J Mauldin - Final Solution

While out on runs I often saw her exhausted, leaving the bridge and heading back to her quarters. I tried to catch up with her and talk, but enlisted weren’t allowed in the officers’ crew quarters, and she was fast.

“Got business in there? Work orders to finish?” Lank Hair, our one-time British islander in security, asked if I ever slowed by her section. “If not, you best get movin’ along. Officers need their space to work. They don’t need rabble buzzin’ about looking for honey to put in their tea.”

“Just passing through,” I replied, but he wasn’t satisfied. He had a reputation on the Vindicator . He was the only man I’d ever known to cock block out of interest for the greater good and not his own need to dip his wick.

I briskly moved on, hoping not to see him in the opposite hallway standing outside the same section, but there he’d be. I guess everyone needed a hobby. His just happened to be in line with the Neo-Puritan church of Mars.

I was forced to watch, trying my best to act as if I wasn’t, while Liberty stepped over the threshold of Officer 1 and locked the hatch behind her again and again. It was a nauseating sight, and after a few days’ reflection it made me as restless as César. I needed something to do. I needed to get my mind off of this.

But for as much as she kept her eyes averted, I knew she’d seen me every time. She’d always been good at looking without looking, sneaking a glance when others were right there. Maybe she’d missed her calling. She would have been a great spy.

Without the benefit of being in orbit around Saturn’s moon, the cupola at Forward Observation had become as dull to look from as watching paint dry. Cruising above Enceladus we could marvel at Saturn’s rings each time we came around, watching as the colors flickered faintly with distant sunlight, shards of ice glinting like microscopic gems caught in a uniform wash. This view lacked for nothing great to behold. The vapor jet expelled near Enceladus’s southern pole, close to our research station in Mirror City, was the direct cause of Saturn’s famed E Ring. Every thirty three hours, this geologically active moon made a full rotation. In that time I could see Titan, Ganymede, Mimas, Dione and Tethys, as well as a dozen more, in all their splendor with the naked eye.

When we’d first arrived I’d been sitting here, declaring it the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen, and for the first six months I woke each morning thankful to have had that chance again.

Time passed. Novelty wore off. Reality set in. Things became cramped and smelly. PT shifted into a more serious part of my routine.

Nevertheless, as things go, the ringed planet and I formed an uneasy relationship. It watched over me as I watched over it. It supplied the backdrop to my adventure, something familiar for me to mentally anchor to. Out of respect, I yielded to its might. It was the sort of piece that fit well with my childhood dream puzzle, and for that it was worth it. But now, all I had was a deepening expanse of black behind a sheet of reinforced glass. I missed Saturn, but longed for Mars.

Space travel was nothing like the movies, stars zooming past at incredible speeds in some artistic representation of high velocity, hurtling us towards a predefined target only known by instrument. It was more like drifting in a frozen pool with white specks of searing ice, but no water, impossible to even determine movement without the use of sensitive machines.

I sat in the curved window of the cupola with my legs stretched out, back leaned against the bulkhead, right palm against the glass. I drew my hand back and placed it on my cheek. It was warm. To my left our forward end was abuzz with activity. Crewmembers were either exercising or sitting about talking. A short, dark looking man and young woman I didn’t yet know, transfers, were working their way around the room replacing filters for the air scrubbers. This was usually César’s job. The man of their pair used a freakishly long pinky nail to rip open the plastic wrap around the filters. Rosaleigh, Navigation, was getting off an exercise bike and toweling her face and chest dry while arguing with Dour Face, who leaned over the bike’s handlebars, flirting. Everyone was going on with their business, paying their Master Engineer no mind.

The gasket on my right ring finger spun round and round, infinite in its position. Wrapped in that single band of thermoplastic rubber were both warm and icy memories, equally opposed in their emotional weights. But there was no sense dwelling on either; I was getting too old for that shit. I focused on something more concrete, placing all my anger on the why of being here, not the how. I could only ever come up with two reasons, and both weren’t all that great.

Reason one: I was tired of struggling.

Not only did this position pay well enough, but when I was done with this tour I’d see a decent bonus. For all the talk the Brethren gave of fixing the Martian economy, nothing really seemed to change. The Axis had come into power and ruined our trade deals, then bombed several key installations and stirred a political shit pot back on Earth. If not for that we’d be much better off, hell, I’d be better off. No war. No terror. I’d be back on Mars making twice as much as I was now, and ten times as much as back then. Apparently, the Axis didn’t like our way of life. We were a virus of religious fanatics. They were the cure.

Then there’s reason two: Which is…

It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’ll ever get away from that no matter where I go. The scales will never be made even.

I wanted to slap the side of my head and punch the glass. I’d told myself I wouldn’t go there anymore. It was best to forget my shitty past and move on. Mistakes made. Lessons learned.

“Hey, David!” a nasally voice called to me. I foolishly turned around and my solace was shattering like a wrecked windshield. Before I could think to say, ‘Leave me to my thoughts, asshole,’ Harold Devins, our horticulturalist, was already sitting beside me. He was far too close for comfort and was patting me on the leg. “I thought we were getting to go home? You’re on my rotation, right? Six months till it’s done?”

I raked my tongue around the inside of my mouth, brushing the backs of teeth and sliding it over my pallet. I forced a brittle smile out of courtesy. “In a way I guess we are. Going home that is. One way ticket.”

“True, true. Know how long it’s been since I’ve seen my wife?” His expression became vaguely lascivious, caterpillar eyebrows tilting in to telegraph his implication.

Probably about as long as it’d been since I’d known dignity, I thought.

“No, I don’t. No idea. No damn clue.”

“Four years and nothing but Sol Net contact.” He started picking at a hardened, thumb size scab atop his right arm. “If I get home and it turns out that she’s run off with some Russian freighter captain or hotshot skimmer driver, I wouldn’t be shocked. Can’t really blame her if she has, me being gone and all, though I’d still want to kick his ass for safe measure. Damn, it blows, because we even had this huge fight before I left over something really stupid. I think I was mad at her for not doing dishes or picking up laundry. Something petty. But in retrospect, why should I have cared, right? I mean, it’s not like I’d have to even look at it.” He gave me a playful shove but could tell it’d fallen short when I glared back. “Anyways. You miss anyone? I mean, if we’re successful in this mission, you’ll get to see ’em. Am I right?”

I shrugged, turning my eyes back to the window, stars spinning lazily as the habitat rotated. “My family, dad, mom, and a sister I’ve not talked to in a while. It’ll be nice to see them, that’s for sure.”