Babylon
12-08-2014, 03:44 PM
Part One.
~~~
“OPS-3 do you read? OPS-3 do you read?"
I launched myself for the radio receiver, and jerked up the mouthpiece. I wiped away the film of sweat from my forehead before replying.
“Receiving.” My throat was tight with a lump the size of a golf ball.
“It’s good to hear your voice comrade.”
“You too. How are you doing?” Leaning towards the porthole, I stared out into the cold void, hoping to catch some glimpse of the Soyuz capsule somewhere out in the twinkling stars.
“All systems great. Amazing view of the Pacific right now.”
“Have you managed to reach ground control yet?”
“Comms are still down because of the solar flares, I guess. Should be back up in a couple of hours.”
“I hope so.” The lump in my throat was getting bigger, pressing against the wall of my windpipe. I swallowed, trying to make room for my next words. “I get worried up here on my own.”
“Only seven days to go now Boris, I’m sure you can last that long. I’ll see you then.”
“I can’t wait until you get here. Talk to you soon.” I put down the mouthpiece, and turned back to the porthole, pressing my eyes into the great blackness, to the divine curve of the Earth’s glowing horizon.
Without Flight Engineer Zholobov, the station seemed very empty indeed. It was a hundred cubic metres of beeping radios, flashing lights, and often blaring alarms, but silence slid beneath these thin distractions, an ever-present threat. Soon enough, I would tune out all the noises, and fall into a state of uncomfortable, clutching, reticence.
I sighed uncomfortably, suddenly extremely self-aware, and tore back from the porthole. Pulling myself through the stale air, I headed for the living area. The sliding door which lead to the cramped toilet compartment was half open, and it squealed as I pushed it into the closed position, the sudden noise making me cringe. The half-hearted chuckle that spilled from my lips was a force of habit; there was no-one else on the station to hear it.
I had no appetite for the generic meat in my food storage cupboard; truth be told, I hadn't eaten more than a packet of dried apricots, a couple of crackers, and some meat spread, in the last two days. If the people back on the ground knew how little I’d eaten, they would've had me on the Soyuz and heading for re-entry in the blink of an eye. If I hadn't been out of contact with them, I might have even considered telling them just to get off.
With no appetite, I decided to call it a day. It was then a simple matter of flicking off the main cabin lights, crawling into the restraints of my sleeping compartment, and praying that the station wouldn't fall apart while I was asleep.
It was warm. Uncomfortably warm. The fabric of the sleeping bag clung to my skin, slick with sweat. I fumbled with the zip, my fingers slipping on the cold metal. The air in the capsule was like tar, and I swam through it with an uncomfortable lethargy. The thermometer displayed the temperature of 19.8 ° C, exactly as it had the day before, and the day before that.
“That’s got to be mistake.” I tapped the screen, as if that would somehow make it display change, but it just ended up leaving a sticky finger mark on the glowing green glass.
Either way, I needed a shower. I used the back of my forearm to clean off my forehead, and sighed. This could wait, it was probably just another sensor problem that I wouldn't be qualified to fix. The whole place was probably only ever one fault from depressurizing and spiraling back down to earth, as brittle as a feather.
The violent hissing of the shower, and the cold pressure of the shower sluiced away my deep rooted misgivings. I couldn't focus on my problems while I briskly rubbed my skin clean with the harsh soap bar. Once I was clean, and suitably refreshed, I turned the knob, and the last bubbles of water floated gently out of the nozzle. With the sound of rushing water gone, I became aware of the noises of the station again, in particular a muffled voice.
“****.” I banged my head on the shower cubicle roof as I attempted to spin myself round and climb out the door. It left a mark on the grey plastic. Not wanting to miss whoever was on the radio, I ignored the stinging pain, and pulled myself naked across the space station, toweling myself as I went.
“OPS-3 do you read? OPS-3 do you read?”
“Receiving Soyuz-21.” Breathlessly I muttered into the mouthpiece.
“I’d almost given up on you.”
“Sorry. I was showering.”
“Well, I’m glad I reached you. I was beginning to think we were alone up here comrade.”
“At least you’re not the only one on the Soyuz. I’m all alone out here on Salyut.”
“Ha, you are lucky my friend, Flight Engineer Rozhdestvensky is starting to drive me crazy.”
“Only six more days to go.”
“For you maybe. I have my whole mission to complete.”
I gave a sympathetic chuckle. I sympathised with Commander Zudov, I truly did. Ever since my partner Flight Engineer Zholobov had got himself a ticket home by accidently chopping off three of his fingers in the airlock door, Zudov had managed to keep my spirits up. He had managed to keep me working. He had managed to keep me hopeful. Zudov was a great man, he would be hailed as a hero back home when his mission was finished, I was sure.
“How are you doing, anyway?”
“It’s warm. It’s too warm up here. I’m not sure how it can be so hot inside, yet so cold outside.”
“Hot?” Zudov was audibly alarmed. “What’s your thermometer reading?”
“19.8 as always. It’s probably a sensor problem, don’t worry.”
“Boris-”
“It’s fine Commander, honestly. I’m only slightly too hot, a couple of degrees maybe.”
“Well, you radio me straight away if it gets any hotter.”
“Don’t worry.” He would worry, I could tell by the sound of his voice.
“Well then, I must leave you. See you soon my friend.”
“Six days to go.” I confirmed, before clipping the mouthpiece back into position on the radio set.
The rest of the day was a constant battle against heat. Communication with the ground was still out because of the solar flares, so I attempted to remedy the problem myself by hand. That started with the simple task of running diagnostic programs on the central computer, but after that denied there was any problems whatsoever, I hit a brick wall.
My mind ran, dredging up hundreds of semi-rendered memories of endless technical documents and cosmonaut manuals. The black diagrams and minute labels all seemed to melt, twisting into impossible shapes, non-Euclidian planes that boggled my mind. I couldn't quite think in the straight lines required for a task like this at the moment; in the heat everything span or spiraled in and out in my mind’s eye. Concentration, it was safe to say, was not high.
In my head, I was back in Zholobov’s last day with me on the station. It was hotter than I remembered in the feverish flashback. Zholobov’s brow glistened as he climbed down, extending his massive frame out of the tiny airlock. He gave a relieved gasp, glad to be finally move his limbs without them slamming them against the walls. I watched him from my seat by the main control console, my eyes aching from looking at the monochrome screen for several hours.
I called out something to him, not in control of my own actions or speech. Whatever it was, for it was muted in my memory, overshadowed by what came next, made him turn. As he did, he placed one hand on the metal rim of the airlock, to keep himself steady. Zholobov replied with a chuckle and an equally muted reply. His lips were blurred in my flashback, indeed, the entire man’s outline was slightly fuzzy in my memory, but the lack of clarity was most noticeable around his face. He was now just an out of focus photograph in the dark recesses of my cortexes.
We finished talking, and Zholobov reached up for the handle on the hatch. He turned back to face me, just as he pulled, and brought down the sharp blade of metal. It dropped onto his other fingers with a sickening-
Thump.
The jarring blow shook me out of my recollection, jerking my head up into an upright position. I gasped for air, and my head instinctively turned to the scene of the accident. There was still a small blood smear down the side of the hatch. Had the noise of metal hitting metal that was still echoing in my ears been real, or was it just part of the memory? In my heat-addled state, it was hard to tell.
The thermometer was still reading 19.8.
I shook myself out of the odd stupor, which sent hundreds of tiny sweat droplets floating across the cabin. The armpits of my top were damp, as was all down by back and crotch area. The temperature must be rising.
Thump.
There it was again. Despite the heat, the sound sent chills down my spine. In any case, I knew it was just space junk or the metal expanding, but it was unsettling enough for me to give the capsule a nervous once over before returning to my previous train of thought.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?” I picked up the radio microphone, still distracted by the glare of the main console, where the display still read 19.8 ° C.
“Receiving OPS-3.”
“Any contact with ground yet Commander? I need to get a fix on this thermostat problem.”
“Negative Boris, still nothing. Is it getting worse?”
“I can cope, but if it persists for two or three days-” I trailed off, putting down the receiver to wipe my forehead again. I could just see my reflection in the edge of the porthole, and he looked very sweaty indeed. White salt crystals stuck to my forearm in the rapidly drying sweat.
“Well, we’ll keep trying. It’ll be fixed in a couple of hours more, I’m sure of it.”
“I hope so, or I’ll have to take another shower.”
“You’re still getting a reading of 19.8?” Zudov’s voice carried a note of apprehension in it, even over the airwaves.
“Afraid so.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back in contact with the ground soon, and they’ll know what to do.”
“I’m sure it’s just a sensor problem, something minor like that.”
“Speak to you soon my friend, and drink plenty of water.”
“I will, don’t worry.” I laughed; that man was acting like my mother.
With Zudov no better equipped to solve the problem than I was, I relented to a policy of acceptance to the problem. If I couldn't solve it, at least I could cope with it.
The heat reduced my appetite even further, but I headed to the kitchen, in hope of forcing down some crackers and water. I rifled through the storage cupboards, looking for something that wouldn't turn my stomach, and at the lack of crackers, eventually settled on the non-descript dried beef I found in one of the white packets. It reeked of meat, an acrid pungent stink which set my abdomen churning, but I swallowed it down nonetheless.
Dried beef’s scent clung to the kitchen walls even after I had finished the package. My mouth was now even drier, so I mixed up some of the powdered orange juice. It tasted nothing like orange, in fact it was some cocktail of harsh chemicals, but it washed away the salty tang of the beef. I wiped my mouth, and discarded the plastic container, sending it trailing small globules sticky of orange liquid across the air.
After my small meal, a heavy weight was sitting on my stomach. It sloshed around in the chasms of my lower body as I moved around the station, warm and stinging. I had to clamp my throat shut to stop myself from throwing up on several occasions.
The day passed with an uncomfortable malaise that made the discomfort in my stomach and head even worse. I watched the hours tick away on the main console clock as I made my measurements, recordings of the sun, or of the box of crystals that grew in the science lab area of the station. Eventually, I could almost take the drudgery no longer. Every surface in the station was covered in sweaty palm prints by the time the day was done, and my hair was nearly sodden.
There was no way I could sleep in heat like this, I had decided, so when I couldn't last the treacle consistency of waking consciousness for a minute longer, I relented to the sleeping pills. They sat in a tiny white bottle in the very back of the medicine compartment, and at the very start of the mission I had sworn never to take them. Unfortunately, today, there was no other option.
Dimming the station lights and crawling into the hot confines of my sleeping bag, I looked at the pale white pills in my palm. They had a slight scent of mint to them. In one decisive movement, I quashed all hesitation, all internal protest, closed my eyes, and swallowed.
I was out like a light.
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the temperature. A gentle cold breeze lapped around my face, probably emanating from the air pumps that whirred gently on the edges of my earshot. My watch, set to Alma-Ata Time from my launch at Baikonur, warned me I had been asleep only three hours. The station was still dark as I slid open the sleeping compartment door, although I was thankful for the respite in the heat and bright light.
I stretched, cracking the vertebrae in my back. Here in the cool dark, I no longer felt feverish or nauseous, just tired. Slowly, as my eyes adjusted, I pulled myself over towards the radio set, and considered calling Soyuz-21.
The air still tasted stale; the tang of sweat and dried beef hung in it even after it was recycled hundreds of times through endless filters and pumps. Even so, there was a certain calm to the station with the lights off and the temperature down. I looked out the porthole, and even the frigid depths of the universe seemed less inhospitable; there was a gentle navy tinge to the infinite blackness, perhaps, and the glow of the stars seemed less harsh. This, along with the weightlessness and the gentle purr of the air pumps, gave the whole scene a dreamlike quality. As if I was safety cocooned in a great white chrysalis that floated through the spiraling arms of far-off galaxies, or across the peaks and valleys of great sparkling nebula. I could go where ever I wanted in this dream-space, and I was safe where ever I went.
All of that came to an end with the noise. A clatter. Movement, almost imperceptible, in the corner of my right eye. I was instantly torn from my trance, and tossed back cruelly into the physical realm. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to attention, as I turned slowly to face the source of the noise behind me.
Nothing. Perhaps I had been imagining it, after all, things tend not to clatter in micro-gravity; they float and drift heedlessly, but never clatter. So it stands to reason it had simply been my mind playing tricks on me, manifesting noise where there was none. After all, nothing in the section of the station showed any sign of movement.
Nervously gazing round the cabin, I shook my head in disapproval of the power of my own imagination, and my initial foolishness for believing it. Nothing on the station could’ve made such a noise.
In an attempt to settle myself again, I swam over to the main console, and checked the thermometer reading. 19.8, just as I was expecting. Either the problem had fixed itself, and the temperature control had automatically reduced the station back to 19.8 degrees, or the problem was still there, but it was with the thermometer and not in fact the temperature control system. Either way, I was relieved not to be doused in sweat any longer.
I had quickly resigned myself to the fact I wouldn't be getting any more sleep for a while, so, with a defeated sigh, I flicked on the switch for the main cabin lights. They blinked on one by one with a deep guttural hum, which was soon lost in the orchestra of other quiet whirs and buzzes. The light hit my pupils with a ferocious intensity, and I had to close my eyes to shield them. I had become adjusted to the comfortable dark, and my eyes were shocked by this new and frightening stimulus.
The next order of business was to put some clothes on; in my sleeping underwear I was beginning to feel a slight chill, and I would be lot more comfortable in something warmer.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?” I pulled up the zip on my jumpsuit as I spoke. After there was no answer, I leaned closer towards the radio mouthpiece, licked my lips slightly to moisten them, and tried again.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?”
“Receiving Comrade. What can I do for you?” The faint reply came. It was good to hear the voice of Commander Zudov again.
“Just wanted to tell you that the sensor problem is all cleared up Commander. We’re back at usual temperature.”
“That’s brilliant!” Zudov was clearly relieved. “I was worried for a minute there. How did you fix it?”
I breathed heavily, trying to form a response. The pause must have lasted a good second or two, because Zudov transmitted again.
“Boris, are you there? How did you fix the temperature problem?”
“I didn't do anything.” I decided on eventually. “Just went away on its own.”
“Hmm.” Zudov wasn't pleased, clearly.
“I’m glad it’s back to normal again.”
“Well yes, so am I. I’ll talk to you soon.” Zudov’s voice was slightly frosty in this dismissal.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
The radio crackled with static, before falling silent completely. I replaced the microphone, and pushed back away from the set, towards the main console, with the intent of once again checking the temperature. I gave an unconvincing laugh when I saw it was still stuck at 19.8; this was becoming my new obsession.
With the temperature back to normal, and the pain in my stomach gone, I was convinced I’d be able to make a better job of diagnosing the problem with the heating control. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and I managed to spend several hours once again vainly trying to plough my way through hundreds of wiring cases and circuit boards.
Eventually though, my frontal cortex began to throb from the sheer mental exertion of the work. It was an acute pressure that punched up my brain-stem, across my scalp, and out my eyes sockets. At one point, it became so bad, I had to let go of the manual I was reading to massage my forehead, in fear my skull would explode outwards. My vision blurred, bright red and blue patters scarring themselves across my retinas like sheet lightning. Pins and needles crawled up my legs and arms, starting in just the extremities, then soaking upwards and inwards, across my thighs and forearms.
There was a rushing in my ears that drowned out most other sounds, but I just heard an odd, drawn-out croak on the edge of my audible range. It took a few seconds for me to realise that the noise was sliding from my own wide open jaws.
The pain was unbearable. Every second I felt like I was about to drown in a sea of swirling fractals, like the damn in my mind was going to shatter open and my entire consciousness was going to be washed away by a flood of jarring flashes. With numb hands, I flung myself for my sleeping compartment. Any second now, I knew I would pass out from the searing heat in my head, and I wanted to be in my sleeping back when it happened, so I didn't float around the capsule while I was out.
I could barely see by the time I was in the sleeping bag, and as I fumbled for the restraints, I went. My face split apart and melt, exposing a bare skull, hard bone peeling back like warm butter. From the chasm in the front of my head, a blinding light spilt out, heat splashing across my head. More fractures opened across my temples and the back of my scalp, beneath my hair. I could see my own brain, separating into regular sections like a gelatinous white clementine.
Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
The pain was too much. I screwed close my eyes, and my mind shut down.
I awoke staring at the plastic wall of my sleeping compartment, drained. The banging in my head had subsided from the feverish dance of a several hundred strong warrior tribe in the midst of a ferocious and primal ritual to the distant crackle of thunder above a darkened grassland, accompanied by the gentle crackle of rain.
With some trepidation, I pulled at my sleeping bag, and climbed out, waiting for the pain to return. But as my sweaty fingers played around the door handle, the fear subsided, and I gingerly slid open the door, and floated out into the dark station.
The main lights were off, casting the living area and the flight deck into an uncomfortable darkness, thick as honey, and seeping from every join of the spaceship walls. It was split only by the bright neon of the station clock and the main console, which sliced through the viscous black with beams of gently sharp green, bouncing off the walls, and battling the darkness for control of the spaces above my head and below my feet.
Another creak yawned through the capsule as I pulled myself out to the flight deck, towards the radio. It still sent shivers down my spine, despite the fact I knew it was just the metal contracting due to a drop in temperature. “Soyuz-21, do you read?”
“Receiving OPS-3.” The man on the other end of the radio wasn't Commander Zudov, and I hesitated when I recognized Flight Engineer Rozhdestvensky’s dry rasp.
“How is it going over there, Flight Engineer?” I didn't like Rozhdestvensky. It wasn't that he was particularly unpleasant, in fact he had been mostly amicable whenever I had talked to him. It wasn't even his rough voice, like sandpaper in my ears. It was his quiet lack of engagement with not only the mission, but the whole of space. He always seemed distant, far far away. Not like Zudov, who was only ever as far as the radio speakers.
“All is fine Comrade.”
“Is Commander Zudov there?”
“He’s getting some sleep at the moment.”
“I see. Have you had any contact with the ground yet?”
“Sorry?”
“Have the problems with the solar flares died down? You've reached ground on the radio communication network?”
“Oh, yes, the Solar Flares, of course. No, we are still unable to reach them.”
“Right. Well, can you keep trying?”
“Yes, of course, it’s our top priority.”
“Okay, thank you.” I hesitated, before closing with my usual comment to Zudov. “See you in four days.”
“I suppose so.” Rozhdestvensky was distant, almost uninterested by the entire conversation.
The radio went silent, leaving me with just the hiss of dead air, which rippled gently off the skin of the capsule, so it sounded like it was coming from every corner of the spacecraft at once. It flicked off the radio, and tossed down the mouthpiece, watching it float on its coil for a few seconds, before heading away to the shower compartment.
Four days. That’s what I kept telling myself, as I sat at the main console, flicking slowly through diagnostic programs, the bright green of the screen washing over the rest of the module. I had kept the lights off, for now, just because it was so much more comfortable in the dark. With the bright lights constantly in my face, I could hardly concentrate.
“Four more days.” The sentence fragment that escaped my mouth was a surprise even to me. It was next to silent, and if I hadn't been completely alone up here, I would've dismissed it as background noise. I hadn’t ever been one to talk to myself, and I was determined not to start now.
My palms, still damp from the shower, had left prints where I had been clutching the armrests of the seat, and with a start, I realised my hands had been clenched, just a few seconds ago, tightly around the plastic.
“Just four more days.”
There was something off in the cabin. I could just feel it now, the equilibrium was off. Something had been moved. In the corner of my eye. Swirling round, I scanned the living area, suddenly aware of a slight change in the capsule. Once you live in a space for long enough, you become accustomed to every tiny detail, and even the slightest differences is like a blaring air-raid siren.
The medical cupboard was open, I realised. It was only slightly ajar, maybe just wide enough for me to fit my hand into, but it was noticeable enough for me to catch it on my second glance. How had it got open?
I thought for a second, just floating silently, staring at the open cupboard. It had a sliding door, so it wasn't something that could just drift open with a draught, not that there was one up here. How long had it been like that? It was impossible to tell.
I finally willed my body into action, done with quietly staring, and crossed over to the cupboard. Perhaps I had left it open when I got the sleeping pills out last night- My train of thought faltered. Had it been last night, or the night before that I had taken the pills? I couldn't remember at properly, nothing was in chronological order.
I slid open the cupboard fully, and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing had moved. The sleeping pills were still politely hidden behind bandages and unlabelled vitamin tablets, keeping up with the fiction that I never used them, that I could get to sleep on my own.
“Ops-3?” I was almost asleep by the time Zudov called on the radio, my eyes barely open more than a slit. “Ops-3, do you read?”
“I read you, comrade.”
“How are you doing up there? Are you well?”
I must’ve hesitated for a second too long, because Zudov was suddenly nervous.
“What’s happened?” He demanded, before I could speak.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me Commander, I can tell something is wrong.”
I sighed audibly, then immediately regretted it. That would be only more confirmation to Zudov about my state of mind.
“Commander Volynov?”
“I've been having sleep problems.”
“Sleep problems? That’s normal, so I hear. Weren't you briefed on that?”
“I took the pills. The sleeping pills.”
“You took them?”
“Yes, they worked fine.” We had been instructed back in Shchyolkovo-14, the cosmonaut training facility, to not take the pills unless it was absolutely necessary, and under no circumstances take more than four at a time.
“That’s it? Just taking sleeping pills?”
“No, there’s–” I hesitated again, this time because my voice was caught on the saliva on the edge of my windpipe. “There’s something else. My memory’s getting fuzzy sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember things properly. Today, I found a cupboard open, and I don’t remember opening it.”
There was nothing but silence, for nearly thirty seconds. I thought Zudov had abandoned me.
“Okay. Look, I have to go, I have to check our oxygen filters. I’ll talk to you soon.” Zudov was obviously distracted, and over the crackle of interference I could hear a faint muttering.
“Right. I’ll see you in four days.”
The sun was just slipping through the blue band of earth’s atmosphere, as I took a quick glance from the flight deck porthole. It was almost fully extinguished, but long tails of light flared up through the dark, the last swan song of the soon to be gone star.
Sleep is a very loose term for what I had that night. I climbed in the sleeping compartment, and stared at the wall. At some nondescript time, I fell into a semi-aware, semi-unconscious state. Not sleep, but somewhere in between, where my mind wandered.
I was awoke, again in the loosest sense of the word, by another thermal ping. There was the faint taste of vomit and chemicals on the back of my throat. My eyes were watering, thick streams of salty tears ran down my face, and soaked into the neck of my sleep shirt.
I didn't remember taking sleeping pills, but I couldn't deny the artificial mint that still hung in my mouth and nasal cavity. It could only belong to the pills, I hadn't eaten anything in days, and certainly not anything mint flavoured.
With a groan, I probed the very edges of my sleeping bag, and felt the strain in my muscles. They were tense, and taut. It took some effort to get them to move, as with every slightest adjustment of my limbs came the sting of built up lactic acid.
The air in the sleeping compartment was stale, old. It felt like it had been through my lungs at least ten times before, and it hung around me with a dreadful stillness. As I pulled myself from the sleeping bag, I could still smell the musk of my skin, and my sweat. Everything reeked of it, everything reeked of me.
I opened the door, and my heart stopped. It stopped pumping, warm blood turning cold in my veins, stationary. The contents of my stomach turned to ice, a great slush of freezing water that weighed down on my body and digestive system, if only figuratively. Thousands of goose bumps rippled across my bare arms and legs, the nerves in my skin suddenly several hundred degrees below zero.
Black powder floated in a small cloud in the centre of the living space. It looked for all the world like a nebula gone dark, hundreds of tiny swirling peaks and troughs made of an infinite number of black pinpricks.
“Lord.” I breathed, disbelievingly.
The carbon filter span at the centre of it all, glinting dangerously, and disgorging more trails of carbon powder as it turned seemingly randomly through its cloud. How had it got there? How the **** had it got there?!
“Good Lord.” I repeated, as I swam towards the cloud. I reached out, extending my hand through the dust, and clamping it around the filter. It was a small metal box, about the size of a paperback book, with an opening at one end, where the carbon was leaking from.
The filter usually sat deep within the whirring mass of the air filtration system. There was an access panel used to change it in the flight deck, and my eyes immediately flicked up towards it when I remembered its location. Sure enough, it hung open.
“Soyuz-21? Soyuz-21?!” My voice into the radio was barely more than a whisper. In my head, my mind screamed, trying to drown out the uncertain knowledge I had gained since waking up. I was looking for an explanation. Any explanation.
Perhaps there had been some micro-debris impacts that had shook the filter loose. I hadn't felt anything, but then I would not have done if I had taken the sleeping pills. Perhaps there had been a pressure malfunction, and that had blown the access panel open, and the filter out.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. There were so many possibilities, but no answers.
“Receiving Ops-3.”
“Comrade. Vyacheslav.” I used Zudov’s first name in my strange state of shock, trying to connect with him across the void, across the great gap. “I think there’s-”
I choked up, looking at the open access panel, and the filter, which I had left floating by it. When my throat cleared, my voice was barely a whisper.
“There’s something wrong comrade. There’s something very, very wrong.”
“Commander Volynov, what is the problem?” Zudov was cold. I could hear a strange silence, as his voice echoed away around his capsule.
“I think-” I couldn't speak. I couldn't say a single. How could I explain? I decided to keep it simple, to ignore the terrifying implications of what had happened, to keep what I said to facts, and nothing more. “There’s a problem with the air filtering system.”
“What kind of problem Ops-3?”
“One of the carbon filters fell out. Or got knocked out. Or-” There I trailed off. After that point, the facts did not serve me very well. There was nothing I could say for certain.
“Do you think it’s fixable?”
“Of course it’s fixable, but that’s not the point.”
“Say again Ops-3?”
“I need you to contact ground Soyuz. Please, as fast as you can.”
“I can’t do that comrade, the long range communications are still out because of solar flares.”
“Okay. Thank you Commander. See you in three days.” I was cold. My spine was chilled with the sharp tingle of nerves. Zudov was never this business-like, never this disinterested, and it scared me even more than the problem with the carbon filter. If I could have seen him, I felt like he would not have batted an eyelid when I told him about it.
I was on my own, it seemed. Not even the comfort of my old friend on the other end of the radio; with Zudov in his current mood I felt like talking to him any longer would be pointless.
I began to rationalize in my head, and the primal spasms of fear inside my head began to die down, comforted by warm and concrete logic. Nothing to fear. I had nothing to fear.
I needed something to calm my nerves. We weren't allowed alcohol aboard the station, of course, but I was pretty sure there were some anxiety pills in the medicine cabinet. Pills, it was always pills. They were in another white bottle, marked with black text. They tasted like chalk, no artificial mint this time. As I felt the large lumps slide down my throat, my heart rate began to slow.
Maybe half an hour passed before I began to really feel the effects. I could my heart beating heavily and slowly in my chest, each thump further away from the last, but heavier, the mass of muscle and veins straining to release itself from the confines of my fleshy body. Time was slowing down. As I watched the sun slowly creep up across the side of the earth, the names of all the pills and tablets I had been taking began to run through my head; Aminoglutaric Acid, Atenolol, Dekaris, Grandaxin, Oletetrine; the list stretched on and on. The names didn't mean anything, just odd foreign words that were a problem to pronounce, and an even bigger problem to spell.
~~~
“OPS-3 do you read? OPS-3 do you read?"
I launched myself for the radio receiver, and jerked up the mouthpiece. I wiped away the film of sweat from my forehead before replying.
“Receiving.” My throat was tight with a lump the size of a golf ball.
“It’s good to hear your voice comrade.”
“You too. How are you doing?” Leaning towards the porthole, I stared out into the cold void, hoping to catch some glimpse of the Soyuz capsule somewhere out in the twinkling stars.
“All systems great. Amazing view of the Pacific right now.”
“Have you managed to reach ground control yet?”
“Comms are still down because of the solar flares, I guess. Should be back up in a couple of hours.”
“I hope so.” The lump in my throat was getting bigger, pressing against the wall of my windpipe. I swallowed, trying to make room for my next words. “I get worried up here on my own.”
“Only seven days to go now Boris, I’m sure you can last that long. I’ll see you then.”
“I can’t wait until you get here. Talk to you soon.” I put down the mouthpiece, and turned back to the porthole, pressing my eyes into the great blackness, to the divine curve of the Earth’s glowing horizon.
Without Flight Engineer Zholobov, the station seemed very empty indeed. It was a hundred cubic metres of beeping radios, flashing lights, and often blaring alarms, but silence slid beneath these thin distractions, an ever-present threat. Soon enough, I would tune out all the noises, and fall into a state of uncomfortable, clutching, reticence.
I sighed uncomfortably, suddenly extremely self-aware, and tore back from the porthole. Pulling myself through the stale air, I headed for the living area. The sliding door which lead to the cramped toilet compartment was half open, and it squealed as I pushed it into the closed position, the sudden noise making me cringe. The half-hearted chuckle that spilled from my lips was a force of habit; there was no-one else on the station to hear it.
I had no appetite for the generic meat in my food storage cupboard; truth be told, I hadn't eaten more than a packet of dried apricots, a couple of crackers, and some meat spread, in the last two days. If the people back on the ground knew how little I’d eaten, they would've had me on the Soyuz and heading for re-entry in the blink of an eye. If I hadn't been out of contact with them, I might have even considered telling them just to get off.
With no appetite, I decided to call it a day. It was then a simple matter of flicking off the main cabin lights, crawling into the restraints of my sleeping compartment, and praying that the station wouldn't fall apart while I was asleep.
It was warm. Uncomfortably warm. The fabric of the sleeping bag clung to my skin, slick with sweat. I fumbled with the zip, my fingers slipping on the cold metal. The air in the capsule was like tar, and I swam through it with an uncomfortable lethargy. The thermometer displayed the temperature of 19.8 ° C, exactly as it had the day before, and the day before that.
“That’s got to be mistake.” I tapped the screen, as if that would somehow make it display change, but it just ended up leaving a sticky finger mark on the glowing green glass.
Either way, I needed a shower. I used the back of my forearm to clean off my forehead, and sighed. This could wait, it was probably just another sensor problem that I wouldn't be qualified to fix. The whole place was probably only ever one fault from depressurizing and spiraling back down to earth, as brittle as a feather.
The violent hissing of the shower, and the cold pressure of the shower sluiced away my deep rooted misgivings. I couldn't focus on my problems while I briskly rubbed my skin clean with the harsh soap bar. Once I was clean, and suitably refreshed, I turned the knob, and the last bubbles of water floated gently out of the nozzle. With the sound of rushing water gone, I became aware of the noises of the station again, in particular a muffled voice.
“****.” I banged my head on the shower cubicle roof as I attempted to spin myself round and climb out the door. It left a mark on the grey plastic. Not wanting to miss whoever was on the radio, I ignored the stinging pain, and pulled myself naked across the space station, toweling myself as I went.
“OPS-3 do you read? OPS-3 do you read?”
“Receiving Soyuz-21.” Breathlessly I muttered into the mouthpiece.
“I’d almost given up on you.”
“Sorry. I was showering.”
“Well, I’m glad I reached you. I was beginning to think we were alone up here comrade.”
“At least you’re not the only one on the Soyuz. I’m all alone out here on Salyut.”
“Ha, you are lucky my friend, Flight Engineer Rozhdestvensky is starting to drive me crazy.”
“Only six more days to go.”
“For you maybe. I have my whole mission to complete.”
I gave a sympathetic chuckle. I sympathised with Commander Zudov, I truly did. Ever since my partner Flight Engineer Zholobov had got himself a ticket home by accidently chopping off three of his fingers in the airlock door, Zudov had managed to keep my spirits up. He had managed to keep me working. He had managed to keep me hopeful. Zudov was a great man, he would be hailed as a hero back home when his mission was finished, I was sure.
“How are you doing, anyway?”
“It’s warm. It’s too warm up here. I’m not sure how it can be so hot inside, yet so cold outside.”
“Hot?” Zudov was audibly alarmed. “What’s your thermometer reading?”
“19.8 as always. It’s probably a sensor problem, don’t worry.”
“Boris-”
“It’s fine Commander, honestly. I’m only slightly too hot, a couple of degrees maybe.”
“Well, you radio me straight away if it gets any hotter.”
“Don’t worry.” He would worry, I could tell by the sound of his voice.
“Well then, I must leave you. See you soon my friend.”
“Six days to go.” I confirmed, before clipping the mouthpiece back into position on the radio set.
The rest of the day was a constant battle against heat. Communication with the ground was still out because of the solar flares, so I attempted to remedy the problem myself by hand. That started with the simple task of running diagnostic programs on the central computer, but after that denied there was any problems whatsoever, I hit a brick wall.
My mind ran, dredging up hundreds of semi-rendered memories of endless technical documents and cosmonaut manuals. The black diagrams and minute labels all seemed to melt, twisting into impossible shapes, non-Euclidian planes that boggled my mind. I couldn't quite think in the straight lines required for a task like this at the moment; in the heat everything span or spiraled in and out in my mind’s eye. Concentration, it was safe to say, was not high.
In my head, I was back in Zholobov’s last day with me on the station. It was hotter than I remembered in the feverish flashback. Zholobov’s brow glistened as he climbed down, extending his massive frame out of the tiny airlock. He gave a relieved gasp, glad to be finally move his limbs without them slamming them against the walls. I watched him from my seat by the main control console, my eyes aching from looking at the monochrome screen for several hours.
I called out something to him, not in control of my own actions or speech. Whatever it was, for it was muted in my memory, overshadowed by what came next, made him turn. As he did, he placed one hand on the metal rim of the airlock, to keep himself steady. Zholobov replied with a chuckle and an equally muted reply. His lips were blurred in my flashback, indeed, the entire man’s outline was slightly fuzzy in my memory, but the lack of clarity was most noticeable around his face. He was now just an out of focus photograph in the dark recesses of my cortexes.
We finished talking, and Zholobov reached up for the handle on the hatch. He turned back to face me, just as he pulled, and brought down the sharp blade of metal. It dropped onto his other fingers with a sickening-
Thump.
The jarring blow shook me out of my recollection, jerking my head up into an upright position. I gasped for air, and my head instinctively turned to the scene of the accident. There was still a small blood smear down the side of the hatch. Had the noise of metal hitting metal that was still echoing in my ears been real, or was it just part of the memory? In my heat-addled state, it was hard to tell.
The thermometer was still reading 19.8.
I shook myself out of the odd stupor, which sent hundreds of tiny sweat droplets floating across the cabin. The armpits of my top were damp, as was all down by back and crotch area. The temperature must be rising.
Thump.
There it was again. Despite the heat, the sound sent chills down my spine. In any case, I knew it was just space junk or the metal expanding, but it was unsettling enough for me to give the capsule a nervous once over before returning to my previous train of thought.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?” I picked up the radio microphone, still distracted by the glare of the main console, where the display still read 19.8 ° C.
“Receiving OPS-3.”
“Any contact with ground yet Commander? I need to get a fix on this thermostat problem.”
“Negative Boris, still nothing. Is it getting worse?”
“I can cope, but if it persists for two or three days-” I trailed off, putting down the receiver to wipe my forehead again. I could just see my reflection in the edge of the porthole, and he looked very sweaty indeed. White salt crystals stuck to my forearm in the rapidly drying sweat.
“Well, we’ll keep trying. It’ll be fixed in a couple of hours more, I’m sure of it.”
“I hope so, or I’ll have to take another shower.”
“You’re still getting a reading of 19.8?” Zudov’s voice carried a note of apprehension in it, even over the airwaves.
“Afraid so.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back in contact with the ground soon, and they’ll know what to do.”
“I’m sure it’s just a sensor problem, something minor like that.”
“Speak to you soon my friend, and drink plenty of water.”
“I will, don’t worry.” I laughed; that man was acting like my mother.
With Zudov no better equipped to solve the problem than I was, I relented to a policy of acceptance to the problem. If I couldn't solve it, at least I could cope with it.
The heat reduced my appetite even further, but I headed to the kitchen, in hope of forcing down some crackers and water. I rifled through the storage cupboards, looking for something that wouldn't turn my stomach, and at the lack of crackers, eventually settled on the non-descript dried beef I found in one of the white packets. It reeked of meat, an acrid pungent stink which set my abdomen churning, but I swallowed it down nonetheless.
Dried beef’s scent clung to the kitchen walls even after I had finished the package. My mouth was now even drier, so I mixed up some of the powdered orange juice. It tasted nothing like orange, in fact it was some cocktail of harsh chemicals, but it washed away the salty tang of the beef. I wiped my mouth, and discarded the plastic container, sending it trailing small globules sticky of orange liquid across the air.
After my small meal, a heavy weight was sitting on my stomach. It sloshed around in the chasms of my lower body as I moved around the station, warm and stinging. I had to clamp my throat shut to stop myself from throwing up on several occasions.
The day passed with an uncomfortable malaise that made the discomfort in my stomach and head even worse. I watched the hours tick away on the main console clock as I made my measurements, recordings of the sun, or of the box of crystals that grew in the science lab area of the station. Eventually, I could almost take the drudgery no longer. Every surface in the station was covered in sweaty palm prints by the time the day was done, and my hair was nearly sodden.
There was no way I could sleep in heat like this, I had decided, so when I couldn't last the treacle consistency of waking consciousness for a minute longer, I relented to the sleeping pills. They sat in a tiny white bottle in the very back of the medicine compartment, and at the very start of the mission I had sworn never to take them. Unfortunately, today, there was no other option.
Dimming the station lights and crawling into the hot confines of my sleeping bag, I looked at the pale white pills in my palm. They had a slight scent of mint to them. In one decisive movement, I quashed all hesitation, all internal protest, closed my eyes, and swallowed.
I was out like a light.
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the temperature. A gentle cold breeze lapped around my face, probably emanating from the air pumps that whirred gently on the edges of my earshot. My watch, set to Alma-Ata Time from my launch at Baikonur, warned me I had been asleep only three hours. The station was still dark as I slid open the sleeping compartment door, although I was thankful for the respite in the heat and bright light.
I stretched, cracking the vertebrae in my back. Here in the cool dark, I no longer felt feverish or nauseous, just tired. Slowly, as my eyes adjusted, I pulled myself over towards the radio set, and considered calling Soyuz-21.
The air still tasted stale; the tang of sweat and dried beef hung in it even after it was recycled hundreds of times through endless filters and pumps. Even so, there was a certain calm to the station with the lights off and the temperature down. I looked out the porthole, and even the frigid depths of the universe seemed less inhospitable; there was a gentle navy tinge to the infinite blackness, perhaps, and the glow of the stars seemed less harsh. This, along with the weightlessness and the gentle purr of the air pumps, gave the whole scene a dreamlike quality. As if I was safety cocooned in a great white chrysalis that floated through the spiraling arms of far-off galaxies, or across the peaks and valleys of great sparkling nebula. I could go where ever I wanted in this dream-space, and I was safe where ever I went.
All of that came to an end with the noise. A clatter. Movement, almost imperceptible, in the corner of my right eye. I was instantly torn from my trance, and tossed back cruelly into the physical realm. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to attention, as I turned slowly to face the source of the noise behind me.
Nothing. Perhaps I had been imagining it, after all, things tend not to clatter in micro-gravity; they float and drift heedlessly, but never clatter. So it stands to reason it had simply been my mind playing tricks on me, manifesting noise where there was none. After all, nothing in the section of the station showed any sign of movement.
Nervously gazing round the cabin, I shook my head in disapproval of the power of my own imagination, and my initial foolishness for believing it. Nothing on the station could’ve made such a noise.
In an attempt to settle myself again, I swam over to the main console, and checked the thermometer reading. 19.8, just as I was expecting. Either the problem had fixed itself, and the temperature control had automatically reduced the station back to 19.8 degrees, or the problem was still there, but it was with the thermometer and not in fact the temperature control system. Either way, I was relieved not to be doused in sweat any longer.
I had quickly resigned myself to the fact I wouldn't be getting any more sleep for a while, so, with a defeated sigh, I flicked on the switch for the main cabin lights. They blinked on one by one with a deep guttural hum, which was soon lost in the orchestra of other quiet whirs and buzzes. The light hit my pupils with a ferocious intensity, and I had to close my eyes to shield them. I had become adjusted to the comfortable dark, and my eyes were shocked by this new and frightening stimulus.
The next order of business was to put some clothes on; in my sleeping underwear I was beginning to feel a slight chill, and I would be lot more comfortable in something warmer.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?” I pulled up the zip on my jumpsuit as I spoke. After there was no answer, I leaned closer towards the radio mouthpiece, licked my lips slightly to moisten them, and tried again.
“Soyuz-21 do you read?”
“Receiving Comrade. What can I do for you?” The faint reply came. It was good to hear the voice of Commander Zudov again.
“Just wanted to tell you that the sensor problem is all cleared up Commander. We’re back at usual temperature.”
“That’s brilliant!” Zudov was clearly relieved. “I was worried for a minute there. How did you fix it?”
I breathed heavily, trying to form a response. The pause must have lasted a good second or two, because Zudov transmitted again.
“Boris, are you there? How did you fix the temperature problem?”
“I didn't do anything.” I decided on eventually. “Just went away on its own.”
“Hmm.” Zudov wasn't pleased, clearly.
“I’m glad it’s back to normal again.”
“Well yes, so am I. I’ll talk to you soon.” Zudov’s voice was slightly frosty in this dismissal.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
The radio crackled with static, before falling silent completely. I replaced the microphone, and pushed back away from the set, towards the main console, with the intent of once again checking the temperature. I gave an unconvincing laugh when I saw it was still stuck at 19.8; this was becoming my new obsession.
With the temperature back to normal, and the pain in my stomach gone, I was convinced I’d be able to make a better job of diagnosing the problem with the heating control. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and I managed to spend several hours once again vainly trying to plough my way through hundreds of wiring cases and circuit boards.
Eventually though, my frontal cortex began to throb from the sheer mental exertion of the work. It was an acute pressure that punched up my brain-stem, across my scalp, and out my eyes sockets. At one point, it became so bad, I had to let go of the manual I was reading to massage my forehead, in fear my skull would explode outwards. My vision blurred, bright red and blue patters scarring themselves across my retinas like sheet lightning. Pins and needles crawled up my legs and arms, starting in just the extremities, then soaking upwards and inwards, across my thighs and forearms.
There was a rushing in my ears that drowned out most other sounds, but I just heard an odd, drawn-out croak on the edge of my audible range. It took a few seconds for me to realise that the noise was sliding from my own wide open jaws.
The pain was unbearable. Every second I felt like I was about to drown in a sea of swirling fractals, like the damn in my mind was going to shatter open and my entire consciousness was going to be washed away by a flood of jarring flashes. With numb hands, I flung myself for my sleeping compartment. Any second now, I knew I would pass out from the searing heat in my head, and I wanted to be in my sleeping back when it happened, so I didn't float around the capsule while I was out.
I could barely see by the time I was in the sleeping bag, and as I fumbled for the restraints, I went. My face split apart and melt, exposing a bare skull, hard bone peeling back like warm butter. From the chasm in the front of my head, a blinding light spilt out, heat splashing across my head. More fractures opened across my temples and the back of my scalp, beneath my hair. I could see my own brain, separating into regular sections like a gelatinous white clementine.
Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
The pain was too much. I screwed close my eyes, and my mind shut down.
I awoke staring at the plastic wall of my sleeping compartment, drained. The banging in my head had subsided from the feverish dance of a several hundred strong warrior tribe in the midst of a ferocious and primal ritual to the distant crackle of thunder above a darkened grassland, accompanied by the gentle crackle of rain.
With some trepidation, I pulled at my sleeping bag, and climbed out, waiting for the pain to return. But as my sweaty fingers played around the door handle, the fear subsided, and I gingerly slid open the door, and floated out into the dark station.
The main lights were off, casting the living area and the flight deck into an uncomfortable darkness, thick as honey, and seeping from every join of the spaceship walls. It was split only by the bright neon of the station clock and the main console, which sliced through the viscous black with beams of gently sharp green, bouncing off the walls, and battling the darkness for control of the spaces above my head and below my feet.
Another creak yawned through the capsule as I pulled myself out to the flight deck, towards the radio. It still sent shivers down my spine, despite the fact I knew it was just the metal contracting due to a drop in temperature. “Soyuz-21, do you read?”
“Receiving OPS-3.” The man on the other end of the radio wasn't Commander Zudov, and I hesitated when I recognized Flight Engineer Rozhdestvensky’s dry rasp.
“How is it going over there, Flight Engineer?” I didn't like Rozhdestvensky. It wasn't that he was particularly unpleasant, in fact he had been mostly amicable whenever I had talked to him. It wasn't even his rough voice, like sandpaper in my ears. It was his quiet lack of engagement with not only the mission, but the whole of space. He always seemed distant, far far away. Not like Zudov, who was only ever as far as the radio speakers.
“All is fine Comrade.”
“Is Commander Zudov there?”
“He’s getting some sleep at the moment.”
“I see. Have you had any contact with the ground yet?”
“Sorry?”
“Have the problems with the solar flares died down? You've reached ground on the radio communication network?”
“Oh, yes, the Solar Flares, of course. No, we are still unable to reach them.”
“Right. Well, can you keep trying?”
“Yes, of course, it’s our top priority.”
“Okay, thank you.” I hesitated, before closing with my usual comment to Zudov. “See you in four days.”
“I suppose so.” Rozhdestvensky was distant, almost uninterested by the entire conversation.
The radio went silent, leaving me with just the hiss of dead air, which rippled gently off the skin of the capsule, so it sounded like it was coming from every corner of the spacecraft at once. It flicked off the radio, and tossed down the mouthpiece, watching it float on its coil for a few seconds, before heading away to the shower compartment.
Four days. That’s what I kept telling myself, as I sat at the main console, flicking slowly through diagnostic programs, the bright green of the screen washing over the rest of the module. I had kept the lights off, for now, just because it was so much more comfortable in the dark. With the bright lights constantly in my face, I could hardly concentrate.
“Four more days.” The sentence fragment that escaped my mouth was a surprise even to me. It was next to silent, and if I hadn't been completely alone up here, I would've dismissed it as background noise. I hadn’t ever been one to talk to myself, and I was determined not to start now.
My palms, still damp from the shower, had left prints where I had been clutching the armrests of the seat, and with a start, I realised my hands had been clenched, just a few seconds ago, tightly around the plastic.
“Just four more days.”
There was something off in the cabin. I could just feel it now, the equilibrium was off. Something had been moved. In the corner of my eye. Swirling round, I scanned the living area, suddenly aware of a slight change in the capsule. Once you live in a space for long enough, you become accustomed to every tiny detail, and even the slightest differences is like a blaring air-raid siren.
The medical cupboard was open, I realised. It was only slightly ajar, maybe just wide enough for me to fit my hand into, but it was noticeable enough for me to catch it on my second glance. How had it got open?
I thought for a second, just floating silently, staring at the open cupboard. It had a sliding door, so it wasn't something that could just drift open with a draught, not that there was one up here. How long had it been like that? It was impossible to tell.
I finally willed my body into action, done with quietly staring, and crossed over to the cupboard. Perhaps I had left it open when I got the sleeping pills out last night- My train of thought faltered. Had it been last night, or the night before that I had taken the pills? I couldn't remember at properly, nothing was in chronological order.
I slid open the cupboard fully, and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing had moved. The sleeping pills were still politely hidden behind bandages and unlabelled vitamin tablets, keeping up with the fiction that I never used them, that I could get to sleep on my own.
“Ops-3?” I was almost asleep by the time Zudov called on the radio, my eyes barely open more than a slit. “Ops-3, do you read?”
“I read you, comrade.”
“How are you doing up there? Are you well?”
I must’ve hesitated for a second too long, because Zudov was suddenly nervous.
“What’s happened?” He demanded, before I could speak.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me Commander, I can tell something is wrong.”
I sighed audibly, then immediately regretted it. That would be only more confirmation to Zudov about my state of mind.
“Commander Volynov?”
“I've been having sleep problems.”
“Sleep problems? That’s normal, so I hear. Weren't you briefed on that?”
“I took the pills. The sleeping pills.”
“You took them?”
“Yes, they worked fine.” We had been instructed back in Shchyolkovo-14, the cosmonaut training facility, to not take the pills unless it was absolutely necessary, and under no circumstances take more than four at a time.
“That’s it? Just taking sleeping pills?”
“No, there’s–” I hesitated again, this time because my voice was caught on the saliva on the edge of my windpipe. “There’s something else. My memory’s getting fuzzy sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember things properly. Today, I found a cupboard open, and I don’t remember opening it.”
There was nothing but silence, for nearly thirty seconds. I thought Zudov had abandoned me.
“Okay. Look, I have to go, I have to check our oxygen filters. I’ll talk to you soon.” Zudov was obviously distracted, and over the crackle of interference I could hear a faint muttering.
“Right. I’ll see you in four days.”
The sun was just slipping through the blue band of earth’s atmosphere, as I took a quick glance from the flight deck porthole. It was almost fully extinguished, but long tails of light flared up through the dark, the last swan song of the soon to be gone star.
Sleep is a very loose term for what I had that night. I climbed in the sleeping compartment, and stared at the wall. At some nondescript time, I fell into a semi-aware, semi-unconscious state. Not sleep, but somewhere in between, where my mind wandered.
I was awoke, again in the loosest sense of the word, by another thermal ping. There was the faint taste of vomit and chemicals on the back of my throat. My eyes were watering, thick streams of salty tears ran down my face, and soaked into the neck of my sleep shirt.
I didn't remember taking sleeping pills, but I couldn't deny the artificial mint that still hung in my mouth and nasal cavity. It could only belong to the pills, I hadn't eaten anything in days, and certainly not anything mint flavoured.
With a groan, I probed the very edges of my sleeping bag, and felt the strain in my muscles. They were tense, and taut. It took some effort to get them to move, as with every slightest adjustment of my limbs came the sting of built up lactic acid.
The air in the sleeping compartment was stale, old. It felt like it had been through my lungs at least ten times before, and it hung around me with a dreadful stillness. As I pulled myself from the sleeping bag, I could still smell the musk of my skin, and my sweat. Everything reeked of it, everything reeked of me.
I opened the door, and my heart stopped. It stopped pumping, warm blood turning cold in my veins, stationary. The contents of my stomach turned to ice, a great slush of freezing water that weighed down on my body and digestive system, if only figuratively. Thousands of goose bumps rippled across my bare arms and legs, the nerves in my skin suddenly several hundred degrees below zero.
Black powder floated in a small cloud in the centre of the living space. It looked for all the world like a nebula gone dark, hundreds of tiny swirling peaks and troughs made of an infinite number of black pinpricks.
“Lord.” I breathed, disbelievingly.
The carbon filter span at the centre of it all, glinting dangerously, and disgorging more trails of carbon powder as it turned seemingly randomly through its cloud. How had it got there? How the **** had it got there?!
“Good Lord.” I repeated, as I swam towards the cloud. I reached out, extending my hand through the dust, and clamping it around the filter. It was a small metal box, about the size of a paperback book, with an opening at one end, where the carbon was leaking from.
The filter usually sat deep within the whirring mass of the air filtration system. There was an access panel used to change it in the flight deck, and my eyes immediately flicked up towards it when I remembered its location. Sure enough, it hung open.
“Soyuz-21? Soyuz-21?!” My voice into the radio was barely more than a whisper. In my head, my mind screamed, trying to drown out the uncertain knowledge I had gained since waking up. I was looking for an explanation. Any explanation.
Perhaps there had been some micro-debris impacts that had shook the filter loose. I hadn't felt anything, but then I would not have done if I had taken the sleeping pills. Perhaps there had been a pressure malfunction, and that had blown the access panel open, and the filter out.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. There were so many possibilities, but no answers.
“Receiving Ops-3.”
“Comrade. Vyacheslav.” I used Zudov’s first name in my strange state of shock, trying to connect with him across the void, across the great gap. “I think there’s-”
I choked up, looking at the open access panel, and the filter, which I had left floating by it. When my throat cleared, my voice was barely a whisper.
“There’s something wrong comrade. There’s something very, very wrong.”
“Commander Volynov, what is the problem?” Zudov was cold. I could hear a strange silence, as his voice echoed away around his capsule.
“I think-” I couldn't speak. I couldn't say a single. How could I explain? I decided to keep it simple, to ignore the terrifying implications of what had happened, to keep what I said to facts, and nothing more. “There’s a problem with the air filtering system.”
“What kind of problem Ops-3?”
“One of the carbon filters fell out. Or got knocked out. Or-” There I trailed off. After that point, the facts did not serve me very well. There was nothing I could say for certain.
“Do you think it’s fixable?”
“Of course it’s fixable, but that’s not the point.”
“Say again Ops-3?”
“I need you to contact ground Soyuz. Please, as fast as you can.”
“I can’t do that comrade, the long range communications are still out because of solar flares.”
“Okay. Thank you Commander. See you in three days.” I was cold. My spine was chilled with the sharp tingle of nerves. Zudov was never this business-like, never this disinterested, and it scared me even more than the problem with the carbon filter. If I could have seen him, I felt like he would not have batted an eyelid when I told him about it.
I was on my own, it seemed. Not even the comfort of my old friend on the other end of the radio; with Zudov in his current mood I felt like talking to him any longer would be pointless.
I began to rationalize in my head, and the primal spasms of fear inside my head began to die down, comforted by warm and concrete logic. Nothing to fear. I had nothing to fear.
I needed something to calm my nerves. We weren't allowed alcohol aboard the station, of course, but I was pretty sure there were some anxiety pills in the medicine cabinet. Pills, it was always pills. They were in another white bottle, marked with black text. They tasted like chalk, no artificial mint this time. As I felt the large lumps slide down my throat, my heart rate began to slow.
Maybe half an hour passed before I began to really feel the effects. I could my heart beating heavily and slowly in my chest, each thump further away from the last, but heavier, the mass of muscle and veins straining to release itself from the confines of my fleshy body. Time was slowing down. As I watched the sun slowly creep up across the side of the earth, the names of all the pills and tablets I had been taking began to run through my head; Aminoglutaric Acid, Atenolol, Dekaris, Grandaxin, Oletetrine; the list stretched on and on. The names didn't mean anything, just odd foreign words that were a problem to pronounce, and an even bigger problem to spell.