Lover's Rock

Lovers' Rock

By

Dan L



My fingers tingled from the cold thick multilayered glass. The harsh vacuum of the space swallowed our small capsule of light and warmth as we sailed far beyond the orbit of Saturn. I looked beyond the panes to Halley's Comet, close enough, clear enough now without the aid of magnification.

"Time check." Ellen's voice broke through the chill of mortality that settled in my chest. With a flick of a wrist, I spun slowly in the microgravity. Her halo of tawny locks, left to grow wild, waved like living question marks as we played the game again.

"Time check. How long do you think it has been?" I waited until she looked over her shoulder.

"No more testing after this, I promise." I smiled. We avoided marking another last time.

"Don't know - about thirty minutes," a safe open gambit.

"You can do better than that." Her head snapped back to the screen and rolled gently in rejection, hands posed above the keyboard waiting valid input.

I tried to focus, for her. "I'd say twenty-two minutes."

"Ha!" She clicked the data into the spreadsheet. "More like thirty-seven, to be precise."

My interest in science and deep space experiments faded long ago. I wanted to caress her - bring her close to me. But if six years sharing this great adventure gone haywire taught me anything, it was that interruptions to Ellen's experiments annoyed and distracted from the moments we shared. I waited for her to finish.

"Elastic Time Perception Score: one point six eight one eight one." Click, click, click, click - like the ticking of an old fashioned clock. "The further we go beyond from the Sun, the wider the perception versus actual time becomes." She banged the enter key and swiped the touch pad to send the data on its ninety plus minute journey back to the Deep Space Network on Earth.

But I was on to her game. She was the strong one, wanting to protect me, convince me that we had more time, beyond our appointment with history that grew closer by eighteen thousand meters per second. I think she wanted to convince herself too. So we played these games with time to make this last day stretch as long as it could.

She turned toward me, rotating counter clockwise. I tapped my foot against a bulk hold to match her orientation. A smile flickered to answer my own. Good. She was done with her work. After our decision to intercept Haley's Comet became known, the pleas for interviews washed in from all the colonies as well as Earth proper. The entire solar system tuned in to our every utterance, dispatch, message, or image intended or unintended. Ellen had become a celebrity and answered as many as she could. It kept her busy I guess.

"By the calculations, we've six plus hours until impact to cram into the three and a half hours between your ears."

"At this point, that's almost another whole life time."

"Are you finished programming the instrument sequence?" She wiggled against her work platform and intercepted me as I drifted toward her Nav Com station.

"Yeah, it'll downstream live video as we approach, automatically shifting the focus and field to keep the audience at the edge of their seats. Once you finish your research transmissions that'll leave enough bandwidth for quite a show."

"Something else for them to watch besides what we'll be doing." Her nose crinkled, probably recalling the in cabin cameras and microphones we'd torn out long ago. I looked over her shoulder to the display of the ship's narrow field camera. The fuzzy little ball I looked at from the view port ballooned into an odd potato shaped pock marked rock veiled in gossamer haze. She tilted up from my chest where she' been nuzzling and touched my stubbly cheek. I submerged into her soft brown eyes.

"Gotta go sometime." She said and she gently squeezed my shoulder.

"Gotta go somewhere." I pulled her tight now; the lonely ache of my lost soul exposed before her, my love, my goddess.

"Better than having Worlds Enquire dedicate an issue to our frozen remains." She whispered.

"Or be displayed in acrylic crypts as the first mummies from space."

"Death locked in a lover's embrace." Her voice trembled. No, not yet – it was my turn to be strong.

"Hey. What's for dinner?" I lessened my hold back down to a warm cuddle. The food reserves were almost exhausted but there was enough left for today.

Our exploration trip was supposed to have taken thirty one months from Mars to Jupiter and back. A Coronal Mass Ejection fried the main Nav computer and power generation circuit at the worst possible time. We missed the burn for insertion into Jupiter's orbit. Since then, we'd rebuilt and reinstalled the software and equipment. Ellen ran the remaining fuel and power consumption figures. There was only one possible body of consequence to intercept. Four years past Jupiter, somewhere beyond Saturn, Halley's Comet gave us something to aim for and build between us.

"You're just interested in dessert," she said as her thigh caressed mine.

"Let's shower first," I said. Her nose twitched a little. She preferred to save the water reserves until after dessert as she called it. "How about a shower before and after?" Her eyebrows shot up at the thought of wasting resources but then the flicker of resignation spread into an impish grin and a nod.

"Sure, why not."

The shower was too small to use at the same time but we reached in and scrubbed the other's itchy backs refusing to be separated. The love we made, both playful and despairing, warred against reality in our promises of forever. As sweet and intense as I'd ever experienced, but as much as I wanted to bury my heart, my love deeply within Ellen's hungry yielding flesh: that too came and passed. Graduation Day had arrived and I was scared.

After a second shower, freshened and dried, we moved to the food lockers. Ellen opened the Agra door to collect the reserved two tomatoes from spindly vines and plucked the remaining handful of leaf lettuce. I opened the pantry.

We each kept a box of private stock. I stored away a couple of items for our graduation supper, chocolate and grape juice. That didn't sound so great together but Ellen would have a proper dessert after providing me with so many. Grape juice wasn't as good as wine, but represented its beginning. We needed all the beginnings we could muster. She giggled at my treasure and opened up her box to reveal a double packet of lasagna.

"My favorite."

"No expense was spared for this rendezvous with our Lovers' Rock."

"I bet they rename it. That - or the Lovers' Comet."

"Lovers' Rock sounds more permanent. That's what I've been calling it in the dispatches. It's catching on."

"Poor Sir Halley's probably rolling in his grave."

"Well, we're more intimately involved. It was just numbers to him."

The food was excellent. I was full for the first time since leaving Mars. She queued up the music and video show so we wouldn't pay attention to the inexorable creep of the comet across our port window horizon. The noise of small grains impacting the hull drew me to the view port. I was shocked at how large it'd grown. Ellen drifted up behind me, her arms wrapping around my waist spooning behind me.

The ship buffeted as we entered the corona. The rough cratered surface raced toward us like the effect of a high powered zoom camera. I turned to Ellen.

"I thought …"

"Shhhhhhh," she said, lips pursed in invitation. I leaned into her loving face.

And then … it happened.

People with so much time still ahead misunderstand that moment when life flashes before your eyes. Now caught up within it, instead of a sudden instant, time stops and the whole of one's existence rolls out before like a carpet with its interesting patterns, worn grooves and unfortunate stains. I can see it clearly – the choices and accidents that accumulate to create the sense of a unique life. And there before me at the archway between dark and light, I see her lips just touching mine - a kiss that lasts forever.