Mission Commander

A short story based on a dream I had this morning.

This was the farthest we as a species had ever gone. And now they were going to die here. Graham shook himself out of those thoughts. He couldn’t have ‘em, he was the mission commander, the commander. Alright "let’s do it", he announced to his crew-mates in his best authoritative voice. The pilot and mission specialist went off, presumably to work on the situation.

Time was limited now, and they knew it. “Let’s go check in the systems room”, he said to Sarah, his flight engineer, in a much different voice. She was the one crew member he never felt like he was commander to. She was matronly, nearing the end of her flight career probably. She was still in terrific shape. In an earlier year… actually only a few years earlier, he might have described the body he was now ogling as ‘bangin’. The worries of many missions showed in the lines on her face.

They got to the sealed hatch. “Low atmo”, she murmured, as she put on her helmet. It was already hot and sweaty enough without the suit, Graham thought.

“Ready?”, she asked rhetorically as she simultaneously opened the hatch. A whoosh of air nudged the two of them through the hole. She expertly grabbed the handle on the other side, sealing it.

She was right, of course. It was a lot cooler here. The escaping gas made this section of the ship almost cold. ‘Must be some thermodynamics shit’ was the thought that sloshed around Graham’s head. She maneuvered on, getting ahead of him. She was so comfortable in micrograv, her very movements calmed his mind. She was really a gymnast of the stars. Graham smirked at that thought: maybe that was sort of an embellishment, maybe he wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

She checked the readouts on various machines. Right, the dying thing. He focused, commander again. “Well this whole section is leaking air like crazy. I don’t think we can do anything about that. The CO2 scrubbers are just fine though.”

Well tell me something I don’t know woman. Graham frowned, annoyed and scared. “Hmm, well I guess I had better move the scrubbers up…”

“Uh, right”, the flight engineer replied. “Well you had better get started”, she said, chuckling. She was right. There were more than 20 of them, each scrubbing the air at a tiny rate, designed to operate in parallel for the extreme long haul. He grabbed two and started going up.

“Uh, I’m actually going to stay down here and try to search out the leak.. try to seal it. I still have plenty of air in my suit.” Um, that was just retarded. There were probably hundreds of microleaks located anywhere and everywhere. He started to say something, then caught the look in Sarah’s brown eyes, pregnant with an unknown meaning. Right, Graham thought, and started to move up, “See ya on the other side,” he mumbled and went on.

Sarah really liked the guy – a great astronaut really, a great commander, and she had dealt with her share of bad ones. She had been in her share of tight spots, but couldn’t bring herself to tell him how utterly hopeless their situation really was. She knew he was the type that although well meaning and very efficient during the everyday operations, wasn’t at his best in a crisis. He might panic, get emotional, screw up, and she really didn’t want to see someone who had become her friend over the course of their long journey get broken like that.

He’d find out upstairs anyways. She locked the hatch.

—

Graham walked in on his mission specialist and pilot, bent over a display console, breathing heavily. The mission specialist was fingering a Ti-89 calculator. “Find a way to power these scrubbers, will you?”, he tried to intone as casually as possible. “Where’s Sarah?” the pilot asked, wiping the sterile space sweat off her petite face. “She’s still down there trying to find and seal the leaks,” Graham said, annoyed at being interrupted and shaking off their incredulous looks. Their deep practiced breaths filled the silence of the room.

The mission specialist took the scrubber. His hands were clammy. He went off fumbling among cables, doing something or another. The pilot looked apprehensive, then began: “The leaking gas is creating a rotation in the craft. So far the reaction wheels are compensating, but that’s just draining our power faster. Worse, the leak has changed our flight path… too much.”

“And another thing… life support”, she continued, “We have some oxygen for now, but CO2 levels are already at dangerous levels.”

Graham rubbed his temple with his left hand. He knew he was fucking up. He was supposed to inspire confidence even when he didn’t feel it and he was letting his fears show. “Then let’s find some solutions people. First the CO2. Let’s power those scrubbers.”

“Every time we open the doors to the bottom, we lose more air. Even if we got all the scrubbers up, we wouldn’t be able to power them. Our energy reserves are draining fast from the rotation.”, the mission specialist protested.

Graham tried not to yell. It would only dump more CO2 into the cabin. “We’ll need thicker power cables to reduce electrical resistance.”, the pilot volunteered.

—

Graham headed down alone again, suited up. The mission specialist and pilot were trying to diddle with some power converter or something. He got to the door. Weird, it wouldn’t give. He tried again, heaving, grunting, putting his shoulder into it. He was really sweating now and short of breath. He pounded on the door. “Sarah!” he yelled, irrationally: there was no way she could hear him in her suit. He looked for something handy: he found a wrench. He pounded at the mechanism, frustrated, angry, desperate. Finally he noticed the emergency release wheel.

The door popped open with a whoosh and he went in, quickly shutting it behind him. It was now dark in the lower half and really-really cold. He turned on his suit light. He went to the systems room. Sarah wasn’t there. How could she get lost on a ship in space? It didn’t make sense.

Suddenly a red light caught his attention. It was on his suit: Low O2. That couldn’t be, this thing was supposed to last for hours. He hurriedly grabbed two scrubbers and the cable. He was awkwardly heading back up. He was heaving. He hit his head on a fixture. His head lamp was smashed. He rotated head over heels twice, then caught himself. Dizzy, nauseous, and now feeling lightheaded, he pushed himself forward again, but then was suddenly jerked back. A loop of the cable got snagged on something.

His arms were so tired. His skin was red and sweat clammy cold. He impatiently untangled himself, then moved on, cable slung awkwardly around his arm and neck. The red light on his arm illuminated the condensation on his visor and made it even more impossible to see. He took deeper and deeper breaths, fighting the gray that was slowly creeping into the corners of his vision, struggling on, fists unnecessarily tight on the scrubber handles.

He got to the hatch, tried to open it, but no, the locking mechanism was broken. Engaged earlier and now smashed. He looked for the emergency release wheel. It was stuck. He tried turning it, bracing himself against a wall and pushing with his legs. He got tangled in the coaxial cable again. He was so tired, breaths shallow now.

He grasped at his neck, trying to loosen a collar that wasn’t there, trying to get some more ventilation in the cubic foot of space that was his helmet.

Was this how it was supposed to be? Man at the final frontier, stuck in a monkey suit, tangled in some coaxial vine, and dying alone in the darkness?

Outside, the ship slowly tumbled into a lower and lower orbit of a planet with beautiful green seas.