Communion

Matthew Rogers hated being caught away from his colony during solar flare activity. Back at Lagrangia he would have been able to wander anywhere in the colony—its hull was thick and radiation safe. Here at U.N. Station Unity, however, solar flares meant staying in specially designed compartments. To make things worse, more than a hundred statesmen, diplomats, and their staff were visiting Unity for the summit talks. The presence of these extra bodies had transformed the shielded rooms into a series of sardine cans. The summit, which this flare activity had delayed, was unprecedented. The leaders of all eight colonies were meeting to find a way to stop the world’s escalating violence from cracking their fragile peace. The summit had attracted the attention of politicians, journalists, generals, terrorists, everyone.

Luckily, the radiation dropped to a safe level in only three days. Soon Matthew and several other workers would be outside the station in pressure suits checking spaceships and doing routine maintenance for Unity, while the summit went on inside. But it was Sunday, and Matthew decided to attend a worship service before he went out to work—he felt guilty about not having been to church in a while. This was an interdenominational, Christian service conducted by a minister who was part of the Unity crew. The crew of Unity was international, so Jewish and Muslim services were also conducted. The hall was packed, but many chairs remained unoccupied while visiting politicians milled about shaking hands. As Matt understood it, their meetings would deal with two main problems: the increasing militarization of space by the superpowers and the use of American facilities by private corporations, which many colonists feared gave terrorists and extremist governments a chance to operate in space.

Looking around, Matt spotted Ismail Iqbal, who had trained with him in flight school. Ismail had later moved from Lagrangia, Matthew’s home and the first colony that the United States built, to Stanford, which was more independent. Like Matt, he had flown his colony leaders to the summit meeting.

Why is he attending this service? Matt wondered. They’ll have Muslim prayers here, later. Ismail was devout and always vocal about his religion. Matt could not stand him. Then he realized the answer to his question. All the visitors from Stanford—government officials, secretaries, and ship crew—were standing together, using the pre-worship socializing as an opportunity for a show of Stanford’s solidarity. “P.R.,” Matt whispered in disgust. As the organ prelude began, the worshippers went to sit down and Ismail made a discreet exit.

Matthew was a religious man, but he found it difficult to remain attentive during the service that morning. While the minister gave his sermon, Matt skimmed through a pamphlet he had picked up from the floor. It discussed the Eucharist.

“Bread: Christ’s body broken for us. Wine: Christ’s blood which seals the new covenant . . .

“Five aspects of the Eucharist. One: thanksgiving to the Father . . . The Eucharist is the great sacrifice of praise . . .

“Two: memorial of Christ.—‘Do this in memory of me.’ . . .

“Three: communion . . .”

Matt put down the pamphlet, wondering that Ismail had even come near a Christian worship service. He’s probably trying to kiss up to his superiors by going along with their “united-front church visit”. Then Matt recognized his emotions: distrust, hate, jealousy. The main reason Ismail repelled him, he knew, was that he had gotten higher grades than him in flight and maintenance training. Hearing the minister’s voice made Matthew’s guilt more acute, and he reminded himself of other sins. As everyone stood for a hymn, he considered the nonexistent work hours he had claimed and been paid for. And he remembered his rudeness to others during the past three days of isolation. He felt inadequate. He sinned gratuitously and often enjoyed it. He was not worthy of God’s grace. Then with a start, Matt realized that the church service was finished. He hurried to one of the four “spokes” and waited for an elevator, not speaking to or looking at anyone.

Unity, like most permanent space stations, was wheel-shaped and spinning to provide artificial gravity. He ascended in the elevator toward the hub, going from one half Earth-normal gravity into nearly complete weightlessness. Barb Watson, who had co-piloted the flight from Lagrangia with him, was waiting there with the assistant they had asked for.

“Matt, this is Liem Tsu. He’s stationed here at Unity and he’ll be helping us.”

“Hello,” said Matt.

“How do you do?” There was silence as Matthew said nothing. “Shall we go?” Liem finally suggested.

Barb led the way through a stem which extended from the station’s hub along the axis of rotation. They pulled themselves by the ladder, travelling head first, toward the ship docking bays at the other end of the stem. Matthew and Barb had their pressure suits waiting in the ship; Liem carried his suit with him. Matt started to tell Liem what tools they would need, but Liem was having some trouble handling his suit. Matt and Barb waited as he captured a glove which had floated away from him.

When they reached the docking bay, Matt asked Liem to get the tools and meet them outside. “Do you think you can handle that?” Matt asked sarcastically.

“What kind of training does he have?” he asked Barb a minute later, as they crawled through a small tunnel into their ferry.

“He has the primary space-systems maintenance training and a master’s degree in rocketry engineering from UCLA.”

Matt’s acrimony was quickly replaced by guilt, again. He had treated Liem Tsu badly, never suspecting that he would have anything near a master’s degree.

Matt and Barb began to don the pressure suits. They stayed in separate compartments of the ship while they removed their casual clothes and put on the water-cooled underwear of the pressure suit, then they helped each other with the outer garment. Even though the liquid-cooled, grey long johns with their web of plastic tubing was not very attractive, Matthew could not help noticing how Barb’s lower back curved and the flare of her hips. Then he reminded himself that she was married. Guilt again.

Matt tucked a nourishment bar into the cavity at the chin of his helmet and made sure he had enough drinking water. And when, after a few minutes, the helmets and gloves were on, he and Barb checked that their suits were functioning properly. Water was circulating and being cooled. Radios worked. Oxygen pressure good. Waste gasses being absorbed. They put down their helmet visors and went outside. Barb tethered herself to a rail on the outside of the ship and helped Matt to strap the jetpack to his back. Barb and Liem would not need to be moving around, so only Matt had the “manned maneuvering unit.” (Everyone just called it a jetpack.) On the way to Unity they had had trouble with the radiator panels of their ship, and on the other side of the docking bay there were some new ones ready and waiting for him. Matt would replace the old ones so they could be inspected and repaired carefully. He fired the oxygen jets and flew off to get the spare parts. Originally jetpacks had used nitrogen as a propellant but lunar mining had made oxygen the cheapest gas anywhere off the Earth.

Matthew looked around. He could see the Earth and recognized two constellations: the Southern Cross and Scorpio. The moon was hidden from sight behind the docking bay. He hadn’t been “outside,” as space dwellers referred to the vacuum of outer space, for two weeks. The eight space colonies each had parks and ponds and birds and fresh air, but that was all still inside. There were always walls, a floor, and a ceiling holding the air in. Only here, fully exposed to the cosmic rays, the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, and total vacuum could Matthew be said to be “outside”. He had been outside dozens of times, but still once in a while he thought about the emptiness of space and would shiver with anxiety. In almost any direction he could point, he knew, there was nothing but occasional hydrogen atoms. But it still felt good to be outside after being squashed in that shielded room for three days.

Matt looked at the ships radiating out from the spherical docking bay, and the crews buzzing around them. There appeared to be nine “ferry” class ships, two “tugs,” and one shuttle plane. From a greater distance, he knew, the docking bay would look like a flower, with the ships as petals. Matthew had seen a dozen paintings of such structures. But these thoughts were cut short when he and all the others outside in pressure suits heard a startling announcement on the common emergency frequency. “Attention all crew members. We may be in danger of a terrorist bomb strike. Please suspend all maintenance and repair operations and return to the station. I repeat. There is a possibility of a terrorist bomb aboard the station. Please suspend all EVAs.”

Already Matt could see the crews scurrying around. “Barb, you go on in. It’ll take me a minute to get back there.”

“Hey you!” an excited voice called, apparently having switched his transmissions to the common emergency frequency. “You with the jetpack, come in over here. It’s closer.”

Matt saw whose voice it must have been. He was down at an airlock, hanging on to a handrail, in the shadow of the docking bay. Matt rotated until he was facing the airlock and applied a bit of thrust. Just as Matt’s jets brought him to the airlock, the other fellow flipped the emergency entry lever—an override mechanism required because of safety regulations. Apparently, he did not want to waste time waiting for the air to be sucked from the room. The doors jerked open and the air rushed out. This airlock was a large room with a small door, so anything loose near the door when it was opened would be swept out with the rushing air. A pressure suit helmet and then the astronaut it belonged to were among the debris that was blown into space when the door was opened. The man who had called Matt had not checked to see if anyone was inside the airlock.

Matt recognized Liem Tsu as the one who had been in the airlock. His helmet was the only thing that he had left to put on. Matt saw Liem grasp for it. But the helmet was out of reach and moving farther away. Matt thought he could see the moisture from Liem’s final exhaled breath crystallizing on his face. Matt shivered, knowing that the heat must have been rushing from Liem’s body. He tried to aim himself in Liem’s direction, but the tools that Liem had been bringing had been blown out of the airlock, too, and were getting in the way. Liem could stay conscious for no more than a few more seconds.

Matt applied thrust and started moving toward Liem. But then Liem threw a small arc-welder from his belt at him. Then he threw another tool and another. Liem was trying to propel himself toward his helmet by flinging mass in the opposite direction, but he had made Matt the target of the flying tools, in the meantime. Matt had to dodge the flying tools and this was slowing him down. If only he could call Liem on the radio. But of course, he couldn’t: the radio was in Liem’s helmet. He gained on Liem and Liem had gained on the helmet. Now it was just out of his reach. Suddenly it shone with reflected light. Matt did not understand. Was someone helping them by shining a spotlight? He did not realize that they were leaving the shadow of the docking bay. Liem was only half a second behind his helmet in leaving the shadow, and he looked directly at the sun. The sun, not screened by an atmosphere or a helmet’s visor, burned into his eyes. Liem cringed and tried to hide his head, and Matt knew that he was trying to scream. Then Liem stopped moving.

In a few seconds, Matt was able to grab Liem. Then he reached the helmet and slammed it onto Liem’s head. Slamming was a mistake, because it sent Matt spinning in the opposite direction. He calmed down, and clipped the helmet into place, then checked to see that Liem’s air was flowing and the suit pressurizing. He took the tether from Liem’s waist, and clipped it to his own belt. It would be awkward using the jetpack while carrying another man, but Matt turned and started back to the station.

But then the terrorist bomb exploded—bombs—a whole string of them. Along the rim of the station, in the hub, in the docking bay. All within two seconds of each other. The structures ripped open and fire shot out, only to be immediately quenched by the vacuum. Matthew saw a space-suited body flying out in his general direction. He aimed himself toward it and turned on the forward thrust, dragging Liem at his hip. Then the speaker at his ear started speaking with four different voices at once. Some of the people who were working outside had not gone back in and had not been injured by the explosions. They were all yelling over the common emergency frequency. Matt turned his transmitter from the private frequency, which only Barb and Liem could hear, to the emergency frequency so he could yell, too. He saw that the body he was flying toward was moving; he was not rescuing a corpse. “Hey, you!” he called. “You there, the one flying away from the station.”

“We’re all flying from the station, wise-guy,” a voice said.

“No we’re not,” said another. “I’m still attached to my ship.”

Then the one Matt was actually talking to turned his head toward him. But he did not say anything. Matt caught the astronaut with a thump and their velocities combined to aim them in a different direction.

“Are you all right?”

“Is that you, Rogers?” It was Ismail Iqbal. He could make out the face underneath the visor.

Then Liem started screaming in Matt’s ear.

“Shut up!”

“No one said anything.”

Matthew realized that only he could hear Liem and he changed his transmission frequency back again. “Shut up! We’re okay. We’re safe.”

“I can’t see! I can’t see!” Liem kept screaming.

“Close your eyes, we’ll get you back to a doctor. You’ll be okay.”

Someone else started talking. “No one answers inside. If there’s anyone alive in there, they can’t help us. They—they won’t have much air.” This voice started crying.

Once Ismail had fastened himself to Liem and Matthew, making a small triangular unit, they saw that they were moving away from the station rather quickly. Matt turned them so he was at the back, facing Unity, and Liem and Ismail had their backs turned to it. When he turned, he saw a corpse float by. She had no pressure suit on—had been flung from the station when it ripped open. Already, her body was swelling as the liquid vaporized under her skin. Freeze-dried coffee, he thought. Then he almost threw up.

“Rogers, look!” said Ismail, kicking the body aside.

Another astronaut was flailing their arms and legs frantically, head turned toward the island of three men. Matthew flew them in the right direction. Before they reached the astronaut, there was another explosion. The rocket fuel and liquid oxygen stored in separate tanks at the docking bay had been leaking out and mixing. The explosion ripped through the entire docking bay and through all the ships and human bodies nearby. Matthew and the others were now far enough away from Unity to be safe from the explosion.

In a moment, they reached the astronaut, but the arms kept flailing. There was only silence on the radio. Ismail flipped up the visor. The woman’s lips were blue, her head jerking up and down. They searched over her suit and found a rip through the outer layers above her right hip. Underneath was an oxygen hose with a small puncture. She was getting some air but not much. Matthew covered the hole with his gloved hand. Ismail attached an auxiliary hose protruding from his suit to the same hose on hers. The hose was designed for just such a hook-up.

“Liem, do you have any putty cement or string or anything with the tools you still have?”

“I got some tape.” Matt found the tape and covered the puncture.

Again he aimed for Unity and turned on the thrust. The space station was farther away than ever and it would be slow going with three passengers.

“Attach yourself to him . . . uh?”

“Denise,” she gasped, still catching her breath. She hooked her tether to Ismail on one side and Liem on the other, forming a spaceship of sorts with their four bodies.

“What’s been happening?” Liem asked.

“Turn your transmissions to emergency, Liem. The station was bombed. We didn’t have more than a minute or two of warning.”

“I looked straight into the sun. I can’t see.”

“We’ll get some help soon enough.”

“How?” snapped Denise. She turned her head to look at the station. The wheel was still rolling but now the entire station was also slowly toppling around a new axis. It was as if it were a bicycle wheel that had come loose on the way down a hill and now the wheel was spinning and tumbling and bouncing in slow-motion toward the bottom. The docking bay was now on the far side with the wheel facing them. It looked like the old symbol for Earth, with the cross-shape of the four spokes within the circle.

“Come on, Matthew, take us back to it. We can get some sort of help there.”

“I am. The thrust is full.” But he saw that the station looked smaller than it had a moment ago.

“We’re going away from it!”

Matt turned off the thrust. “I’d better save the oxygen.”

“What do you mean, ‘save it’? Get us back there.” Denise, like the others, was scared.

Matthew yelled. “The jetpack would run out of oxygen before we were half way there, and then we would run out of oxygen.” He paused a moment then said, “We’ve got too much momentum going the wrong way. And besides, there’s not much left there to get back to. We’re probably the only ones alive.”

“By yourself, with the jetpack you could make it,” offered Ismail.

Matthew said nothing. He just bent to read everyone’s oxygen gauge. Both Liem and Denise were running low. Matthew removed the jetpack from his back and began to examine it. The valve for filling the tanks was the right size to attach to the auxiliary hose on any of the pressure suits. Thank God for standard sizes and for mass production. He strapped the jetpack loosely to Liem’s chest and connected the hose. When Liem’s air was gone, he could be fed oxygen from the jetpack.

“Matthew,” asked Ismail, “do you think you could use that jetpack to rotate us again? I want to be facing Earth.”

“Why?”

“It’s about time for my prayers.”

Matt was shocked. “Does your stupid religion tell you that you have to do your daily prayers, even in a situation like this? Damn it, don’t you know what’s happening to us?”

“It is not a sin to miss one prayer. And of course it would be silly to pray when your life depended upon your doing something else. But there is nothing we can do now but wait.”

They now knew that they were going to die.

Matt rotated the communion of four astronauts, attached with wire tethers, air hoses, and interlocked arms and legs, until Ismail was facing, if not exactly Mecca, at least Earth. Ismail shut off his transmitter and started his prayers. Several minutes passed in silence, then Liem began to scream. He’s probably not even sure we’re still here, thought Matt. Blind. No one talking. Nothing to even touch or feel. Matt took Liem’s hand and squeezed it tight. He stopped screaming.

Matt looked back at the tiny space station. He could still see the cross of the spokes, and the cross reminded him of his guilt. Freeze-dried coffee—a terrible, evil thought to think about another human being. But although he remembered his sins, he felt no guilt now. Somehow, guilt seemed to have no place here. Regretfully, but resigned to it nevertheless, Matt realized something else: he still hated Ismail. And to hate is a sin, he thought. He wished he did not feel that way, but he did.

Matthew took the nourishment bar that was tucked in his helmet within reach of his lips, and a few sips of water from the tube that came up to his mouth—his final meal before he died.