Reactions

The room was well lit and spacious, a welcome change from the cramped capsule that Elric Johnson had lived in for the better part of the past year. It hadn’t helped that men with guns had escorted him directly to a prison cell the moment his thirty-ish million mile journey had come to a sudden and wrenching end.

Considering that the cell had only been marginally bigger than the capsule’s single room, was it any wonder that Johnson was actually happy - elated really - to be in the same room as a tribunal made up of some of the most powerful people in the world? Flash bulbs blinded him, but the white lights were better than gray walls any day.

The gray walls and blinking red lights surrounded him. His only companions. His eternal rivals.

“Start from the beginning, Lieutenant,” the head of the tribunal, an aged man with more hair in his ears than on his head, said into his microphone as press photographers snapped off picture after picture.

“Which beginning, General?” Johnson replied, doing his best to keep the contempt from his voice. The bed that the medical technicians had laid him in propped him up so he could see all three members of the tribunal clearly, and left his back to most of the press so their cameras didn’t distract him.

“Don’t be cute with us, Johnson,” said the woman seated to the general’s right with more than a bit of annoyance creeping into her voice. With her back straight and her clothes cut so precisely to her measurements Johnson couldn’t help but be impressed by her presence. He wondered idly whether she understood the intricacies of the third law.

The blinking light switched on and off every second. On. Off. On. It was his only clock. On. Off. Equal. Opposite.

“No offense intended Madam Secretary,” Johnson bowed his head slightly towards the woman, and risked falling off the bed in his weakened state. A steadying hand from the medic next to him saved his dignity, however. “I merely wish to know what information is needed. Should I start at the beginning of the mission or jump to the accident?”

The general cut off the secretary before she could respond, “The accident, Lieutenant. The particulars of your mission up to that point are very well documented by the recordings in your craft.” That wasn’t a surprise to Johnson even though he hadn’t been sure whether or not the backup discs had been secured safely back when his trip had started. It was best to anticipate the worst whenever possible.

“Yes, sir,” Johnson paused for a moment as if to draw on his memories. “The accident occurred during my team’s dinner break. The three of us were doing an informal debriefing for the day when Captain Victor Martell went to get his water ration.”

The food packet exploded into thousands of goblets of sauce and meat chunks as it hit Johnson’s face, flying in all directions around the cabin. The remains of Victor’s dinner covered everything in splatters of bright red sauce as the blobs of food rebounded around the room. Through the gory meat and sauce Victor’s fist slammed into Johnson’s eye sending him flying across the small room. Although his strength was blunted by the environment, there was nothing for Johnson to steady himself with. The details of the cabin became a flickering blur.

“We weren’t able to determine exactly what caused the malfunction, but the water hose apparently broke above the cut-off valve and flooded most of the mess room before we were able to clamp it.”

The panel buckled as Johnson’s body slammed into it and immediately he felt cold water gushing against his back. The water pushed him back the way he had come through the floating field of saucy blobs that bounced off him and went splattering around the room. The continual push of water at his back pinned him against the wall. Victor was trying to staunch the flow, but was having little success.

“The water filled maybe a quarter of the room before it was clamped off. Due to the nature of weightlessness, however, that essentially filled the compartment with water. It broke down into droplets which floated around the cabin, and it was impossible to breathe without sucking in water or food. That only made the problem of getting out of the room all the more difficult since we obviously couldn’t let the water escape the mess room and wreck havoc on the ship.”

Johnson had to get out. He needed to. The water, turned red from the sauce and meat, was pushing around him and forcing itself into his nose and mouth. He had to escape it. He struggled against Victor’s clawing hands and tried to pull the release switch to open the door. Sparks burned his hands as the buttons on the panel around the release short-circuited. Victor was yelling something about the hatch, but Johnson wasn’t listening.

He needed to get out.

“So, then, how did the water get out, Lieutenant?” the woman asked, the annoyance still plain in her voice.

“Specialist Mironov was running the ship while we were eating, and must have heard the pipe rupture and opened the hatch to help us. By the time she’d realized what was going on most of the water had already escaped the mess hall and was flowing freely throughout the ship. Systems started short circuiting very soon after that.”

Johnson found the release and pulled himself through the door, water flooding out behind him. He drew in deep breaths of air as the water pushed past him down the corridors. Warning sirens went off almost immediately. Victor was screaming something at him, but the water rushing past and the alarm sirens drowned him out. Johnson realized, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the water was heading towards the open cockpit.

“Which systems?” the general asked in a way that suggested he didn’t actually care, but knew the question was expected.

“It’d be easier to state what we didn’t lose, sir,” Johnson replied quickly. “We had a near complete system failure, everything was down in a matter of minutes. In addition, several fires started which we had to deal with rapidly.”

Smoke filled the halls as Johnson pulled himself along. He had to get away from Victor. His eyes burned from the smoke and he tried to find a place to hide from it, but it was literally everywhere - you couldn’t get below smoke when the smoke didn’t differentiate between up and down. He breathed in more smoke than air and could feel his lungs gasping for whatever they could get. Victor pushed past him towards the cockpit, fire extinguisher in hand. Johnson wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Victor curse him. Debra came up behind him and thrust an oxygen mask into his hands.

“What of Beta Team at this time? The system failure must surely have woken up them fairly quickly.

Johnson winced before he responded. The memory of Beta Team was still raw, even a year later. “We didn’t know it yet, but one of the systems that short circuited caused the rest pod to be ejected into space. As you know Beta Team rested while we worked, and we rested while they worked. They were all in the pod when it detached.”

The pod spun quietly, serenely almost, as it drifted slowly away from the main ship. The silhouette of a woman appeared briefly in one of the portholes as Johnson watched. A hand pounded on the window as it slipped out of view, but it would do her no good. The lights on the pod flickered and died as the power cord broke.

The tribunal sat in silence as he shifted uneasily. The stillness in the room was interrupted only occasionally by the sound of cameras, everything else was deadly silent. The rest pod didn’t have its own environment control system; the crew trapped inside wouldn’t have lasted long.

Anger and frustration burned in him as the pod disappeared from sight.

“After the fire,” the general finally said into the silence, his voice soft with a compassion he probably didn’t feel, “what happened?”

“We took stock of the situation and tried to decide what needed to be done in order to get the ship operational again. We established a priority list of what needed to be fixed and Captain Martell and Specialist Martell began repair work.”

Debra Martell looked over her shoulder at Johnson as he turned away. Her eyes radiated sympathy, but her posture said something else entirely. Johnson wasn’t sure which one was what she was really feeling. Maybe it was both. She accompanied her husband to the engine room to start repairs without looking back again.

“And what did you do, Lieutenant?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“I began planning an engine burn that would get us on course towards Earth as soon as we had engine control again.”

“You aborted the mission so quickly? You knew that fast that you couldn’t make it to Mars?” the third member of the tribunal said, breaking his silence for the first time.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. The water had taken out most of our systems and the fires had rendered many of them beyond repair, including our landing control systems and, more importantly, the communications systems. Without contact from Earth we decided that we could not continue the mission safely.”

The communications system sparked a few times as Johnson watched. The wires in his hand sparked, but his palms had already become used to such pain by now. A quick jerk of his wrists and the lights in the panel shorted out.
“We recovered our engine controls fairly quickly and I made the burn less then a day after the accident.”

“The burn was plotted incorrectly, though,” the woman finished for Johnson. He could hear the cameras behind him suddenly snapping off pictures at a much faster rate.

“The plot was correct, Madam Secretary. The problem was in the burn.”

The angle was off. Less than half a degree, but it was off. In deep space, at this range, that tiny bit was more than enough to destroy any hopes of getting home in this ship. Johnson didn’t say a thing to Captain Martell, though. There was no reason he needed to know, since there was nothing that could be done about it, anyway.

“Regardless, you failed to make the appropriate corrections and, as a result, your squad died,” the general cut in, the disapproval in his voice was nothing compared to the pure anger in his eyes. There was nothing worse than failing your teammates as far the general was concerned.

“Yes, sir, that is possible. However, even if we had known there was no way we could have fixed it. Another burn would have done more harm than good, and we had no fine control because of the fire. It is also possible, sir, that the deviation from my plotted course happened later, perhaps due to micro-meteor impacts. We were out there for a very long time before we discovered we were off course.”

The ship rocked as Johnson rebounded off the wall. Victor was screaming at him and it looked as if he might try to punch Johnson again. Debra was tugging on her husband’s arm, which kept him off-balance enough to not do anything. Debra understood the third law better than anyone.

“Did anything of importance happen in the interim between the burn and the discovery of the course deviation?” the chairman asked quietly. He was perhaps the only man in the room not overwhelmed by his own emotions, at that point. He also seemed genuinely interested in the investigation, unlike his fellow tribunal members.

‘The third law,’ Debra was whispering to him in hushed tones while the instructor prattled on about emergency procedures for the space craft, ‘says that for every action,’ she smiled coyly, ‘there is an equal… and opposite… reaction.’ He grinned back at her. If Mironov wouldn’t play, then maybe Debra would.

Johnson looked up at the Secretary and met her squarely in the eyes before answering.

Equal…Debra smiled coyly at him as the ship rocked slightly in the quiet…

She stared back, unmoved by whatever she saw in him.

…Opposite…The room twirled in slow motion as any semblance of control was lost…

His cheeks flushed and Johnson turned away before anyone could notice. That was impossible, of course, with everyone staring at him, but maybe they’d misinterpret it.

… Equal…Debra’s eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow…

“Lieutenant?”

… Opposite … Johnson’s head smacked into the wall. Again. He suspected she was enjoying this more than he was.

“Lieutenant!”

Johnson shook his head, banishing the memory once more. Now was not the time. “Uh, no sir. Nothing of note happened. We rationed off as much as we could and were able to save enough food and water for the return trip.”

Victor was yelling again, he did that a lot lately. There wasn’t enough food for all of them. Johnson’s ration was being cut. He balled his fists, waiting for an opportunity to strike, but Debra was between them and he wouldn’t risk hitting her.

“So you discovered the deviation and then what happened?”

Johnson paused. This was the part of the story he could never really get straight. “Victor, I mean Captain Martell, discovered the problem and began converting the landing module into an escape craft of sorts. However, because of its size we knew that there would only be room for supplies for one person.”

The craft was packed full of supplies and what flight recordings they had been able to recover, even though they were probably damaged. There was almost no food left on the main ship anymore, but that couldn’t be helped. Someone had to get home and report what had happened. Johnson knew it had to be him. They had to know his story.

“And how did you decide who would get into the module?” the general asked. Clearly he thought that sending the Lieutenant instead of the Captain had been a gross mistake.

“Captain Martell decided.”

“He picked you?” the general asked incredulously.

“Yes, sir. I believe Captain Martell did not wish to leave his wife.”

Victor pulled rank and claimed the craft as his own. There wasn’t much Johnson could do at that point, there was no point in arguing. He’d expected Debra to put up more of a fight, though. She just meekly accepted Victor’s decision. Maybe she was feeling the guilt for what they had done. Or maybe that spark in her eyes as she looked at her husband meant something more than it usually did.

Johnson waited patiently for the next question, rehearsing his next couple of answers. The panel seemed to be waiting expectantly for something, however.

The general finally broke the silence. “And what of Specialist Mironov?”

Johnson stared at the general blank-faced for a few moments before regaining his composure. He hadn’t expected that question. “Mironov, sir? I often seem to forget her since she did so little after the accident. She accepted the decision, of course.”

“Easy to forget? Our personnel reports suggest that you two were becoming romantically involved near the end of the training sessions. It was, in fact, one of the deciding factors in picking you two for the mission, I believe.”

“Once in space we didn’t see much of each other and we drifted apart.”

Her slap sent him spinning out of control through the sleeping pod. He’d only asked her to test out some of the theories that he had heard from Debra, but apparently she was still mad at him. He would have to go to the source directly, it seemed.

“After the accident,” the woman said with a disdainful look at the two men and Johnson, “you had lots of time with her, though. Nothing sparked then?”

The pod spun quietly, serenely almost, as it drifted slowly away from the main ship. The silhouette of a woman appeared briefly in one of the portholes as Johnson watched. Johnson involuntarily let go of the release handle that had detached the rest pod. Mironov met Johnson’s eyes just before her porthole drifted out of view. She would have an eternity to think on what might have been, now.
He would never forget the last look in her eyes. Anger and frustration burned in him as the pod disappeared from sight, the last of the lights winked out as the power cord came free.

“No, ma’am. We were too busy surviving. And, as I said, she wasn’t much help with that.”

“So, you got the ticket home and nothing else happened?” the general asked.

“That is correct, sir.”

Debra looked at Johnson for a moment and smiled sorrowfully at him. She whispered something which could have been “I love you” just as easily as it could have been “fuck you.” Then, without warning, she screamed in unintelligible rage and lunged at her husband. A jagged piece of metal that had been torn from one of the damaged computers was in her hands and she was flailing about with it like she intended to murder Victor, and maybe Johnson as well. Her husband intercepted her mad thrusts and was attempting to subdue her when Johnson slipped past them into the landing craft and sealed the hatch behind him. His last view of them before starting the long trip home was of blood spurting from Victor’s neck as Debra placed her bloody hand on the porthole and watched as Johnson started his long journey home.

“Is there anything else you wish to say, Lieutenant?”

“Not at this time, General,” Johnson said as he bowed his head slightly. The tribunal deliberated amongst themselves for a while, but they motioned for him to be released after a minute. There would be more probing questions later, many more, but for now they were done with him. Two men came and placed him on a stretcher and carted him off back to his cell where he would wait to find out what would happen. The director of the Mars Project whispered into his ear after they were out of view of the cameras.

“You did well today, son. Your bravery out there will probably earn you some damned fine medals. You’re a hero; be proud, son.”

The tiny landing craft, packed as it was with supplies, gave Johnson no room to move. And so he sat there watching the black emptiness of space day after day, month after month. As the food dwindled he could move around a bit, but not much. He knew his muscles were going to atrophy quite a bit while he was out here, but that was a hurdle he’d have to jump when he got home. For now he would just rehearse his story.

The gray walls and blinking lights surrounded him. His only companions. His eternal rivals.