Adrift

Spencer Reay floated back into Lewis's view and waved, his left side brightened by the sun, his right in shadow blacker than black. "So long," he said, and Lewis didn't even have time to be confused. There was a pair of heavy shears in Reay's hand. Why the hell does he have those? Lewis thought. Then it was done, the tether cut. The capsule and Spencer Reay began, slowly but absolutely irreversibly, to drift apart.

"Control, Reay has cut the tether, repeat he cut the tether." Lewis tried to keep his voice neutral, factual. He expected he failed.

There was a short lag; the capsule Reay and Daniel Lewis were in was now far enough from Earth that the transmission took the better part of 3 seconds to reach the receiver. Three seconds to Earth, three seconds back. Plus whatever time the Control staff spent trying to frame a response.

About fifteen seconds later, "Ymir, please repeat."

"Tech Specialist Reay cut his tether. He's adrift." A short pause. "Reay is gone."

Maybe twenty seconds this time. "Ymir, you are saying Specialist Reay cut his tether before returning from the EVA? Confirm." The extravehicular activity--EVA--had been a longshot; or maybe not even that, a Hail Mary pass launched into a tornado.

"Control, yes, he cut it. Estimate he's now about 200 meters from the spacecraft."

Still trying to keep neutral, professional. His internal dialog was different. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm hallucinating. No shears in that equipment kit, we packed it together. Christ almighty, no no no. The loop kept playing, small variations on the theme, over and over.

"Copy. Stand by."

Lewis knew there was nothing to stand by for. The spacecraft, the first manned mission to try to visit a comet, was without any sort of propulsion, drifting in a path influenced only slightly by the gravity of Earth and Sun, floating in the vast nothing that begins a few dozen miles from his home and ends, in any practical sense, never.

***

He thought most about his family, his wife and daughter, his father and sister. They were together, he knew, likely trying to be brave, each thinking about what could possibly provide comfort to the others. He thought about the choices that led him here - the uncountable steps that took him from his parents’ house in Scottsdale to the Air Force Academy to... He tried not to judge his decisions, tried not to regret any single step on the long path, but he couldn't see past how those steps had led to what his wife--his best friend--was feeling now.

Still, in the end, he thought, he wouldn't have changed anything; still, in the end, he thought, he would've changed everything.

***

He was watching Pete Janx power through his solo in "Split Infinitive", left hand high on the neck of the guitar, the patter of notes tearing out of the instrument, fingers flying. His dad introduced him to Janx when he was ten, nearly a quarter-century ago. He never knew music could be like this, like flying. It still took him out of himself, lifted him somehow, made everything else drop away, if only for a few minutes.

His father had been his guiding light his whole life, his hero, his pillar when his twin brother was killed. He didn't fully realize, until he had his own child, how difficult that must've been for his father, to grieve one lost child while unfailingly supporting another. If he prayed--which he didn't--he'd have prayed that his wife could lean on his father as he had.

He knew the Janx video by heart; next would be "Causation", the sounds from the instrument so fat they practically oozed. He stopped the video after "Infinitive"; the solar arrays weren't positioned properly, and energy was in short supply. He allowed himself a few minutes of something--anything--each day to take him back to something familiar: a bit of a favorite movie, or the Janx concert. He'd brought some video of his family also but couldn't watch it; it deepened the emptiness rather than filling it.

"Control to Ymir, it's check-in time."

"All good." Now over ten seconds round-trip, plus a bit for the actual thought and/or talking.

"Copy." Then silence; silence stretching and stretching, more nothing in the middle of nothing.

***

Food was getting low, even given the minimal consumption pattern Control suggested. He started to remember meals over the years; he had begun using the phrase "real food" in his mind. His wife's shrimp risotto, barbecue ribs from Q-1 down the street, his own short rib ragu. He stopped those thoughts as quickly as he could. His mind was his only company, and he began to feel it was betraying him, making remaining time even more unpleasant, drawing him into the trap of contemplating things he'd never experience again.

"Control to Ymir..." Now over fifteen seconds (plus) round-trip.

***

No one wanted to say goodbye. He was increasingly muddled about whether this was a good thing; the isolation and nutritional depravation were beginning to take a toll. There had been a few short conversations with his wife, extravagantly painful exchanges more like small talk than anything, both of them pretending to be unafraid. "Talk to you later," she'd say.

Control didn't - or couldn't - speculate on how much time was left, but it couldn't be much.

Waking and sleeping were beginning to merge; when awake, he would wonder if he was asleep, occasionally landing on the conclusion that if he were sleeping his mind would be more active. His dreams had turned dark: pursuits of ill-defined objectives down endless, dim corridors, or hiding in half-demolished structures, hoping the monsters couldn't find him.

***

The spacecraft had developed a slow roll, the result of a tug from some gravitational gremlin. The windows were never rolled straight toward the sun, but were angled more toward it for much of the rotation. When both windows were turned away from the sun, he could see the backdrop of stars, vivid against the velvet black, scroll slowly past. They would slowly dim, and the reflections on the frames around the windows would brighten as the windows turned toward maximum sun exposure. He tried to remember how the reflections subtly changed, tried to notice the smallest nuances in the play of light on metal.

He thought about his daughter, realized he couldn't remember her birthday.

The windows had passed the brightest point in the rotation; the sun was slowly fading. November 14th? he thought.

As the light faded, he closed his eyes and waited for the dreams that never came.