This partial story was inspired by the prompt, “Write a story about a space explorer on a long journey home, facing unknown challenges.” The prompt is from @ShadowsPub in her daily Prompt email. If you’d like to get the daily prompts, you can subscribe here. I don’t typically write fiction but I’m trying to push myself into different genres this year that I don’t typically write and so, you have, the first ever installment of my Fiction Fridays. I’ve gotten so into the story that I’m going to stop here and there will have to be a part II next Friday or sometime soon.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
The control computer screamed for attention as Marian returned to the control room from freshening up her coffee.
“I’m right here. You don’t have to yell at me you idiot machine,” she said to the control computer.
“That’s no way to talk to the machine that’s currently keeping me alive you know.” Her partner’s face slowly floated into view on the wall sized monitor.
“Good morning Alice. You could have built gentler warning sounds into this thing you know.” Marian silenced the alarm and quiet returned to the control room. She took a long drag on her coffee as she began to study the numbers and graphical interface on the wall to the left of Alice’s face.
“I could have but they wouldn’t bother you as much. What flavor coffee this morning?”
“It’s Cinnamon Hazelnut. Quite delicious. Are you seeing the CO2 warning on your end as well? You’re going to start hallucinating in about 45 minutes if we don’t recycle the air in there.”
“Yes. One of the scrubbers needs replaced. I was just coming to grab it when I heard then control room computer signal so thought I’d just make sure we saw the same issue. After last night’s drama I don’t want anything to get in the way of heading home later today.”
“Go ahead and swap it out and I’ll do a full system’s check. Speaking of last night’s drama - are you sure you don’t need to take a quick space walk this morning and double check the nose assembly?”
Alice considered for a moment. Marian was surprised her friend was actually considering the walk. But, then again, a piece of space debris had come hurtling at the ship’s nose while Alice was at the other end of the craft and she hadn’t been able to get back to the nose in time to completely avoid a collision. The two had run full systems checks twice after the collision and everything had come back fine but that didn’t tell them if the aerodynamics of the experimental craft had been thrown out of whack by the collision.
Alice was solo piloting a new multi-billion dollar space craft that she and Marian had designed, along with their team, to take people on commercial space tours to the moon and then back to Earth. The ship was designed to carry about 50 passengers and 25 crew when it was fully operational. This first test flight had simply been a solo flight with Alice on her own to make sure the ship could take off, cruise for a few days, and land - and do so with a solo pilot. It had been a risk to go up alone but Alice and Marian had designed the ship to be controlled nearly entirely from the ground so that the pilot and one other flight operations director could manage the ship in space and the other 23 crew could concern themselves with guest operations. In a pinch, Marian could fly the ship from Earth. Marian’s friend Rex had been at the controls last night and had stepped away for a dinner break when the near miss happened which was why Marian didn’t plan to leave the control room again until Alice was back safely on the ground.
Alice continued to look pensive and said, “Are you still concerned that there might be damage?”
Marian reflected back to look she saw on her friend’s face. “Your face tells me you’re still worried. Suit up and go out and do a check. I know we hadn’t planned to do a space walk on this flight but you’ve done all the simulations and all the checklists are ready to be tested. We can call this a dry run. We still have 12 hours before you’re supposed to head home.
Alice and Marian shifted gears and began the checklists for a space walk. As Alice suited up in the Exit Chamber’s ante-room, Marian read off checklist items.
The massive, by spaceship standards, ante-room had spaces for about 5 guests and 5 crew to suit up to go on space walks at the same time in another first in its kind revolution to the space tourism business. Space walks had never been attempted by civilians before and now they were going to become regular practice on 10 night and longer voyages.
“How’s the suit fit?” Marian asked as Alice fitted her helmet into place.
“Like a glove. My first space walk a decade ago felt like I was floating around in a too big for me winter coat and mittens. This feels like a race car driver’s suit.” Alice replied.
“Similar technology - but much, much more resilient fabric. I know we didn’t plan a space walk, but I’m glad that you get to test out the new multi-tool I designed for you.” Marian was a materials engineer as well as computer engineer. Materials engineering was more of a hobby than a job now but she still found times to develop little things that made jobs easier. “Checklist complete on my side.”
Alice referred to the tablet strapped into the wall and anchored herself in place in front of it. “Ante-room door is secured. Cabin oxygen pressure is holding steady. Switching my oxygen intake to suit provided.”
“Confirmed.” Marian replied as she monitored the instrumentation showing that oxygen and other gasses had responded within limits in all of those areas. “Your vital signs are reading well. I’ll start the countdown to open the doors.”
Marian pushed some keys on her keyboard and a countdown started to open the external doors. This countdown would be accompanied by a final safety message and video show on the monitors around the room when guests and crew were going on their space walks. For today, it was just a plain countdown. All the graphics would get added later.
The countdown went off and Alice started to step forward but the doors didn’t open. “What’s going on with the doors Mar?”
“They show as if they are open here. Clearly that’s not right.” Marian replied.
“I’m going to try to manual exit and see if that works,” said Alice. Alice walked forward and raised the security panel over the red exit button. She pushed the button and then entered in her 8 digit security code to the accompanying keypad. “The gloves fit amazingly well. I can actually feel my fingers clicking the numbers.”
Overhead, the computer voiced, “Manual override of craft bay doors initiated. Doors opening in 10 seconds.” Another countdown came on the screen. After it counted down to 0 the doors slowly began to slide open but they were not sliding smoothly.
“Are you seeing this?” Alice asked. “These doors are not working as designed.”
“Yep. I’ve made note of the time so I can pull specific footage and send it to the team. Since this is making me even more nervous about damage, let’s leave the bay door open during the walk. There is no reason to have you stuck outside of the ship and not able to get back in.”
“I agree. I’d rather come home today.” Alice took a step off the side of the ship into the dark of space. “I’m going to take a quick look at the doors and see if anything seems obvious. Are my body cameras coming through okay?”
“Yep. I’ve got both your eye level camera and your rear body cam so we can see anything behind you as well. Switching on the finger cam now.” Marian clicked a few keys on her keyboard and a small camera hidden inside the pinky finger of Alice’s glove came to life.
“I see all three feeds in my heads up display,” Alice said - with just a little bit of that extra joy of something working right in her voice.
“I love that you still get a little awestruck when things work as they should.” Marian goaded her friend just a little. Alice had a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity that kept her searching for the next great discoveries. It never got old working with Alice.
Alice turned back towards the doors. “First blush says everything looks okay on the doors.”
Alice turned towards the nose of the ship. She walked along the top of the ship until she came to the cockpit section. A tether trailed along behind her keeping her connected to communications, oxygen, and all the monitoring systems. She could float unconnected for about an hour if she had to as her suit could do all of those things on its own as a backup, but the tether kept her both secured to the ship and was the primary safety point for space walks.
Alice made her way down the side of the ship just behind the cockpit area. She wanted to come up on the nose from the side opposite the one she feared had sustained damage. “Coming up from port towards the nose.” Alice relayed her plan into the comms device.
“Confirmed port to starboard.” Marian had gone all business as she did anytime the nose cone was involved. This was another of her personal engineering marvels and Alice wouldn’t tell her things but she was checking more so to set her friend’s mind at ease than her own. Alice had designed all of intricate gadgetry inside the nose cone. Even though it had all checked out last night she wanted to make sure there was no meaningful visible damage. Spacecraft had to be able to sustain damage during flight. The Challenger Space Shuttle program had taught the team the importance of that.
“Everything looks good on this side,” Alice said as she made her way along the side of the cockpit. She approached the front tip of the ship and noticed a dinner plate sized dent just past center of the nose cone. “There is the damage. Looks like nothing but surface damage. I told you I saw the debris bounce off to the side as I pulled the navigation arm around last night.”
OXYGEN ALERT, OXYGEN ALERT, OXYGEN LEVEL AT 10 MINUTES.
…
Come back next time to see how our duo navigate the next challenge coming their way.
