Wallflower

Mother Sun and her nine daughters spin around each other in a nonstop whirligig, gravity and momentum providing the backbeat. It seems chaotic until you zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Every dancer on the floor has their place, knows their moves. It’s as graceful and beautiful as a roomful of Viennese Waltzers. There is a system—a solar system.

Within the movement, there is stillness. Eddies in space where gravity and spin cancel each other out. They’re called Lagrange Points. There are five of them, positioned precisely halfway between Daughter Earth and Mother Sun. Put an object there—a satellite, meteoroids rich in rare metals, a mining scow like the one I fly—and it stays put, a wallflower at the cosmic dance.

The trouble starts when you can’t get out again.

‘You’ve rotated the manoeuvring thrusters?’

‘Yep.’

‘Cycled the main drive?’

‘First thing I tried.’

‘Restart from cold? Do a hard ramp to full thrust? Could be you’re just not pushing fast enough to break the gravity lock.’

I sigh, tapping at the drive control panel in front of me, taking another bleak look at the figures which sprung up.

‘Not enough fuel. If I shut the motor down, I don’t have the reaction mass to bring it back up.’

Silence on the other end of the line. The green comms light stutters for a moment. Please gods no. If the connection to Inspace Command dies, if they lose the trace to my beacon—

I swallow the bubble of terror rising in my chest. Calm, Channie Ross, calm. You’ve been through worse.

‘OK,’ says the IC operator, snapping me out of my reverie. His voice sounds strange. Strained. ‘OK, I— remind me about your life support status again?’

Uh-oh. Dude already had all my numbers. First thing I did when I realised I was stuck in the L5 Lagrange point was transmit my current stats to the receiver arrays parked at L4, the other main Earth-Sun stable zone. IC could take that data, feed it into a simulation of my ship and see what’s happening in real time.

Dude knows exactly how much air and power I have.

Dude is stalling.

‘I’m good for 36 hours. If I go down to essentials only, maybe two days.’

‘48 hours.’ He makes a sound, like a dry swallow. I can faintly hear other murmurs through his mike. He isn’t just talking to me.

‘Closer to 44. This was supposed to be a quick payday. Grab a few hunks of flying ore, get back before the bars on Moonbase Alpha close. I didn’t pack for a long stay.’

Some low mumbles on the comm. The green light flickers again.

‘OK. I—look, there’s no sugar coating this, Mz—Ross, is it?’

My stomach knots. ‘Call me Channie. If the news is what I think, we should be on first name terms.’

‘Channie. I’m Nate. OK, it’s this bad. Our sims failed to come up with any solution you haven’t already tried. We’re scrambling a heavy lifter with enough push to get you out of L5, but it’s going to take time. The fastest we can get to your location, cutting every corner, is— is 56 hours.’

Nate keeps talking, explaining how a safe mining zone had somehow turned into treacherous quicksand—blah blah solar flare, yak yak once-in-a-century anomaly, hab lab Sargasso Event. I stop listening. It’s information I don’t need. My focus is on how to stay alive for 12 hours longer than the cold numbers allow.

Think, Channie. Think. Shunt the things away which can’t help you. Grab onto what’s left.

‘Nate.’ He’s still grinding through his script, but falters and stops at my word. ‘44 hours. 42 before I stop properly functioning through cold, hunger, oxygen debt. I’m going to start working on options. Do me a favour and get the big brains hunkered up behind you doing the same. Keep cutting corners on that lifter launch. And hey. Nate.’

‘I’m here, Channie.’

‘Stay on the line. I could use the company.’

I waste an hour on a complete emotional breakdown. Crying, screaming, thrashing, begging, letting it all out, leaving nothing behind. The terror of death, the despair, the regrets, all the what-ifs and why-didn’t-I’s vomited out and left to dry up and blow away. No room for that shit. No time. I make sure to mute comms for that bit. No need to subject poor sweet Nate to my meltdown.

Of course, all that noise and effort puts a dent in the amount of available oxygen. I should be keeping still and breathing shallow.

Sadly, not an option.

I boil the problem down to a basic dilemma. I am in a ship which cannot move. Too heavy, underpowered engines, not enough fuel. If I stay with the scow, I’ll die before help can reach me.

‘Which means,’ I tell Nate, ‘I have to suit up and fly away.’ My scow is small, basic, no frills. But I had the sense to tuck a good EVA suit into a spare corner. Armoured, independently powered. Most importantly, it has self-contained life support which extend my chances. Not enough for me to sit tight and wait for the lifter to arrive, though.

‘But who says I have to stay put?’

Nate’s quiet. The murmur behind him has sharpened to a buzz.

‘Come on, lads, this is simple stuff. Mass times acceleration with the right ratio equals escape velocity. I’m much, much lighter than the scow. If I can rig up a small engine and hang onto it, I get me the punch I need to break free of the gravity well and meet the lifter as it flies in. All you need to do is tell me how to detach one of the manoeuvring thrusters and find a way to bolt it to the suit.’

The buzz builds. ‘In, well, 38 hours.’

Time flies by when you’re the driver of an ad-hoc rocket-powered spacesuit. Driver, builder, engineer. The day-and-a-bit allowed to me blasts past in a spindizzy of work. Get the thruster unhooked from the scow. Work out how to control it from the suit. Jam it with enough fuel so I can go fast enough, hard enough to break free from the pull of the Lagrange Point. Most importantly, strap the motor to the suit securely enough so when I light the touchpaper it doesn’t just fly off and leave me behind.

And the clock ticks and the energy and effort I expend burns through the oxy and power I have to live on. I have to retreat to the suit two hours before we’d scheduled. There’s nothing left to breathe in the scow.

All that work brings us here, Nate and I. He murmurs in my ear, calm as ever, while I dangle gracefully outside the ship, a gibbon in armour hogtied to a giant cartoon firework. A countdown to thrust commit from the motor peeps sweetly in the background.

‘The lifter failed on the launch pad, but we could re-route a faster ship to loop round to you, once we knew it didn’t have to breach L5’s gravity envelope. It’s on time, on target. As long as everything else works, you’ll meet it before the suit gives out.’

‘What could go wrong? I’m bolted into a rushed botch job lashed together with whatever I could get my hands on after 45 hours without sleep or rest, all powered by a nuclear-fuelled rocket. I’m not worried at all.’

Nate chuckles, as much to keep my spirits up as anything. ‘Well, as long as you’re confident.’

‘Serious as murder, Nate my boy.’

‘Listen. When you hit the rendezvous.’ He puts a light stress on the when, bless his heart. ‘It’s a freighter, full of food and drink supplies for the Moonbases. I’ve told the pilot to break out a bottle of something expensive and warming for you. Don’t drink it all, though. Save a shot or two for me. I’d like to say hi in person.’

‘That’s nice. I promise nothing when it comes to booze, though. I’ve worked up a mighty thirst.’

He snorts, and I conjure up an image of how he looks smiling. It helps with the gnaw of fear in my gut. ‘Guess that first round’s on me, then.’

‘No. I’m buying. Couldn’t have done this without you.’

The countdown chirps more loudly. The firecracker on my back starts to thrum and quiver.

‘That’s my ride. Gotta go.’

‘See you in the bar, flygirl.’

‘Laters, Naters.’ A shudder runs through the motor as fuel hits the reaction chamber. I feel a deep rumble vibrate through the suit. Seconds to go.

I look up and out, at the star-spattered black ahead, and think about the planets pirouetting in their unending waltz. I’m no wallflower. It’s time to get back on the floor.

The thruster fires.

Let’s dance.