At first Victor thought little of the pain in his back. After five months of traveling in the quickship, unexplained aches and pains had become second nature. His muscles were atrophying, his bones were weakening; dull aches were to be expected. But then the backache worsened and became so excruciating at times that it felt like a knife stabbing and twisting inside him. It came in waves, and no matter how Victor positioned his body in the quickship, the pain continued. Then the pain spread to his side and groin. Then blood appeared in his urine, and he knew he was in trouble.
All symptoms pointed to kidney stones. His bones were becoming osteoporotic and the released calcium was coalescing in the kidneys. Sleep was difficult. He felt anxious and nauseated and worried about being sick in his helmet. He drank lots of water, but it didn't help. He had brought a few mild pain meds, but he had taken those months ago to get through a few days of migraines. Now he cursed himself. The migraines were a gentle kiss on the cheek compared to this.
After three days, he worried that the stone might be too big to pass, and he wondered what would happen if that were the case. Would he get an infection? Could it kill him? Would Earth never receive warning because of a stupid clump of crystallized calcium?
He passed it on the fourth day, and the pain was so unexpectedly searing and intense that for a moment he thought he was dying. When it was over, he fell instantly asleep, exhausted.
He continued to drink a lot of water over the next few weeks, but it didn't stop him from having stones. He passed four in all. None of them were as painful as the first, but they all left him anxious and restless. He was now keenly aware of the fact that his body was deteriorating, and he constantly worried about a dozen other ailments that might afflict him at any moment. His bone density was his primary concern. Would the weight of his own body break his legs when he stood on Luna? Gravity on Luna was only a fraction of what it was on Earth, but perhaps it would be enough to overstress his weakening bones. Then there was the issue of his appetite. It had greatly diminished recently. Was he malnourished? And what about his heart? It was weakening, too. Would it give out before he reached the Moon? And what about radiation? Was the shield holding? He needed to strengthen it, he realized. He needed to add another plate to the exterior. He was sure he'd get cancer if he didn't.
Victor entered the commands in his handheld to initiate deceleration. The ship had been moving at a constant, high velocity for months, and if he maintained that speed and went outside, the ship would appear to him as if it wasn't moving at all since he would be moving at the same velocity. But going outside at a high velocity was risky. He'd expose himself to gamma radiation and the threat of micrometeoroids. Getting hit by a tiny rock particle would likely be fatal. Victor couldn't take that risk. Not with so much at stake. It would be safer to decelerate and repair the shields at a full stop. He'd add a lot of time to his trip, yes, and he wouldn't reach Luna as quickly as he had hoped, but he felt the extra shielding and precautions were worth the delay.
It took the ship almost two full days to decelerate. Victor didn't want to rush the process and put any undue burden on his body, weak as it was, so he had slowed the ship gradually. When it had reached a full stop, he detached his air hose and screwed a canister of oxygen into the back of his suit. Next came his tool belt, which he fastened around his waist. Then he opened the hatch and crawled outside. Using the handholds recessed into the hull, Victor pulled himself toward the back of the ship to check how the rear plates were holding up. His hand slipped from one of the handholds, and Victor instinctively reached for the safety cable fastened to his chest harness to steady himself.
Only the safety cable wasn't there.
In his haste to come outside he had forgotten to anchor himself to the ship.
Victor clawed at the hull, trying to get purchase, desperate to stop himself, but his body was in motion now, moving toward the rear of the ship, and he had already passed the last handhold. His bulky gloves slipped along the metal surface, stopping on nothing. He was screaming now, his voice hoarse and cracked from lack of use. He was slipping down the side of the ship. There was nothing to grab. He was going to die.
Then he saw it ahead of him. A tube of some sort, a small metal pipe at the back corner of the ship. Beyond it was space. If he missed it, he was gone. He would drift until he ran out of air. He approached the pipe, and just before he reached it he knew he wouldn't be able to grab it. It was too far away, just beyond the reach of his fingers.
In a single swift movement, his hand whipped to his tool belt and came back with a long wrench that he reached out and hooked around the pipe at the last possible moment, stopping himself. His heart was pounding. His breathing was labored. The wrench's hold on the pipe was slight and precarious. It could easily slip off. He gently pulled and drew himself back to the ship.
The wrench slipped from the pipe, but he was moving in the right direction now. He slowly drifted toward the cockpit, climbed inside, and fastened the safety cable onto his harness. He cursed himself for being so stupid. He had come all this way, risked his life, with intelligence that the whole world needed to see, and he nearly ruined it all by failing to fasten a single metal ring to his harness. Brilliant, Victor. Real genius.
With the cable secured, he returned outside, checked the plates, found them in order, but then decided to install the spare plates anyway on top of the existing ones. Might as well. The spares weren't doing any good inside the ship. Besides, he needed the labor. He needed to occupy his mind with work for a little while. He had built and engineered every day of his life since becoming Father's apprentice, and the past five months had been nothing but mind-numbing idleness.
When he finished the installation, he resealed the seams twice to be sure they would hold. He knew he was stalling. The seals were fine. He simply didn't want to get back in the ship.
Eventually, he returned to the cockpit. His hand lingered on the hatch for a moment before he closed it, his eyes scanning the expanse of space above him. He was only a few months away from Luna. He could endure this a little longer. He sealed the hatch and began to accelerate. The computer reconfigured his flight path to account for the delay and revised the time of arrival, putting him at Luna three weeks later than originally expected. Victor felt like hitting something. Three weeks. That was much longer than he had anticipated. But it was too late now. What's done is done, he thought. Sighing, he sat motionless in the flight seat as the quickship
picked up speed.
*
A month later a feeling of hopelessness overcame Victor. He felt certain he was off course. Or the computer had a glitch in it. Or he was running short of air. He kept catching himself staring at nothing. Food lost all appeal. His sense of taste was gone. Or maybe the proteins in the food had broken down so much from radiation that the food no longer had any taste to deliver. Either way, he had no appetite. He lost weight. His wrists and ankles felt thin and flimsy. He had brought rubber strips for resistance exercises, which he had been doing religiously every day since setting out. Now he ignored all exercise. Why bother? Little good it was doing. His bones were probably twigs at this point. He had struggled for months with insomnia. Now he seemed to sleep all the time. He hadn't touched his handheld in days. There were books he had started and hadn't finished, puzzles he had left unsolved. He didn't care.
A hand was gently shaking his shoulder, rousing him from sleep. Alejandra was beside him, wearing the pristine and pressed white gown. She smiled at him and folded her arms across her chest. "You're losing your mind, Vico. You're psychologically frito. You've been cooped up in this thing so long and your sleep is so unregulated that you're only sane when you're dreaming."
Victor's voice was dry and frail, and the sound of it surprised him. "Am I dreaming?" He looked around him. Everything seemed normal. The instruments. The equipment. The air tanks.
"You won't find any pink elephants, if that's what you're looking for," said Alejandra. "I'm here. That should be evidence enough for you." She sat down in front of him, with her legs bent demurely to the side. "You've stopped exercising and eating. Have you looked at yourself? You're wasting away to nothing."
"I don't have a mirror."
"Probably best. You'd break it. Also, you need a haircut."
"I'm going crazy, aren't I?"
She ticked off his problems on her fingers. "Severe anxiety. Depression. You're ignoring life-sustaining food and exercise. Your sleep patterns are completely out of whack. You can't think straight, and you're talking to a dead person."
"It's a very good choice of dead person. That should win me some points."
She rolled her eyes. "Isabella gave you pills to help regulate your sleep. Why did you stop taking them?"
"I don't like taking pills. I like being in control."
"You're not in control. That's the problem, Vico Loco. You're not yourself. If you're not careful they'll throw you in a padded room when you reach Luna. It won't take much to convince them. They'll already think you're crazy for flying from the Kuiper Belt in a quickship. As soon as you start yapping about aliens, their suspicions will be confirmed. You need to be a model of sanity, Vico. Looking like you do now isn't going to help."