I am not floating. I am falling.
Below me is the sky. I am falling toward the sky. I will never reach it. I will never reach it alive. What once was me, long since starved of oxygen, will graze the atmosphere. My corpse will flare. It will vaporize. It will become gas. It will become part of the sky.
I am falling toward myself.
Very slowly.
I am surrounded by a thin shell of air that is held in place by this ridiculous suit. I am also surrounded by the sound of my breathing. My breath is the air made loud. Sometimes it fogs the glass of my faceplate. My breath is the air made visible. It only hangs there for a moment. The glass resists the fog. It is special glass made specifically for that purpose. And to keep out cold and radiation. I blow my breath against the faceplate to watch the air fade away.
I hit my head in the explosion.
I am not thinking clearly. I am aware of this, but unable to do anything about it. The very fact that I cannot think clearly prevents me from trying to clear my head.
I have spun so that I am facing down at Earth. I am facing the direction I am falling, like a skydiver. I spread out my arms and imagine the wind rushing past. My breathing provides the sound effect. Whoosh.
My spinning continues and now I face the spaceship. The windows glow orange. That would be the fire. Something sparked in a computer console. The smell of burning rubber filled the cabin. I pried off panels and opened compartments. I could not find the fire. It flared up from behind the attitude controls. By then it was too late.
The other astronaut was a scientist. She was studying worms and the tunnels they dig when weightless. When falling. The bulkhead behind her experiment exploded. The explosion threw me against the wall. I hit my head. A piece of metal shot out, spinning, and sliced through the scientist’s neck. Her severed head bounced around the cabin. Her blood formed undulating orbs. I was a scientist studying the paths blood follows when weightless. I was charting the constellations in red.
I am an astronaut. I am an astronomer.
I abandoned ship and I am floating. I am falling.
In a small town in Indiana there is a pond where the ducks float on the water. They do not fall. They bob gently. The surface of the water ripples in the chill breeze. The clouds stream in from over Lake Michigan. On the shore of this pond there is a boy who will become an astronaut. He throws small pieces of bread into the water. The ducks paddle over and splash their bills against the surface. Sometimes a piece of bread goes unnoticed. It sucks up water from the lake. Slowly it sinks. Slowly it falls.
The boy was once bitten by a duck and he cried.
The tears gather in the corners of my eyes. When there are enough of them, they break free from my face and float in front of me. They float up to the faceplate. Some bounce off and some stick there. I spin to face Earth again. This time the view is obscured by my tears. They are like dots on the globe marking the cities toward which I am falling. The cities are all very sad. That is why they are marked by tears.
The spaceship comes back into view in time for me to see it explode. It is a bright, silent flash. The body of the ship cracks like a hatching egg, then pieces fly off in every direction. A number of large chunks hurtle toward me. I shield my face with my gloved hands, but the pieces sail past.
I am still breathing. My breath remains loud in my ears, gray on the faceplate. There is a gauge on the suit that tells me how much air I have left. I am not morbid enough to look. I do not need a countdown. A countdown is what brought me here in the first place. Three, two, one, fall.
I can see Earth again. Clouds cast shadows on the ocean. Something floats between me and the planet. I look at it. I look past the tears on the faceplate. It is one of the scientist’s worms. It is what is left of the worm after a fire, two explosions, and explosive decompression. The little body is torn and mangled. It looks like an earthworm on a driveway, run over and dried out by the sun.
The worm moves. It is alive and wiggling. I am not a scientist so I do not know much about worms, but this does not seem right. It wiggles more.
I hold my breath. Something beeps inside my space suit.
The worm is floating toward open space. I do not know the escape velocity for a worm, but I know that this worm is free. It is free of falling. This impossible worm will wiggle into eternity. This worm alone will explore the cosmos and live the places that people dream.
I will not let it.
I will take the worm with me, or be taken with the worm.
I grasp at it with the thick fingers of my glove.
Worm in hand, I float away.