Excerpt: Sands and Velvets

The Escape Capsule and the Spacer's Wife

I have tried to write this story many times, and every time until now has been a failure. Not because I lack facts, or because I don't remember how it was told to me. Quite the contrary. The way this story was told to me, the language, the smell of people and drink in the bar, the rustle and clink of the glasses, all of this is deeply imprinted in my memory. I have found that the only way to write this story is to merely transcribe it exactly as it was told to me. So I give you the story of the Escape Capsule and the Spacer's Wife, as told by the Spacer himself, Georgeson MacMannley.

When the alarm sounds, the one thing you don't have time for is worry. You spend time worrying, you're dead. Basic truth. So when the klaxon started wailing and the lights started flashing we didn't fret, or ask questions, we just settled into our escape pods and launched.

What was the emergency? Bless you! I don't know. I'm sure someone told me at some point, but I wasn't fit to hear it at the time, so I forgot.

Now, as I was saying, we climbed into our pods. This was on an older ship and our pods were all the Thalous Gemini models. You know what those look like? No? Don't be sorry, I'm not surprised. A lot of the newer spacers don't know 'em either. They're no good if you're too near a planet, see? So most ships use something more versatile. They can't be beat for a deep space emergency though, which is why we had 'em.

Any way, what you need to know about the Geminis is their shape. They look like two long oval capsules, a bit longer than a man is tall. And they're hooked together with a small bridge. The capsules can put a person in a low stasis, and keep 'em alive for a long time with out needing much power. Problem was people'd wake up some times with no one to talk to and they'd go crazy. Like being buried alive- they'd panic and try to claw out of the capsules and into raw void. Messy. So they started pairing folks up, and even if they hated each other by the end of it, at least the weren't mad.

So of course my wife and I were paired up. We pulled on our skin suits, those are a kind of snug EVA suit, and we jumped into each side of our Gemini and hit launch.

At first everything seemed okay. We were just drifting along as calm and silent as you please. Then the wife got fidgety. I could hear her rustling around on the mic, because these Gemeni don't sedate you for a couple of hours in case it was an accidental launch, or there's a quick rescue or whatever. So I asked her “What's wrong?” and she keeps shuffling about so I asked again and she says

“The damn thing's not set right.”

“What are you talking about?!” I asked.

And she says, “The lavy tubes aren't hooked up properly. Give me a minute.”

“Should've gone before we left!” I told her, and she just called me something unrepeatable and kept shuffling around.

I said 'unrepeatable' girl! Don't you know what that means? It means not worth repeating, so I won't! Besides, I can't remember exactly what it was she said anymore.

Anyway, it's about this time I'm starting to notice a shaking in the pod, and some of the screens are lighting up. And I am not liking the picture they're drawing.

“Darling?” I said, “Tell me what your gravity gauge is reading?”

“Not. Now.” She said. And to be fair she sounded a bit preoccupied, and I don't blame her if she was wrestling the lavy pipes.

So I waited a bit and the gravity kept getting higher, and the shaking was getting worse until a warning light started flashing pretty strongly. It said, “Danger! Entering atmosphere.”

Now I started to worry, and one of my flaws is to get mean when I'm worried. So I'll always regret snapping at her like that when I said, “You tell me what your gauges say right now!”

“Georgeson will you stop-” but she never did harangue me like I deserved. She just said, “oh god” in the quietest voice you've ever heard. And right then I'd have traded my pod and all its protection for being able to put my arms around her and comfort her.

Then it got violent. The shaking wasn't shaking now, it was thrashing. And even with the insulation the pod got unbearably hot. It was like being inside a frying pan, hopping around in burning oil like a little grain of rice. My teeth rattled so hard I couldn't talk, and my bones shook so much I wouldn't have had anything to say.

And more and more lights kept coming on, red and green and yellow, all blinking and flashing and blinding until everything just seemed to be one bright light and the endless shaking that was going to kill me if the heat didn't.

Then it was like something snapped. The shaking was still bad, but I wasn't going to break into pieces and float away. And I felt like I was being held in gentle arms, like an angel, and they guided me safely through the rest of that reentry and to my splash down in a warm sea.

Now some one else might claim I hallucinated that, and he can claim it, but it ain't true. And some one else might claim there was a whiff of perfume, or some tender words whispered in my ear. And if ever an angel carries them down from heaven, and they smell or hear something, then more power to 'em, I say. But I just felt those arms, and I recognized them. I'd have known them anywhere, they were the same arms that'd held me every night for eight years, just I held her. And they didn't let me go, rocking me gently the whole while, until the rescue team came and popped the lid off my capsule and pulled me out.

The young man there hauled me onto floating platform, and told me not to look at the wreckage. That's how I know that young man had never been in love. Because being in love is all about looking back to make sure she's safe, right behind you.

So when I did look back, because I love my wife and wasn't about to do anything else, I saw her capsule was completely gone. Sheered off and vaporized. They told me later it was what saved my life. If her capsule hadn't gone just when it did, we both would have burnt up in the atmosphere. But at that moment, looking back at that blackened tube that could have been my coffin...

I know she did it for me. She gave her last thought to getting me down safe. And you can't get more loved than that.