripped away by the exiting debris, and that in turn had deformed or pulled free the edges of four other plates. It was bad. Ange did what she could to reroute, and she shut down as much as possible; but not everything could be rerouted without actually going into the room, which promised to be a dangerous and onerous task. More, the impact had thwacked the ship hard. They were (Ange couldn’t sense the actual motion, although a big shudder was still palpable in the craft) now rotating horizontally stem-to-stern, and tumbling on a different cycle on a seventy-percent-of-vertical roll. The micrometeorite strike meant that she didn’t have the complete set of attitudinal jets to steady the ship. She spent ten minutes doing what she could with what she had, and steadying without entirely eliminating the shudder.
Then she went back to the medical room and checked on the patient. Ostriker had regained consciousness, or some part of it. Ange kissed her forehead, glad that she had already sprayjected the painkiller. How are you doing?
—I’m thirsty, she said
Ange fetched her a globe of water, and she sucked noisily upon it. What happened? she asked. So Ange explained about the micrometeorite strike, and about Ostriker’s foot. She seemed to take this calmly enough. For a moment she looked down at her leg.
—That explains the ache, she said, in a whispery voice. I remember the decompression, and I remember I felt calm. Isn’t that odd, feeling calm?
—You did very well, Ange reassured her. You did very well not to panic.
—Everything was dark and swirly, but I had a good handhold, and it was easy enough to see where the holes were. I plugged them both, but then I must have passed out.
—Bloodloss.
At this Ostriker began to weep. I feel faint, she said. Oh my foot! My poor foot! How will
I do without a foot? My toes! My foot.
—You’ll be alright, Ange said, awkwardly. When we get home, you can have a prosthesis.
—I feel faint. Oh, it hurts. Can I have some painkiller?
Ange fetched a bulb of analgesic. Here, she said. Take a little of this. It’s best if you self-medicate; when you feel sore, sip a little. But don’t take too much.
And, suckling like a baby, Ostriker did seem to become calmer. Thank you, she said. You’re a good person.
—You need to rest.
—I do feel real sleepy. Don’t think me rude, but. And Ostriker fell asleep, holding the bulb of analgesic in one hand and the bulb of water in the other.
Ange was filthy, sticky with Ostriker’s blood; so she went off to shower. There, in amongst the omnidirectional jets and the cleansing florets of steam she considered the situation. A rogue micrometeorite strike through the flank of the craft was extraordinarily unlucky, but it had a plus side: namely that it was almost certainly not to be repeated. Of course, where there was one micrometeorite there were often others, but had the ship flown into a whole cloud of such obstacles, and had the combined velocity of ship and projectiles been enough to pierce the shield of ice, then the ship could have been shredded and both she and Ostriker would be dead now. On the downside, she was going to have to suit-up and go into the broken 7-side chamber, to see how much of the physical damage could be made good. Only then would she know if the ship could make it back to Earth unassisted. Methodically she worked through the worst-case. They were weeks away from any assistance. Weeks were no problem; they had air, water and food for months, and energy for years. But Ange would much prefer not to have to go begging amongst other pilots for rescue.
Clean, she went again to the medical room to explain to Ostriker what she was going to do. The patient was still asleep. So she went to the store space and began suiting up; elasticated leggings; elasticated arms; the padded torso unit. She was about to roll the helmet about her head when the whole ship gave a massive bucking-bronco kick and lurched wildly, sending her colliding painfully with the wall.
Moving about inside the ship in the vacuum suit was not easy, but there was no time to disrobe. Ange went first to the medical room to see if Ostriker was OK—she was still asleep—and then to the nearest control nexus. A supply tubule had ruptured all along its length, and was feathering great sprays of sealant and fuel into the void. It must have been weakened by the earlier damage to that flank of the ship. Ange fiddled again with the attitudinals to try and calm the lurching, trembling aspect of the ship. It took a long time, and when she was finished one thing was clear: that the craft was in no shape to pilot itself back to Earth.
Angry at fate, Ange sent out the SOS. It would be half an hour before anybody even heard it, and an hour at the quickest before she heard any reply, so she went back to the medical room. Ostriker was awake now.
—You’re suited, she observed.
—A tubule has ruptured, she said. I’m going to have to go into one of the voided rooms and see what’s what.
—Will we need rescue? Ostriker asked. She seemed very matter of fact.
—I’m afraid so. But I’ll see how bad things are. You OK?
Ostriker took another sip of water, and smiled. I’m fine. If I’m thirsty, I’ll drink; if the pain comes back I’ll take some more painkiller.
—Is the pain bad?
—I can’t feel anything.
—That’s good.
Ange took herself forward, fitted the helmet and negotiated the bulkheads. Inside, the breached chamber was cold and messy, the twinkly detritus of floating dust in vacuum. To the gasping soundtrack of her own breathing Ange checked the pipes one after the other, tried rerouting the fluid network, and discovered she could not. She swore, to herself, quietly. The gaping hole in the side of the ship was panel-sized, and there was no patching it; Ange even stuck her head through it to take a look at the outer skin. It was sobering to consider that a projectile so small could have so large a set of consequences. The whole area was pitted and striated, not by the micrometeorite itself of course, but by the debris it threw off as it shot out of the ship. Her helmet headlamp drew witchy shadows from the gouges and shone brightly off the petals of twisted metal. Beyond that was the starless black.
She had done what she could, at any rate. So she brought herself back in, moved laboriously up the corridor, lowered the bulkhead, pressurised the space, and came back through.
Stripping out of her suit she realised she was hungry; so she heated some tagliatelle and drank some sugar water. Replies to her SOS had come in: the nearest craft cried-off rescue because the detour would impact too grievously on the commercial viability of their trip. Another ship replied but claimed to be too small to be able to help (it took Ange only a moment to pull the specs of the craft and see that this was only an excuse). There was nothing she could do, however; so she fired back acknowledgements and spent a frustrating half hour working the crippled controls to at least orient the ship in the direction of Earth. They were still falling sunward, although the sideswipe and rattle-roll had added months to their unaided ETA.
Finally a third ship confirmed the SOS; another Mars freighter, similarly returning empty to Earth. If Ange’s parent company would reimburse the fuel, they would divert and accelerate, and lock trajectories within a fortnight. Ange agreed, hoping that the parent company would agree (if not, the money would come from her own salary) and went to tell Ostriker the news.
Ostriker was sleeping. Except that when Ange looked more closely, she saw that Ostriker wasn’t breathing. With a sensation of nausea in her solar plexus Ange examined her. There was no question about it. Ostriker was dead.
Ange gave herself over to a childish, universe-directed fury. She swore and swore, and kicked the walls of the medical room. It was so stupid! Idiotic. The whole universe was idiotic. But she had to get a grip; getting a grip was what she was good at. So she reined-in her temper and examined the situation. It was obvious enough what must have happened: holding a globe of water in one hand and a globe of painkiller in the other, woozy, confused with blood loss and very thirsty, Ostriker had drunk deeply of the latter thinking it the former. It was such a trivial mistake! So arbitrary! That the woman could survive having her foot amputated yet die of mixing up what she was holding in her left and right hands—it was more than outrageous. It was actively insulting.
But it could not be undone. This is called the arrow of time.
For a while Ange busied herself to prevent herself brooding on the stupidity of everything. She wrapped Ostriker’s corpse, but rather than manoeuvre it upship past all the bulkheads, opening and shutting each laboriously in turn, she left it in the medical room, dialling down the heating to make the space preservingly cold. Then she cleaned the chamber and the corridor vigorously, removing the many floating patches and wall smears of blood and other dirt. But there was only so much to occupy herself. The earlier candidates for unluck seemed foolishly trivial now. Even Maurice’s death in the fastness of his cabin. That had been his own silly fault. But Ange felt a frustrating sense of complicity-by-incompetence in the death of Ostriker.
It was the insignificance of it that was the most irritating thing. A human death ought to be a grand and tragic affair, not a footling stupid mistake of this sort. But that was the logic of the crowd. Some few humans met death with dignity and grace; some few died in ridiculous and comical ways, but the bulk of the poisson distribution was: mean, pointless, insignificant demises. Of all the great philosophers and religious figures, it was Copernicus who was the greatest, for he alone had preached the truth to humankind: you are not special.
For Ange, dealing with that was something best essayed alone.
4. Second contact
She was alone again, and that was alright; although being alone in her house, with its beautifully manicured garden, was a different thing to operating a basket-case spaceship with a crew of two corpses. There was a further leak, and thi
s threw the ship into a shimmy-shake and slow toptail rotation. Ange tweaked and toyed and adjusted her attitudinals to cancel this new irregular trajectory, but doing this shook free further jinks in the system. Breathing air flooded into the void in a swarm of crystals. For one heart-bumping moment Ange thought she wasn’t going to be able to seal off the delinquent pipe from the main supply, and she entertained crazy ideas of having to suit up, go out and stuff rags or something in the hole. But then she was able to seal the vent, and only a few days breathable air lost.
She wondered if she ought to keep a tally of unlucks; but that felt like itself an unlucky thing to do. The tossed coin may keep coming up tails, but the coin itself doesn’t know that. It goes into every tumble and spin with the beautiful clarity of 50:50 as its outcome.
She did not talk to herself. Only people disinclined to solitude, or people who only mistakenly believe that they enjoy solitude, talk to themselves when they are alone. She was perfectly at ease by herself, and went about her business. Besides what was there to say?
There was a fire in one of the forward compartments, and the automatic dampeners failed (because she had—to make assurance doubly sure—sealed off all tubules with anything less than 100% structural integrity). By the time she had gotten the pipes open the dampener head had melted and fused in the heat. She was forced into uncomfortable passivity as the fire burnt through to the shielding supplies of ice and finally burnt itself out. But this weakened the whole forward portion of the craft. For the first time she began to weigh the chances that she would never make it back to Earth. Rescue was still weeks away, and her entire tech-system was now precariously balanced. It would take only a few more malfunctions to finish her off.
Still, she lived another day. And then another day after that.
She suited up and, despite the discomfort, stayed that way; sleeping with the helmet hooked beside her. The air started smelling bad, and she discovered—after a long, wearisome search—that mould was growing inside the recycle pipes. She cleared as much of this out as she could, although there wasn’t a way to get at the most deeply located colonies of the stuff short of physically dismantling the entire system. She ate. She drank water. She slept. She lived another day. She thought about all the things in her life that would be rendered forever unfinished by her death. But then she thought to herself: after all, anticlimax is the currency of mortality. If I live, she decided, and get home again I will write a work of philosophy, explaining how Copernicus revolutionised our living and dying as well as our cosmology. All those Greek tragedies, all that Shakespeherian to-do about death, the distinguished thing—it all belonged to that Pre-Copernican delusion of our importance. Only an important being can have a significant death! An unimportant entity dies, as she was doing (there was little point in denying it), stupidly, belatedly, unexpectedly, in a downbeat banal accidental way. The modern mode of it.
