Resonance

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I remember reading Carl Sagan’s quote when I was going through enrollment to attend the academy, “We are all made of star stuff” and subconsciously locking that away in my brain. School days were long and dull, most of us were itching to get on a crew and leave the station in search of adventure. When my instructor, Mr. Neeland, started talking about space and the invisible particles that had been discovered, that reminded me of the quote. Maybe the particles were our ancestors… or would one day be our family.

Some of us in the dorm decided to have a cheezy old movie marathon after the week of testing ended. We were 3 weeks from graduating and needed a few days to relax before the last marathon of testing and training arrived. The first movie that was voted on was ‘The Blob’. I only half watched that one, I was so tired that I fell asleep through the middle of it. I woke up to Andre throwing cheez puffs at me. Terrie was giggling and filming the whole event with her holophone.

“Dude… what a waste of snacks…” I groggily brushed the cheese powder off my shirt, and ate a few of the puffs that had landed on my shoulder.

Terrie picked the next movie. ‘Alien’ was one of my favorites. There was a cat in it. One of the tag lines related to how the vacuum of space doesn’t allow for sound to resonate. It matched with everything we learned in the many science classes we had to take to graduate as flight crew. I had heard stories from other students- shared by friends and family who worked on ships, how comets made a shrill screaming noise as they flew past ships, or the eerie whistle of the ice crystals crashing into each other in the Oort Cloud. Maybe it was just ghost stories, fictions to keep kids at home- like the really old stories that would scare children enough to make sure they didn’t stray.

The final few weeks crawled along, we had to wait until the last Thursday of the month to receive our grades and certificates. I made high marks in science and engineering, and passable (just barely) marks in English and structural design. How much English would I need to repair stuff in the engine room anyway?

The ship I was assigned to was named the Persephone. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, she was the goddess of the underworld after all. Andre was assigned to the same ship, he would be working in the research lab though, so I don’t know how often I would see him. I was going to be working in the dungeon, also known as the engineering department. The head mechanical engineer was a short stocky old man. He had very little hair on his head, and copious amounts of hair on his arms and poking out from his shirt collar. We were required to call him Chief. Chief Tarnock. There were two new recruits, me and a very thin and pale graduate named Carter. He also had 4 other maintenance people, they had been working on the Persephone for at least a year, so they knew the expectations. Carl had been there the longest, he was almost as grumpy as Chief, but still had a little bit of humanity to him. Agnes was the second most tenured, I don’t think she was even born with much of a personality. She is blunt and direct, and if you did something wrong, she would make you fix it while telling you what would happen if it failed… In great detail. The other two were hired from the class 5 years before me. Trent and Pete were good guys and knew all the ins and outs of the ship. They were arrogant but didn’t treat Carter and me too terribly. We spent the first several months cleaning pipes…. Mopping hallways…. Lubricating bolts... All the annoying busy work the low man on the totem pole would typically get. Chief would pull us to learn stuff, but he wouldn’t let us actually repair much. I observed how to change out fuel cores, how to charge old cores with the solar cells and how to repair photovoltaic cells in those solar cells. He would only let us practice on (obviously) unrepairable parts, so we ‘didn’t make his job harder’ by breaking functional units. I didn’t get a real chance to change out a fuel core until he had no other choice but to let us both get more hands-on.

Chief was showing us the upgrades to the water filtration system; quick change filter tanks, new valves, and a separate system for distilling water- they always need it in the research department. As he was showing us the distillation tank, the whole ship lurched to the left, causing him to fall into the side of the tank. It was running at close to 60 degrees celsius and burned his hands pretty badly. Carter and I radioed for help and got his hands wrapped before the EMTs rounded the corner where we were.

After he came back from the medical wing, he was even more grumpy, for good reason I guess. He hovered and griped as he watched me change that first fuel core. Said I didn’t level it right, and I was ‘lucky’ I didn’t blow up the whole ship but added ‘good enough for a first time’ after I closed the hatch. He gave both of us more work after that. Moving things, hauling parts, helping Pete, Trent, Agnes, and even Carl install or repair stuff.

When we docked at the Europa station, Chief opted to take an extended vacation. He gave the title of Chief to Carl- who was really not happy about it. He opted to defer to Agnes for direction. She was a great boss, she designed a whole repair and maintenance schedule and gave us tasks that played to our individual strengths- mine being soldering and detailed electronics repair- but that gave me some tasks I was not all that happy to complete. The solar cells were located outside, on the wings. This required putting on a bulky suit, and floating from a tether if I needed to resolder connections or replace components. I really didn’t like being in space. It was stiflingly quiet, like a roar, which always made me feel uneasy.

I had been working on the Persephone for 4 years and had gotten used to the routine of my weeks, check forward components on Monday, med bay Tuesday, research wing Wednesday, security station Thursday, power bank and solar panels Friday… fairly boring but I liked it. We had been sent on a course to survey Pluto and its moon Charon. I had to go out suited up to change the sensitivity of the solar cells because we were so far away from the sun. We were in a stationary orbit around the two planetoids when I got ready to go out on the left wing. Agnes usually chose to supervise me, she was great at responding to sudden changes and I truly did trust her with my life every time I went out on a space walk. I locked my helmet in place and she checked over the linkages at my wrists and ankles- two spots that could lead to a catastrophic failure and kill someone if they weren’t sealed properly. She had told Carter and I over and over all the different ways someone could die if their suit failed. She nodded and said I looked like I was ready for yet another space walk. I half smiled and asked if anyone is ‘ever really ready’ to float in the black vacuum of space. She shook her head and chuckled.

“I don’t know about you sometimes, you’re too young to be this sarcastic, kid.” She called all of us some variation on kid- sonny, kiddo, bud, etc. She sat down at the monitoring station and hit the button to open the inner door of the airlock. I walked into the airlock, holding my tether like a leash. She closed the hatch behind me with that same button and started the countdown to open the outer hatch. I clipped the backup carabiner into the heavy metal D ring and double-checked my tool pouch. The countdown hit zero and a green light flicked on inside the airlock as the outer door slowly opened. I started floating as the gravity assisting mechanisms were turned off to allow me to sort of swim along the side of the ship. I reached the first set of solar cells and clipped my primary carabiner to the large metal D ring nearby before digging through my tool pouch for the star head screwdriver I usually used to adjust the sensitivity on the cells. I opened the panel on the side of the cell housing and carefully lined up the head of the screwdriver with the set screw. I was slowly working and focused on watching the sensors change as I turned the screw and thought I heard Agnes speak to me through my headset.

“What? Agnes repeat?” I paused to hear her better.

“Uh, I didn’t say anything kiddo, I’ve been sitting here reading while you’ve been playing outside.”

“I must have zoned out then, never mind.” I got back to work.

“.....DON'T”

There it was again. The voice rattled around inside my headset that time. A harsh whisper. Loud enough to almost make me let go of my screwdriver. I looked around, thinking maybe someone else came out to work on something nearby. I didn’t see anyone, even the planetoids were so far away I wouldn’t have heard anything echoing from the surface. I had two more cells to adjust and I was done. I shifted my weight to slide forward and

“DON’T”

The word rattled my whole helmet… and made my breath catch in my chest. I stopped moving and looked around again… “Who… who’s there?”

“You…sssshouldn’t be herrrrreeee…”

The voice felt like venom in my ears… it made me almost feel nauseous and I quickly jammed the screwdriver back into my tool pouch as I backed up toward the open airlock hatch.

“Agnes… Agnes come in, I need to come back inside” I know my voice was cracking and trembling but I didn’t really care, there was no way I was staying out there with… whatever that was.

“I always tell you kids to use the toilet before you go outside to play.” She sounded more and more like my mom the longer I worked with her. I didn’t even know if she had kids, or a family… she never talked about anything except the ship and our work.

“Just let me in..” I pulled my tether in behind me as I waited for her to hit the button and repressurize the airlock.

The primary carabiner was still outside of the airlock when she hit the button so it set off an alarm. The door slid back open, and the airlock was suddenly filled with something very dark, it blocked my vision and forced me up against the ceiling of the airlock.

“YOU SSSSHOOOULLLDN’T BE HEERRRRE” It sounded like the voice was inside my skull, breathing through my lungs, pumping blood with my heart.

“AGNES!! HELP…..” I blacked out and woke up in the med bay.