Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

“You shouldn’t swear around a six-year-old, Grumpy.”

Frank let the medal drop to his chest and grinned a lopsided smile. “You said ‘shit’ first. I only said ‘hell.’”

“Hell’s bad too,” Wixam said earnestly.

“It’s in the bible. It can’t be bad.” Before the kid could respond, Frank reached over to his chart and perused it, nodding approvingly. Any other person would be kicked out of the hospital for looking over the chart of a non-relative, but he was Frank frickin’ Bickham. “Looking good here, kid. I bet they’ll get you out of here later today. Tomorrow, tops.” He set the chart down. “Where are your parents, anyway?”

Wixam shrugged. “Getting sissy from school,” he said, probably referring to his sister.

“Good, then they’ll be here any minute‌—‌school’s only a block away.” Frank stood up, and formally extended a hand. “Mr. Hanuman, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Bye, Grumpy.” Frank turned to leave, but Wixam added, “You know, you’re not really grumpy.”

Frank turned back, raising an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

“You’re not really grumpy.”

“All my grandkids and great-grandkids call me Grumpy. It’s my nickname. Don’t you like it?”

“You’re just pretending to be grumpy. I can tell.”

Frank had no response to this, so he frowned, and gave a small mock-salute. “Catch you later, kid.”

The walk back to Huygens Dome would only take ten minutes, and he didn’t need to be anywhere until his noon meeting with the city council and the corporate board, so he decided to head to the emergency airlock just outside the city park. The site of his plan’s impending execution. The place he’d find his way into the history books. Second man on Mars? Screw that. First man to die on Mars, coming right up, baby.

Only a few people strolled the green park grounds under the huge transparent dome of the city park. Red light filtered down through the foliage from the inhospitable paper-thin atmosphere beyond the composite glass. The atmosphere that would kill him. The atmosphere that he’d be hailed as a hero for saving the population from.

Once inside the emergency airlock, he checked the automatic visitor log. Sure enough, no one had been there since the last time he’d checked his handiwork. No one would have noticed the imperfection in the inner airlock’s door, which would surely cause a major spark when shut in an emergency. No one would have noticed the constant background drain on the outer airlock door’s battery, which, inexplicably, was not connected to the central computer‌—‌Interplanetary’s singular focus on the stock price knew no bounds, apparently. And no one would have noticed the fact that the oxygen line over in the corner was clogged. And several other pieces of the Rube Goldberg-esque series of technical problems that would culminate in the appearance of the colony being put at grave threat of catastrophe, and his own death as he sacrificed himself to save them all.

It would be glorious.

And by all accounts, quite painless, given that the near vacuum would put him to sleep far sooner than it would kill him.

He double checked his handiwork before exiting the room, being sure to use his special security access to erase the record of his visit. The perks of being a hero‌—‌they trusted him with top secret security clearance and all-system access.

Lunchtime was approaching fast and he hurried to Huygens Dome, but a glance at his watch told him he still had twenty minutes to burn before the meeting. According to the street sign he was just a block from Ed Smith’s apartment, and so he decided to make an unscheduled visit‌—‌the unannounced kind, where the visitor peers in through the window from under a bush rather than take the more obvious route of knocking on the door.

Before long he found himself on the flimsy plastic sidewalk staring up at the apartment building. Luckily, it was surrounded by bushes, and Ed’s unit was on the ground floor, so with a surreptitious glance to either side he wandered around the side of the building, and assuring himself no one was watching, plunged into a hydrangea bush under what he supposed was Ed’s kitchen window.

“‌—‌told you, Marie, there’s nothing to be done about it. Look, sweetie, yes, I could come back to Earth and have the operation. But what would it get me? Three more years? Five? And if a new aortic valve lasts twenty more years, it’ll be the diabetes that gets me. And if that doesn’t, the prostate. We talked about this before I left, and I thought we understood that I was mortal, and I was old, and that this was a one-way trip. Plus, I signed the contract. No one leaves unless congress approves a spending authorization to shuttle someone back, and that ain’t happening for some eighty-year-old welder who‌—‌”

Frank yelped and almost jumped as his pocket started chirping with an incoming call. He breathed a curse, jabbing it through the cloth of his pants to silence it.

“‌—‌hold on, sweetie...” Frank could hear the other man in the kitchen stand up from his chair with a labored grunt, and approach the window. He squeezed up against the siding underneath as best he could and held his breath. A creak from above told him the old man was leaning against the windowsill. Labored breathing filtered down through the leaves of the hydrangea.

“Move along, nothing to see here,” mouthed Frank.

“Sorry, Sweetie, thought I heard something out the window. Probably one of the feral squirrels we’ve got around here. Now, as I was saying‌—‌”

Frank crawled away military-style, and once he’d passed another unit’s window he stood up.

“Frank Bickham?”

He recognized the voice. His face was turned away from her, so he allowed himself a grimace. “Mrs. Doughby?” He turned to face her. She was leaning out her window. Did she really live right next to Ed Smith? Shit. Just his luck.

“Mr. Bickham!” she said again, excitedly, grinning from ear to ear. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, just checking on you, my dear. To see if you were doing ok after your terrible ordeal.”

She covered her mouth with her hands, looking as if she was about to cry. “So thoughtful! What a wonderful man you are!” She paused. “Through the window?”

“I... uh...” he stammered, searching for words. “Yes. Through the window. Didn’t want to bother you.”

The awkward conversation took far longer to extricate himself from than he would have liked, and he half suspected that the house call would make it onto Scarlet Paredes’ evening news broadcast as another heroic example of Frank Bickham’s care for the common man, or ferret-faced woman in this instance. But he finally made it the last few blocks to his lunch meeting, worrying the entire time about Ed Smith’s message to his daughter, or whoever Marie was.

The man needed an aortic valve replacement. Frank was no doctor, but it sounded terminal. And by the time he was shaking hands with the corporate board and the city council, he’d made his decision.

Tonight was one for the history books.

The preparations were made. He’d rechecked the Rube-Goldberg sequence of planned systems failures in the auxiliary airlock that would result in the appearance of the colony being placed at grave risk and result in his heroic death.

He’d had a close one. Habitation module twelve‌—‌the site of the explosion and decompression last week‌—‌was still leaking a minute amount of atmosphere that the engineering team couldn’t lock down, and it led to him nearly being discovered at the auxiliary airlock during the team’s extra safety walkdowns of the rest of the colony. But he managed to slip out just in time, and when he returned later, none of his preparations had been disturbed.