After the Bite

by Lovato, David

“About a week,” I said. The sun was setting outside, for the fifth time that day.

  “How long will you keep track?” Loxley asked.

  “As long as it takes.”

  I went back to my sleeping rack and picked up my book. The Martian Chronicles. Mick had been right; I enjoyed it.

  A few more days of silence passed us by. Tom wasn’t exercising as much as he should have been, and nobody was eating as much as they usually did. We all still did some work, but mostly we waited.

  I was on the treadmill when it happened. The station suddenly came back to life. It was like a gigantic beast waking from a long slumber. All of the system functions came back online, and the whole station spun around, positioning itself toward the sun. I nearly slipped off of the treadmill, but the harness kept me in place. For a split second I even got disoriented. It was actually very welcome, it was a small taste of being home.

  I rushed to the control console, and everyone was already there, cheering and celebrating, sharing hugs, smiling, laughing.

  “Trent’s here, let’s call home!” Tom said. Sacha smiled at me, then turned to the console.

  “Mission Control, this is Sacha Borislav of the International Space Station. We have had no communication for… many days.” He laughed. “Do you come in, Houston?”

  The click of static came through, and then there was silence. Slowly, one by one, the smiles faded. The room grew silent.

  “Houston, do you copy?”

  Sacha tried for a while after, even as the silence poured in, even as the other astronauts gave up hope and left the room, one by one, hour after hour. The whole while, that big blue orb hung there in the sky through the window, laughing at us.

  “Do you think,” Loxley said, “that whatever happened to Alex might’ve happened down there?”

  Nobody said anything, but we all thought it, now.

  “So… what?” Sacha asked. “Some crisis happens, and nobody thinks to check on us? To even try to find out if we’re alive?”

  “Typical,” Loxley said. “People will flock for the chance to ask us how to shit in space, but a global crisis occurs and nobody even cares to find out how we’re doing. Do they even know what we’re doing up here?”

  “I don’t even know what we’re doing up here, now,” Sacha said. He stood up and made his way to the door.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “There is nothing, now,” Sacha said. “It appears as though we’ll be up here indefinitely.”

  “No more going home,” Loxley said after Sacha left. “Guess I’ll get back to work.”

  He left me alone at the console. I stared at the earth for a while longer. My mind raced, searching for a solution, for some other way to get home. There had to be something. Some way to get home, some way to see my wife again, outside of a lone picture hanging up in my rack.

  A few more days gave us nothing but another problem. There was a malfunction in one of our solar panels. It wouldn’t turn, couldn’t position itself toward the sun. We discussed it in Unity as we ate breakfast.

  “My guess is that some junk is jamming it,” Sacha said.

  “We can fix that with a spacewalk,” I replied.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “We have radio now, so it’ll be a walk in the park.”

  I looked at Tom. He wasn’t eating much, and he winced whenever he moved a certain way.

  “Tom, have you been keeping up on the treadmill?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just slept wrong.”

  “In space?” Yamanaka said.

  “It’s an expression,” Tom replied.

  We finished breakfast, and then got ready to send Sacha out.

  Sacha suited up and then went outside, anchored to one of the station’s arms. He got to the solar panel. We worked after a sunset, to keep the sun off of him.

  “Okay,” he said through the radio. I couldn’t see him through the window. “I’m at the solar panel. It looks like something is jamming the panel’s hinge.”

  “Can you get it out?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, hurry up. There could be more shit out there.”

  Normally, Mission Control would be giving us a heads-up on our flight path, tracking the other satellites and things in the area. Needless to say, we didn’t have that luxury.

  “I think I’m going to need something,” Sacha said. “A big drill, maybe.”

  “Okay, we’ll pull you back in, then,” I said.

  “No, wait!” Sacha said. “I think I have it.”

  “Hey, what’s that?” Yamanaka asked, pointing out the window. There was a satellite approaching us.

  “Sacha, we can see a satellite heading our way. You think you’ll be okay?”

  “I can’t see any satellite.”

  “Well, it’s there. Want us to pull you in, just in case?”

  “No, I almost—there!” The solar panel was unstuck, and positioned itself with the others.

  “Okay, hang on tight,” I said. “I’m going to try to turn the station and see if we can’t clear that satellite.”

  “I’m holding on, go ahead.”

  I looked at the satellite. I couldn’t tell if it would hit us or not; I’d have to eyeball it.

  “Just rotate her a bit to the left,” Loxley said.

  “I agree,” I said. The station turned, very gracefully.

  “Guys!” Sacha said. “There’s another satellite out here, you just moved toward it! Rotate it back!”

  “Shit!” I tried to turn the station.

  The satellite nudged the station, and it spun. The station automatically calibrated its position, and the thrusters fired, stopping the rotation, but the other satellite hit right after.

  The arm snapped backward with a violent motion, and Sacha lost his grip. We could see him now as the arm lurched forward from the motion. The anchor reached its fulcrum and snapped, hurtling Sacha away from the station.

  “Shit! Ahhhh!” Sacha screamed, the volume distorting the sound through the radio into a loud, crackly blur.

  “Sacha!” Eva said. Sacha’s screams continued.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Loxley asked. Sacha was slowly fading out of view as he floated away from us, away from the earth, out into space.

  “No,” I said. He’d eventually come down to the earth, but we’d have no way of catching up with him. We could still hear the screams. “No, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Help! Help me!” Sacha screamed. He knew we couldn’t.

  “Sacha, can you hear me?” Eva said into the microphone.

  “Eva, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” Eva said, near tears. “It’s me.”

  “Eva… I’m not coming home, am I?”

  Eva began to cry.

  “No, Sacha. I’m afraid not.”

  We could hear Sacha panting. I don’t think anyone wasn’t crying.

  “Turn it off! God damn it, turn the radio off!” Yamanaka said. He couldn’t take it any longer, and I could sympathize. But I refused.

  “No. We’re not leaving him alone.”

  “My friends,” Sacha said, his voice becoming more and more difficult to discern through the static as he faded away, “it was the greatest honor of my life, working with you.”

  “Sacha,” I said. “Close your eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Sacha said.

  “Think of Russia. Think of your home. What’s it like?”

  “It’s a small home. A cottage, almost. Just outside Moscow. And when there’s no snow, the field is full of flowers. The most beautiful site imaginable.”

  “You’re there right now, Sacha, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Sacha replied. His voice was cracking, and not just because of the reception. “Yeah, I’m there. I’m home.”

  “You’re home, Sacha,” I said.

  The radio went out, then.

  ****

  A few weeks passed by. We ran out of pepper. Food became more and more tasteless, and we gre
w tired of powdered food and drink even more quickly than we’d anticipated. Still, we gathered for breakfast, and one day Tom didn’t show up to eat. We all knew why.

  Tom’s condition had worsened. He could hardly move. He stayed in his rack, most of the time. His face became more and more puffy, and he complained of headaches often.

  “We have to do something about him,” Eva said as we ate. “He stopped exercising.”

  “He’s grown tired of this life,” Loxley said.

  “We all have,” Yamanaka said. “We just have to hang in there.”

  “Do we?” Loxley said. We looked at him.

  “Lox,” I said, “are you suggesting we let Tom kill himself?”

  “It’s what he wants, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Eva said.

  “Why not? It’s the most logical conclusion. We don’t have much up here. At the least, the least, we shouldn’t deny each other our basic rights.”

  “The right to die?” Yamanaka asked.

  “The right to die the way we wish,” Loxley replied.

  “Enough of this,” I said. “We’re all tired, but we have to make do with what we have. I’m going to visit Tom.”

  I made my way to Tom’s rack and knocked on the door. He opened it. He didn’t look well.

  “You stopped exercising,” I said.

  “Better things to do,” Tom replied.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “God damn. Don’t we all.”

  “I don’t want to be up here anymore.”

  I sighed. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know what I could do. I thought of Mick, Alex, and Sacha. They’d all gone out into space; one by choice, one by accident, the other… we still didn’t even know what had happened to Alex. Regardless, I didn’t wish either fate on anyone else in the crew.

  “They’ll come for us,” I said.

  “They would’ve come by now.”

  “Well, what else can we do?”

  “We can end it,” Tom said. “Just turn the thrusters off. Fall back to Earth.”

  “We’ll all die.”

  “We’re already dead, Trent. What kind of life is this?”

  “What about whoever we land on? What if we kill innocent people when we crash?”

  “The earth is mostly water, Trent. Besides, if there are any innocent people down there, why haven’t they come for us?”

  I couldn’t answer it. Tom continued.

  “Maybe they’re alone, down there. Maybe they got sick, maybe only a few are left. Maybe none are. Who knows?”

  I remained silent.

  “Take us down, Trent. Take us home.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Then at least let me go.”

  We offered Tom a suit so he could talk to us. He refused it. Said he wanted it to be instant. We put him in the airlock and sent him home. I didn’t like it, but it gave Tom something none of the others had: He died smiling.

  ****

  Even after a few months had passed, Loxley continued his work. I wasn’t even sure what he was doing anymore, but he kept himself to it.

  I stopped counting the days. I didn’t know how much time had passed, how many sunrises and sunsets flew by us. I just woke up in the morning, ate, exercised, then spent my time in the control room hoping for a signal, and keeping track of the others.

  Yamanaka took care of his last Bonsai. Eva started sleeping on the U.S. side of the station. We rarely visited the Russian segments. We didn’t have much reason to.

  One day, the station console informed me it was time to fire the thrusters, to keep us afloat for another few months. Tom’s words came to me. I wondered what to do. I sat there at the console thinking about it.

  “Fire the thrusters,” Loxley said. I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

  “What’s the point?”

  “I have a lot of work to do. If you don’t fire them, I will.”

  I fired the thrusters. Then I left the console. Loxley followed me.

  “How long will this last?” he asked. We passed Eva. She was on the treadmill.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Then why force it?”

  “You’re the one who told me to fire the thrusters just now,” I said. Eva left the treadmill and joined us.

  “Like I said,” Loxley said. “I have work to do.”

  “Well I don’t,” I replied.

  “Then find something. How was the book? Finish it yet?”

  “Months ago,” I said. “It was wonderful.”

  There was a beeping sound coming from the console. We returned to it, and it told us that one of the airlocks had been opened.

  “Yamanaka!” I said.

  We rushed through the narrow white spaces toward the airlock. Yamanaka floated outside the door, in the hallway.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Yamanaka said. He was near tears. “Just saying goodbye to an old friend.”

  He turned to me, revealing the empty plant pot in his hands.

  “I’m tired of life. I figured he was, too. He was going brown. Plenty of water, plenty of light, but he was dying anyway. So I sent him home.”

  I put my hand on Yamanaka’s shoulder.

  A few weeks later, I had a dream. A dream that I was falling through the earth sky. Tufts of clouds flew past me as I fell. I wasn’t in a shuttle or on the station, just falling, completely naked. Below me was a field full of flowers. Sacha’s field, I guessed. My wife was there. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, I just did. Then I woke up.

  At breakfast, I told the others my plan.

  “We’ll put on some suits,” I said. “Then we’ll go out to the shuttle, and drop.”

  “We’ll die,” Yamanaka said.

  “Yeah,” I replied. Nobody contested this.

  We suited up outside of the airlock. Loxley just stood there. He didn’t put his suit on.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “I’d love to join you,” Loxley said, “but I still have work to do.” Everyone stopped.

  “You’re going to stay up here?” Eva asked.

  “Yeah,” Loxley said. “I think I am.”

  “What for?” I asked. “What could you possibly have to do?”

  “That shuttle is smashed. It’ll have to be released from here.”

  For a while, nobody said anything.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “I guess I’ll just stay around for a while, continue my work.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes, Loxley said.

  I hugged him. He hugged me back. Tears filled my eyes. Loxley didn’t cry. We let go of each other.

  “The earth ladies,” Loxley started, finally starting to choke up.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Yamanaka said. He tried to force a laugh, but even sarcasm wouldn’t cover him this time.

  Three of us stepped into the airlock. Loxley remained outside. We suited up, and I watched my friend’s face fade away as we entered the space shuttle.

  The front was smashed, but many of the seats were still usable. We picked our places and strapped ourselves in. With no windshield, the view of Earth was extraordinary. Beyond it the sun was rising. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “Okay, Loxley,” I said into my radio. “Send us home.”

  There was no sound as the shuttle dropped. That magnificent blue orb rushed closer and closer. It was getting difficult to breathe. The temperature began to rise, and pieces of the shuttle, both inside and out, began to peel away, to burn up and fall apart.

  I closed my eyes, thought of my wife. The moans and shouts of my friends with me, the sobs coming in through the radio filled my ears. For the first time in so long, we weren’t alone.

  “Halley,” I said, “I’m coming home.”

  Dog’s Story

  I felt a nice breeze rush ov
er me as I walked down the sidewalk in the quiet neighborhood. I was not alone; my friend was with me, and I walked just ahead of her. The few glimpses I got of her, she was smiling, and she had something over her ears. I’m not sure what it was, but it was strange.

  Not far from our house, there was a strange man in his garden, and I felt an undeniable urge to bark and run at him. I could not overcome it, but my friend stopped me, and I began to calm down as we passed him by. The man gave us a strange look as he was pouring water from some green tube all over the garden.

  We stopped for a moment for me to do my business near a bush, and I turned to look at my friend. She seemed to be messing with some device; maybe it had something to do with the thing over her ears? I wasn’t sure. She smiled down at me, and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. I swung my large tail. It slapped against the sidewalk.

  “You ready, Skipper?” she asked in her soft human voice. My tongue was hanging from my open jaws, pulsating a little; my tail was going nuts, and I was happy, ready to continue our walk. I took off, and I heard her playful pleas to slow down a bit. I did, and we were back on track.

  There was a small black thing on the ground that caught my interest, and I had to stop and investigate. My human didn’t seem to mind too much. I poked it with my nose and sniffed it. When I felt it move I freaked and backed up a step. My big body bumped into my human’s leg, and she seemed startled. I barked at the black thing, thinking it might go away. It did not. It moved a few inches over the sidewalk and then stopped.

  “Come on, silly dog,” my human said, laughing. I tore myself away from the black thing, then continued on.

  I was growing a little tired, but I felt the need to go again, so I stopped near a fire hydrant and did more business. When I was finished, I looked up at my friend. She looked strange. She dropped the string that was tied to the collar around my neck. I stepped over to it, sniffed it, and bumped against my human’s legs.

  She looked down at me, and I didn’t feel comfortable. Something was different about her, I could smell it. I barked at her, but she made no remarks. She grunted as she began to move toward me.

  What was she doing? She wasn’t my human. Who was this human? I had to get away, and quickly, but she was standing on the rope attached to my collar. I pulled, and she took a step forward, freeing me. I got away with the rope slapping against the sidewalk as I ran. I was terrified of this human, and didn’t want anything to do with her. I wanted my old human back.