“Too long.” She removed her hand from his slight paunch and rested it between her thighs.
“I find that hard to believe, you’re what, twenty-nine?”
“Twenty-eight, but thanks,” Tor looked up at the mottled artex deckhead and rolled his eyes. “With all due respect Captain, you may have flown longer than I have, but all I get to see is the shit when it goes wrong. Guy’s like you just turf them off to me and hope I write a nice career saving report.
“It’s not kids with sniffling noses or hypochondriacs or pillheads, or the holier-than-thou holistic types who come for your advice and then throw it back in your face. It’s major fucking trauma, crushed limbs, hypoxia and bends. It’s a lot of death and I’ve got to see it on the most haphazard stations in space.”
Her chest heaved, he supposed that was her other method of release. “Why not go terrestrial?”
“I fucked that opportunity a long time ago. I was a pillhead and I hated the kids, the hypochondriacs and the holistic medicine pricks. Only people who’ll hire me are companies with thankless jobs in space. And I guess I prefer it. At least the folk here aren’t piss pathetic types.”
“Sounds like you picked the wrong profession.”
“Yeah,” she paused as if to go further then let the sentence slip away. In quiet they watched the denouement of the half-watched film, David Hemmings fighting off an ageing Clara Calamai.
The quiet slid awkwardly into the credits, Tor sat stiffly watching the list of cast slip past. Hoping the doctor would excuse herself. Instead she said: “I guess Falmendikov had some help.”
Her raw voiced summation stirred Tor from his torpor. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t see how he could override the cryobed otherwise.”
“I guess he figured a way to make it malfunction, I suppose it will all come out in the report. Don’t blame yourself.” Tor felt her body tense, immediately he regretted what he said.
“I don’t. Do you?” Her pale, sun starved skin reddened.
“No, I didn’t mean that,” he took a deep inhalation of breath and tried to replay the throwaway sentence. “I meant, if you did.”
“Well I don’t,” she withdrew from the bed, splaying sweat stained bedsheets on the deck. She pulled her leggings over pert buttocks and turned to look at Tor. “I blame you, you’re the Captain and the only damn report that will matter is the one we hear, if, if we get home.”
Indignation slowly pushed Tor’s voice higher, the throbbing headache once again gnawed at the back of his eyes. “And you don’t think we will?”
“Not with a limpdick like you in charge.” The doctor pulled a little white tank top over her tall frame, nipples and rib bones pushed through the material.
“Fuck off, Doctor,” Tor said with deadpan hostility.
“Gladly,” Dr.Smith replied picking up her poncho and storming out of his cabin.
Tor let the silence resettle. “…What the fuck?” He retrieved the bed sheets from the deck and muttered, “fucking brat,” to the empty cabin.
The wetness on the sheets had cooled, uncomfortably so he kicked them away. Tor autopsied the infuriating exchange in his head, anger colouring his subjectivity. He surmised everybody was on edge and already going nuts. The crew were scared and cryosick, the worst facets of each personality were bound to be amplified in their situation. Still he knew to steer clear of that crazy again.
Tor blew out his cheeks and got up, pacing the length of his bed. A last beer remained in the cooler in his living quarters, he retrieved it and returned to the bed.
He slaked his dry throat with a German pilsner and looked once more at the photo on the bedside. For once he didn’t focus on Olaf.
It had been a long time since he’d felt a pang of remorse in his extramarital activities, while he didn’t expressly admit to his whoring, he knew Lucia was not the naive sixteen year old he’d met in a Salvador strip joint. If anything, she’d been uncommonly nuanced for a teenager back then. A pragmatist who’d been impregnated by an older, wealthier European. Even her family had taken a practical approach to the affair and Tor felt proud for honouring her by looking after them as wife and child. He even supposed he loved her in an abstracted sort of way.
As the anger subsided, the perpetual undertone of loneliness returned. He drained the bottle of beer and rewound the VHS. Heavy lidded, he let the trailers for upcoming Italian slasher flicks from seventeen years ago play him to sleep.
Chapter 4
Tor woke to the hiss and blizzard of static. His eyelids felt hot, lashes claggy with yellowy gound. He wondered how long he’d slept as he rubbed the mucus from his eyes and fumbled for the TV controller castaway amidst the shag pile.
Reluctantly, he twisted his body from stained ivory sheets and buried his toes in the rug. Heavy headed, he tried to stand and was greeted with the after effects of oversleep and a bottomless nausea in his gut.
A gentle rap at the door stirred his senses. Tor heaved his stiff body over to his IKEA recliner and retrieved the pair of neoprene boxer shorts he’d worn since entering cryo eight months ago. Pulling them on he glanced around his cabin; clothes were strewn everywhere after the previous evenings exertion. Tor would have to speak to Sammy, ensure housekeeping came back up on track as soon as possible.
Galley needed to wake a day earlier, that would have been a great idea, Tor supposed he would not be attending another Master’s Conference. In an odd way it made him feel sad. He’d always found them rather grinding affairs. Daytime conferences a prelude for evening debauchery. The company always ensured they were situated near a strip club or bordello, subconsciously sewing seeds of compliance, safeguarding themselves from costly requests and difficult questions. The realization that his career was almost certainly over filled him with an isolating detachment.
A second more fervent knock. Tor hoped it wasn’t Dr. Smith and cringed at the memory.
He limped to the door. “Morning, Tor.” It was Nilsen. The words were cheery but his face grim. He didn’t look rested.
“Is it?” Tor asked, Nilsen looked puzzled. “Morning. Is it?”
Nilsen glanced into the port side portholes. “Well you know what they say Tor, it’s always dark in space.”
“Except when that fucking gloomy star is blasting in.”
“You slept through our last pass, it’s the opposite side of the station now,” Nilsen appraised Tor’s disposition with cold eyes. “You OK Tor? You seem a bit more dishevelled and terse than usual.”
“Fine. Bad night I guess.” God, Tor wanted that final cigarette.
“Get dressed I have something I want to lend you.”
The leatherette recliner, identical to the one in Tor’s cabin, was cold on his back. Tor sat, gooseflesh prickling his skin, in his neoprene boxers and black truckers cap, holding a cordial glass of Linje aquavit. Piss brown-green coloured, faint caraway and aniseed redolence.
Nilsen bustled around his pristine living quarters, furniture positioned in obsessive lines, engineering manuals ordered by descending height. Nilsen pulled the last book from the shelf, a short tome about the Kon-Tiki expedition and placed it with reverence on a large Perspex coffee table bolted to the deck. The coffee table was now covered in a jumble of oddments, situated in a peculiarly ritualistic fashion.
“When was the last time you EVA’d?” Nilsen asked crouched down and working the lock on a battered dark green lockbox, previously concealed somewhere in his en-suite.
Tor sipped the aquavit, letting the spirit warm his chilled body, and tried to cast his mind back. “Did some training in enclosed environments as a cadet. Probably twelve years ago. The company I flew with as a rating never EVA’d except in critical situations. Usually just let repair teams do the work at station or back on Earth.”