Until they were, we were just more floating debris in this field of debris, with no way to move out of the way of drifting rocks.
The five of us remaining were all heavily experienced on outside work, so we drew straws and I got the short one, meaning I’d man the controls while the other four went out to get the work done as fast as possible.
We told Mission Control what we were planning and they agreed that time was of the essence.
They had only been out there less than five minutes when an asteroid on my screen appeared out of nowhere, a rock the size of a small house, spinning slowly.
I tried to warn them. But with our speed and the rock’s speed, it happened fast. Far too fast. It scraped all four off the outside of the ship like so much crap off a shoe. If the engines and side thrusters had been working, the computer would have automatically moved the ship just a few feet out of the way as it had done hundreds of times in the past two weeks.
Instead, that nasty grinding sound of my friends dying would be something that would haunt my last hours.
Suddenly, I was alone, farther from Earth than any human had ever been, drifting in a field of debris without power, or any way to get power that I could figure out. That last rock had pretty much taken out a good part of the port side of the ship, leaving me with air and environmental systems in the control room and the galley only. I suppose I could say I was lucky to have survived as well.
I didn’t feel lucky.
I had enough to eat; I had enough oxygen to breathe for months. But in this mess of swirling rocks, I wouldn’t last that long. I’d be lucky to get through the conversation with Earth.
Again, I didn’t feel lucky.
“We’re set up, Ben,” Devon’s voice came back on strong; then a picture flickered into place.
I clicked on my uplink, then without a comment ran the recorded events of what had happened.
I sat and stared at Devon’s face for a few seconds as he just waited for the time lag; then he got my video uplink transmission and his face went white.
For a moment, I thought he was going to be sick as he watched. I knew exactly how he felt. There had been a camera on all four of them out there. What had happened was not something anyone would want to see in the news services.
And besides that, they had been my friends. And Devon’s friends.
After a short time, I punched a few buttons and sent the next compacted data streams toward Earth. “Telemetry on the ship’s status being fed now.”
At least they would know exactly what happened and why.
I gave them everything, downloaded it all, to show everyone back at Houston Control just how screwed I was. That way they wouldn’t go off half-cocked trying to come up with some harebrained scheme for me to fix this mess.
There was just nothing to fix.
I might die at any moment from some stray rock. Or some weakness in this cabin’s walls caused by the two crashes. Or I might live until my food and air ran out. I was betting on a stray rock taking me out very shortly.
“Give us a few moments to look over all this,” Devon said, his voice barely holding back the emotion I could see in his eyes.
Then he cut the link and I was alone again.
“Hope I’m still here,” I said into the silence of the big control room.
At least some of the cameras and sensory equipment were still working on the outside of the ship. That way I could see what was going to kill me. I think someone once called that a cold comfort.
I tested the main computer and it seemed to be up and running as well, so I worked to plot my course as best I could in relationship to the big rocks we had charted. Banging off two different rocks like a bad game of billiards could send a ship going in some very strange directions, and the Klondike had been no exception.
After about ten minutes, I had figured out that at least I wasn’t going to go head first into any of the bigger asteroids for at least a few months. In fact, the last impact had sent the Klondike upwards and slightly out of the main debris field. So it was going to have to be a small piece of rock that finally took me out. And there were far, far too many of them just in my neighborhood for even our best computers to try to track.
I might see it coming. Maybe two, three seconds ahead was all.
The connection to Houston remained blank, so I stood and moved around, stretching my muscles as best I could in the zero gravity. My magnetic boots held me to the deck, so, as I had learned over the years, I used that force to work against doing my exercises.
I wasn’t sure why I was doing that. Just force of habit, I suppose.
What else could I do while waiting to die?
Poor Tammie. I could see her long, brown hair, her big eyes, her small but wonderful smile. I had been gone almost more than I was home over the last two decades. From what I could tell, she had lived the life perfectly, keeping her own interests in teaching, sharing in mine when I was there, saying goodnight to me every night, no matter how deep into space I was, or what she was busy with.
A perfect astronaut’s spouse.
She never really mentioned, and we never really talked about, the fact that I might not come home. It was just understood, part of my job.
I suppose I took her for granted far too much. The job of exploring space had always come first for me. The adventure was what I loved. I had to admit I had let the marriage just coast along. When I got home after this trip, I had planned on making up for that.
Too late.
I finally sat back down and stared out the forward viewport, watching the shadows of the dark rocks turning slowly, blocking out the background stars as they moved around and past me.
It was like a bunch of ghosts moving through a very dark night. Only these ghosts were real hard. And real deadly.
May 23, 2008. This would be a day that would be remembered as a footnote in the history of space exploration. All six of our names would be put up on the big golden obelisk sitting on the mall beside the United Nations building. It was a fantastic way to remember the dead. It was over thirty stories tall, yet no more than seventy feet across at the base. Standing back on the UN Plaza, staring up at it, the entire thing seemed to be reaching up for the stars. On its sides near the base, in large block letters, it held all the engraved names of those who had given their lives in the adventure of space.
Unless someone else died while I was sitting out here waiting, I would be the three hundred and twenty-sixth name on the memorial.
I knew exactly where my name would be. I had stood under those names many, many times, remembering all my friends who were on that memorial.
I had no doubt Tammie would stand there as well. I always felt it was too bad we had never had children. Now I was glad. I would never want to put a son or daughter through what Tammie was going to have to go through.
It took Houston a good twenty minutes before they got back to me. Guess when there was no hope, time suddenly lost its importance.
“Ben,” Devon said. My friend’s face looked drawn and older, far older than he had looked just a half hour before. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sure you know the situation.”
“Yeah, I know it,” I said. “Got any friendly neighborhood aliens with spaceships to stop by and pick me up? I could use a lift.”
After the few seconds’ timelag, Devon would smile at my corny joke, since we had both loved that story, published when we were kids, of an alien rescuing a stranded astronaut. Where was a good alien when you needed one?
“We’re seeing what we can do,” Devon said. “And don’t give up hope just yet. We’re still working on this.”
“Sure,” I said. “Has it got out to the press yet?”
“No,” Devon said. “We’ve kept a lid on this for the moment, and no one’s paying any attention. It was just a regular day for you guys out there.”
“Yeah, real regular,” I said. “After you guys finally figure out that my goose is cooked, I’d like to talk to Tammie.”