They just say "It gets to you you sometimes..."
13 May 2017Da5id Weatherwax
And then conversation tails off, ripples of silence spreading over the drifting noise of indistinct voices as pilots stare blankly into space for as little as an instant or as much as a few seconds. That phrase isn't unique to us, of course. Dirtsiders and stationers use it too, but not the same way we do. They always mean it in a bad way and we don't, not always. Without looking, I felt for the line connecting me to Noodle and gave it the tiniest flick, whipping a tiny wave into it and in return Sir Isaac gave me a little momentum nudge that started me in a gentle slow rotation. As I watched the stars wheel ponderously and majestically around me I toggled off my lights and shut off my helmet displays before carefully flicking the line again bringing myself to a halt.
Noodle and I were far out, high above the plane of the system ecliptic and the sullen red light of the system primary was so weak out here, the star itself barely more than a bloodstained pearl against the black velvet of everywhere else. As my eyes adapted to the starlight I could maybe have fooled myself into thinking the light had a faint red tinge but to do that I'd have to see it reflect from something and there was nothing for it to reflect from. My suit, like Noodle's hull, was as black as the space around us. She was in total shutdown, the power plant and all internal systems completely deactivated, nothing running to draw any power from reserve storage. No lights, no hint of plasma leakage from thrusters on standby or any glow from her shuttered radiators. With my suit lights and helmet displays off, my suit wasn't quite as perfect a black as the stealth paint on her hull but it was black enough to fool human eyes and only my own excess body heat and the minimal power of my suits environmental systems provided any photons into the parts of the spectrum you needed sensors to pick up. We were a hole in space, one with the black.
It's peaceful. And it's beautiful.
Slowly, the stray thoughts chasing themselves through my head slowed and stopped, leaving me alone to not think, not feel, to neither act nor react, simply to be. Part of this incredible universe spread around me. Gradually my heartbeat slowed and my awareness drifted, losing any sense of place, forgetting the illusion that I was somehow at the center of all I saw around me. I was nowhere and somehow everywhere at the same time. After a little while even the concept of "I" ceased to have much meaning, at once nothing and yet a part of everything.
I don't know if I slept. I was sure that sometimes doing this I did but it didn't matter. If I did, I slept with my eyes open, time passing without me being aware of it.
Like a diver slowly surfacing in an infinite sea I felt myself slowly coming back into focus. The quiet notification I'd set in the suit systems was pinging at me, telling me that my airpack was at 50% endurance. These packs are nominally rated for six hours of EVA with thirty minutes of emergency reserve but in my slowed-down trance-like state I burned through it a lot slower than normal. I didn't bother checking the chrono, but I knew I'd been out here about six hours on a nominal three hours of air. A gentle pull on my tether oriented me towards Noodle and started me on a slow drift towards her, the only indication that we were approaching each other being that her black hull slowly hid more and more stars from my field of view. Once we were only a few meters apart I brought my lights and displays back online, the lights showing me the open e-lock where my tether was attached.
Powering my boots, I twisted in space to arrive feet first and flexed my knees to take up the gentle impact. I clipped into the short working line inside the lock and released my primary tether, hitting the button on the reel to wind it all in. As soon as it was clear of the outer hatch I closed that and cycled the lock.
It was a short walk from the lock to the engineering spaces where flipping the master switch on the power plant illuminated a dozen telltales, which immediately began slowly cycling from red to green as main power took over from the reserve. I turned my back on them and walked away, back towards the lock as my helmet started to relay the soft voice of the ships computer.
"Primary startup complete. Initiate secondary sequence."
"Main power nominal. Environmental systems online."
I retracted my helmet then shrugged off the airpack, stowing it in its place in the airlock and hooking up its recharge lines as the computer's litany continued and I depowered my boots and pushed myself through the air towards the flight deck.
"Position fix positive. Primary control to NAV."
"Thrusters preheat. Frameshift standby."
I was buckling my seat straps by the time the sequence finished.
Startup complete. Systems nominal. Primary flight controls released."
Settling my hands on the familiar controls I looked through the viewport and the stars looked back at me. My fingers went through the motions of calling up my next waypoint on autopilot as I relaxed into the leftover peace and tranquility from my extended drift. Dirtsiders didn't get it. They never got to feel like this because they couldn't take it. The folks that could almost all ended up as spacers.
Yeah, sometimes it does indeed get to you, and it's wonderful. It's why we fly, it's why we're free.