admit, while he was outside I was tempted to reroute the vessel and leave him to orbit Mercury forever. I floated in front of LAMB’s console for an eternity while he made his way along the hull to guide the sails. I was practically hyperventilating with the possibility.
What held me back? Routine holds no adventure. If I didn’t seize my destiny, I’d be stuck in another twenty-year cycle of twelve-hour shifts. There was no hope in that future. Only despair and normalcy and order and convention. But I loved him. Or was it that he loved me? How did the story go?
The flashing red screen turned green before I made up my mind. Zeph had freed the sails. The simulation showed the arms extending, sails stretching between them.
Back inside, he latched onto me saying things like, “I don’t ever want to be apart from you again,” and “It was cold and dark without you.”
“That’s just space,” I said.
“No. It felt like any moment, you were going to jet off back to Earth and I was going to be left behind.”
“I would never go back to Earth without you,” I said, which was the truth. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll take your shift.”
“You’ve been up for almost two already.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Come with me,” he said. “LAMB will take care of things. She always does.”
“She?”
“She has a woman’s voice.”
“No he doesn’t. LAMB has a man’s voice.”
“Oh, I changed that out years ago. The only man’s voice I wanted to hear was yours. Didn’t I tell you? I thought I told you in one of my video feeds. On my shifts, LAMB is female.”
“I should stay up. We could get blown off course.”
“Right. Baby steps.”
“Don’t get scared if you hear LAMB freak out about us going off course. It’s just the wind. I’ll take care of it,” I said.
He gave me a kiss and swam off to sleep. In the workroom I stared at our coordinates. The blinking icon of the Helianthus steadily increased its distance from the sun. My chances at spending eternity with God slipped away with each pixel.
There was only one way we could still be together. Neumikos had built in a sail release for when the Helianthus was ready to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. Zeph and I both knew the command sequence. It was part of our monthly drills to keep our minds sharp, so that we didn’t travel sixteen billion miles through the solar system only to panic in the last ten and ruin forty-three years worth of work.
Who can live with that kind of pressure? The weight of the world’s future rests on my shoulders. And the sweat is running into my eyes. My muscles are shaking. But not from fatigue. Not from anxiety. From eager anticipation of the day when I can throw off the expectations laid on me by men who have not seen God. The day I will join him in true unity and we will together warm the land between your toes, and send the wind across your ears. Mankind will not know, they won’t have even an inkling, for there is not a single man on Earth who knows me. Yet it shall be. Who is strong enough to break a god’s love?
Zeph has this habit. Even though the sleeping quarters are kept dark he likes to wear a mask when he sleeps. I don’t know. At first I understood because your internal rhythms aren’t used to it out here, but after twenty years it isn’t cute anymore. His arms were floating in front of him. I took one and guided it to his side and pinioned it with Velcro.
He woke with a snort. “You know that freaks me out,” he said.
I gave him a kiss.
He lifted his blindfold with his free hand and smirked. “What happened to baby steps?”
I replaced the blindfold and secured his other hand.
“Hy, come on. This isn’t fair.”
I kissed him for all I was worth. He leaned for more as I floated away.
“Do you believe in God?” I said.
“I’m a scientist,” he said. “My job presupposes the absence of God.”
“I’ve seen him,” I said.
“Hy,” he was laughing. “Hy, don’t joke around. You’ve been awake for over two straight shifts. You’re not thinking straight. Come, sleep. I put my allotment of Z-pills in your cubby. You’ll feel better next shift.”
“I want you to meet him. But it will take us a little off course.”
His arms tugged at the Velcro and he swallowed. “I hope,” he said. “I hope it’s nothing Texas can’t correct.”
I floated back and anchored myself to lean in to his ear. “No, you see. We’re using Texas to get there.”
“Not all of it.”
“All of it.”
“Then how...”
“We’re not going back. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“So is making it safely back to earth.”
“There’s nothing back there for us.”
“There’s nothing out here for us.”
“Just God.”
“Horseshit.”
“I used to say things like that,” I said.
“For good reason,” he said.
“I used to think skepticism kept me safe—that the rules kept me safe.”
He didn’t respond.
I told him how it was all a game. To see how long a man can endure this imprisonment.
“But you’re not just a man,” he said. “You have me. We’re two of us up here. And that counts for something. This voyage isn’t a bet about how long you’ll last without putting your toes into the September sand. It’s about two heroes, paired by fate, sent hand in hand to face the destiny of the world and defeat the gorgon enslaving the rest of mankind.”
“You’ve been reading too much Braeburn.”
“The old ideas give one’s heart the strength to make the difficult choices.”
“Like facing death.”
“Like leaving the rest of the world behind for love and glory.”
He strained so hard on at the Velcro I thought he was going to pop a blood vessel.
“Lieutenant Rivera! I order you to release me at once!”
“Shh. You’re making it worse. You know even a bruise is fatal out here.”
“What about our cottage in the country? What about our garden? How we’ll get out to water before the sun rises and come back with real dirt between our toes? We’ll grow anything you want. Anything. And I’ll cook it. I’ll learn and then I’ll cook it. And we’ll finally be able to spend our days together and nights never apart. I’ll hold you when a storm comes up and our wind chimes go wild. Don’t you still dream? Don’t you imagine our life together once we finish this mission? We’re halfway home.”
“I can’t wait that long. I need it now. Are you willing to abandon your duties to the Helianthus to spend your days with me and our nights never apart?”
He bit his lower lip.
“Are you willing to hold me like you once did?” I said. “To spend eternity entwined even if it means drifting to the edge of the galaxy instead of returning to Earth?”
“If I say yes, will you release me? Hy? Hy? Where’d you go?”
“You’re only telling me what I want to hear. You don’t really want to go drifting in his heap.”
“As long as we’re together. If you had only told me this is how you felt, we could have discussed it. You didn’t have to tie me up.”
“I don’t want to go drifting.”
“You just said—“
“I want to transcend. I don’t want my death to be the end of me.”
“It won’t be.”
“Zeph, we’re the only two people in the universe.”
“What?”
“No one knows us. Or knows about us, I mean. Everyone we knew on Earth is long dead. If we die out here, no one will be sad. No one will mourn or have funny anecdotes to tell at our memorial. We won’t live on because no one will remember us. We only have each other. If we die together, we die for good. But if we die being loved by a god, we will be remembered for eternity.”
“Hy. We’re out here gathering helium.
If we die, the entirety of Earth will mourn.”
“Not for us. For themselves.”
“But they’ll remember us.”
“Only because we failed them.”
“Then let’s make sure we don’t die. Let’s go back. We’ll be heroes. And we’ll be remembered not only in someone’s mind, but in all the history books that will ever be written after us. Hy? Hy?”
Have you scientists figured out what gravity is yet? Last I heard, they had theories. Such colorful theories. Some said it was an electromagnetic pull between two bodies and that even subatomic particles exhibit the same attraction that planets do. Others said it had something to do with very tiny strings that all matter is composed of. Others said that gravity is mass affecting the fabric of spacetime itself.
I’ve lived without gravity for twenty-one years. I’ve forgotten the weight of my own body. Every time I force my memories to return to Earth, the one thing that escapes me is how heavy I should feel. I can’t remember what if felt like for my hand to be heavy, or my head or my legs. Or anything. Earth used to seem so big. A force I couldn’t escape. And now Zeph tries tempting me with a force weaker than remembered gravity: notoriety.
Was living in the history books a form of transcendence? If that was Apollo’s plan for my immortality why wasn’t it appealing? Was it his test? Could I take the leap of faith necessary to steer the Helianthus away from him and back to Earth? Did I have the courage necessary to live the rest of my life before earning the laurels of his love?
“Hy? Hy? Please tell me you’re still here? I know you haven’t changed course yet. I don’t feel it. I’d feel it if you changed course. Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
I had absently taken hold of the passageway so I didn’t float closer.