The Final Expedition

Day Forty-Two

Yawning, I climbed out of my sleeping compartment in the Harmony node. I stretched before closing the compartment door which was in the ‘floor’ of the module and had been nicknamed ‘The Coffin’ by the many expeditions prior to my own. I reached for a packet of wet wipes and began to clean my body with them. Using water was extremely tricky and the first time I had tried had caused chaos with droplets of water floating off in all directions, so I tended to use wet wipes for most of the week. Having given myself a good once over, I reached for my toothbrush and carefully applied some toothpaste and some water to the bristles.

“Carter!” Morrison called out as I began cleaning my teeth, carefully brushing while keeping my mouth as closed as possible to avoid any stray droplets of water from floating off. I turned to the American as he emerged from the Destiny Lab. “What do you have planned today?”

“Same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that I expect.” I replied, wiping my mouth with a flannel. “Couple of hours exercise, lunch, shoot some video and take some pictures of the dead planet we’re orbiting, dinner, enjoy the company of my fellow astronauts and cosmonauts in the evening, go to sleep, repeat tomorrow.”

“Not today, Carter.” He smiled. “Come with me.” I followed him through the Destiny Lab and into the Unity node. Morrison nodded in the direction of the Quest airlock.

“Get in the airlock.” He told me. “We’re going outside.”

“What!” I replied incredulously. “I can’t do that. I haven’t had any training!”

“Welcome to Spacewalk one-oh-one.” He grinned. “Now hurry up, we haven’t got all day!” We pulled ourselves into the airlock and Morrison closed the inner hatch, sealing us inside.

“I’m going to adjust the pressure in here,” He continued, operating a control panel on the wall. “So hold your nose and try and blow out of your ears to alleviate the pressure.” There was a hiss as the pressure was lowered within the airlock. After a few minutes, Morrison seemed satisfied that the pressure had reached the correct level and turned to me. I reached for one of the spacesuits.

“Easy, Carter.” He said, pulling a book out of a small locker. “Now we wait until tomorrow morning.”

“What?!” I replied. “Why?”

“The lower pressure will help us to flush the nitrogen out of our bodies.” He replied, leafing through the pages of the book. “Helps prevent the bends.”

“Bloody hell, Wes.” I frowned, thinking of my laptop back in my sleeping compartment with all my e-books and films on it. “You might have mentioned that before you locked us in!” Morrison smiled, a hint of mischief in his eyes.

“Sorry Carter. I couldn’t help myself!” I settled myself down against one side of the airlock opposite Morrison, squeezing in next to one of the bulky spacesuits fixed in place against the wall. Looking around the confines of the airlock, I wondered exactly what I was going to do for the next few hours.

“Why me, Wes?” I asked Morrison after a minutes. “The others are all trained for spacewalks…”

“E.V.A.” Morrison interrupted, his face still buried in his book.

“What?” I replied.

“E.V.A.” Morrison repeated. “Extra Vehicular Activity – E.V.A. It’s what we call spacewalks.”

“Well, whatever we call it,” I replied a little tetchily, “Why not one of the others?” Morrison finally looked up from his book, slipping a bookmark in place before closing it.

“Everybody else is keeping busy.” He shrugged. “They all have their assigned tasks. As you said earlier, you are just running through the same mundane routine each day. I thought, I’d take you outside, let you stretch your legs, experience something new and keep your morale up. You do want to go outside, don’t you?”

“Yeah of course.” I replied nonchalantly, though in truth I was feeling a mixture of excitement and fear at the prospect of venturing into the cold vacuum of space.

“Good.” Morrison grinned, opening his book again. He fumbled the bookmark, sending it floating across the module towards me. I reached for it, plucking it out of the air and handed it back, noticing as I did that it was a photograph of Morrison wearing a navy blue flight suit together with what appeared to be his wife at his side, baby in her arms and young son standing in front of them.

“Your family?” I asked. Morrison nodded, looking at the photo for a moment and frowning.

“They lived in New York.” He said quietly, just a hint of a quiver in his voice, his mask of confidence slipping just for a moment. “I’m under no illusions. I saw the mushroom cloud directly over the city and I know they’re all dead. We are trained to deal with loss in the military, but nothing can prepare you for losing your whole family. Sometimes I wake in the morning and just for that hazy moment, I’ve forgotten what’s happened and I think of my wife and my babies and then I remember and it hits me like a sledgehammer. Other times, I wonder what if. What if they’d decided to go out of the city for the day, or what if they were deep underground in the subway? What if against all odds they were still somehow alive?” I nodded, not knowing what to say, not wanting to breathe life into the faint embers of false hope, but not wanting to crush the man at his most vulnerable either.

“Don’t get me wrong. I know they are dead.” Morrison replied, seemingly perceiving what I was thinking. “I know in my heart they are gone, but one day I will see them again and I take comfort in that.”