Planet Pluto by CHASE B.C

Author:CHASE, B.C.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: preseption: press
Published: 2020-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-nine

I do sleep, but in fits and starts, and not in my quarters. Instead, I hook my sleeping bag to the wall of the living area. (I’ve tried to avoid my CQ as much as possible since I was confined there.) When I go to the airlock the next day, Commander Sykes is being suited up with the assistance of Tim and Shelby.

But I am shocked and dismayed to see that Commander Tomlinson and Shiro are assisting someone else into an Orlan-MK. Her body is already entombed in the space suit but they have yet to embalm her head with the helmet. It was bad enough that Commander Sykes was going out there, but emotion wells up from within me with the knowledge that if she is being suited up in an airlock, she must be heading outside, too.

It’s the shock. I can’t handle it. “Katia,” I say, unable to contain my angst, “why are you in that suit?”

Calmly she explains, “Two can do the job faster than one. Without me, Commander Sykes won’t finish in time.”

“But…” I protest, swallowing a frog in my throat the size of Texas.

Commander Tomlinson intones, “The mission cannot fail. With both of them out there we’ll have twice as much likelihood of success getting the gyros replaced.”

Katia shrugs, “I’ve been camping out with Commander Sykes since you went to sleep.”

“But, but does that mean you can get in faster and escape the radiation?”

Nobody speaks, but they all stop working. Commander Sykes breaks the silence: “You never told us the actual numbers, Shelby. What will the chance of mortality be?”

Shelby hesitates, “I don’t... Do you really want to hear them?”

“Yes.”

She soberly says, “Eighty percent within twenty days.”

Her words are like barbs thrust through my heart. So instead of sending one person out to die, we are dispatching two. And I don’t know a whole lot about radiation, but I know that it can cause immense suffering before it exacts the ultimate price.

Despite this, Katia is the consummate professional, going about the business of checking her suit steadily and even, you might say, happily. I know she has never done a spacewalk before and has always wanted to. Now is her chance, and the love of her work and the arrogance of youth make her seem carefree and thoughtless. She doesn’t understand the gravity of what she is doing. She doesn’t seem to care. She shouldn’t be doing this, I think, and suddenly anger boils up within me and I loudly blurt, “You can’t do this, damn-it! You can’t send her out there!”

Everyone ceases their labor to stare at me.

“She’s too young. It isn’t right.”

Katia explains in a pacifying tone, “I always wanted to do an EVA, Jimmy. Now’s my big chance.”

“But you can’t,” I implore, my voice burdened with emotion. I pull myself towards her and plead, “I already lost one daughter, Katia. I can’t lose you, too.”

She says nothing for a moment, but my statement elicits a tear from her. Finally, she emotionally observes, “I always wanted a father.

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