Evolution Rising
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. It was the standard hazing line whispered to every space rookie right before their first spacewalk. There was an initiation ritual that went along with it, a rite of passage before you could officially be called an astronaut. But modern-day commanders frowned on that sort of thing. Ever since one particularly odious rookie suffered a heart attack during his first walk. It didn’t matter that the kid was an utter pussy whose wealthy father had bribed the academy to pass him, and had no business being off-planet. After that, the leadership declared space travel to be perilous enough without your fellow crewmates trying to haze you for entertainment, and outlawed the practice. Colonel Roger Benson still remembered his own hazing. It had taken him a solid week to get the smell out of his spacesuit. The saying was true, both literally and figuratively. After all, he’d been standing here screaming into his helmet for the last half hour and no one noticed.
