Station & Distant

Written 56-E18 [2024-11-27], Edited 56-E18 [2024-11-27]

Image credit: Twitter Twemoji

Part 1: Station

“There’s only one person who can fit in the shaft,” Ivan said. He floated slowly, centimetre by centimetre, towards a pipe to his left.

“If we can fix the bot -” Michael started. He was floating in the opposite direction than Ivan was, towards one of the few viewports of the space station.

“No time for the machine,” Ivan interrupted. “The bot circuits are fried. It is an electronic problem not a mechanical issue. We cannot fix it with duct tape and crossed fingers.”

“It’s too dangerous for Timothy,” Vaishnavi said with a frown. “He could get stuck, and if the engine reactivates-”

A ray of sunlight passed through the window and onto Timothy’s face.

“The engine won’t reactivate. Ivan pulled out the fuel injection controller, right?”

Ivan grinned and pulled a tiny circuit board from a bag floating aimlessly in the room. To think that such a minuscule item, the size of an insect, could control engines large enough to burn an elephant to a crisp in seconds.

“I’ll do it,” said Timothy.

Vaishnavi turned her face away, trying not to cry in microgravity. Michael shook his head slowly. Ivan gave Timothy a thumbs up.

Timothy pushed himself towards the shaft with his two remaining limbs. His custom space suit and nimble body had no trouble fitting through the twisted pipes and broken glass at the mouth of the shaft. In seconds, the legless astronaut had disappeared into the darkness, with only a cracking on his colleagues' radios indicating his former presence.

Part 2: Distant

Timothy couldn’t see very far down the shaft, to the extent that down and up even made sense on the station. The shaft had no lighting for one thing. For another, the once-straight shaft had been bent and twisted by the impact with the landing module.

If the shaft were in working order, Timothy would have just floated down to his distant destination, pushing against the top and letting Newton’s third law do the rest. But that wouldn’t take him far in a bent shaft, and he didn’t know if any of the broken pipes below had sharp edges. So instead he grabbed the any handhold he could find, and slowly, gradually descended.

Notes

Both parts were written in 15 minutes in a Joy of Writing session.