A Scream in Space

         Some old movie once said that in space no one can hear you scream. They were right, and so space was perfect for me.
         I went out in my suit, nothing between me and oblivion but the thing fabric and insulation. I would go out onto the deck, looking at the stars stretching all around me and I would scream. I would turn off my microphone of course, we weren’t supposed to, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
         That was my problem, ever since I could remember I had dreams of being something fantastic. For a time it seemed as if those dreams might come true.
         Instead I got to watch as all of my dreams were destroyed one by one.
         I’m not blaming anyone for this except myself, I failed my life, no one else did.
         It had all started out so nice. In high school I was doing good, getting good grades, not on the honor roll, but most people generally acknowledged that I was of above average intelligence.
         My social life left something to be desired of course.
         It wasn’t that I spent all of my time studying, it was that I had nothing else to do. No one ever invited me to parties, and when I tried to fit in with the crowd I mostly got ignored.
         University was going to be different, in University I was going to be someone.
         It seemed to have some hope of coming true. I met a girl, we got close, and then the year ended and she never called me back.
         The next year started the same as ever, only this time I was in the city. I didn’t know anyone, I had lots of relatives in the city, and somehow they never called me or seemed to remember I existed though.
         In all I was as alone as anyone could be. My immediate family tried to help me out, but they never knew what was happening.
         They would give me some money, it would be enough to buy some food, or maybe some clothes, but never enough to fix all of my troubles.
         It wasn’t their fault, they weren’t exactly well off themselves. No one is perfect, someone has to get the dregs at the bottom of the barrel.
         That someone seemed to be me, and the only person I could blame for being so late in coming to the bar was myself.
         I ended up coming into space, not as a pilot or a scientist as I had dreamed, instead as a piece of human waste, an expendable piece of flotsam sent up to mine an asteroid for valuable and rare ores.
         The pay was amazing, if I lived to use any of it. The work wasn’t technically difficult since we were in the asteroid’s extremely weak gravity, even massive blocks of iron weighed almost nothing.
         Each night when everyone else was sleeping I would come out onto this deck, where I could stand and look at all of the stars, and I would scream as loudly as I could, for as long as I could.
         No one ever heard, no one ever knew, it was between God and me.
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         Asteroid mining wasn’t an easy task. Sure you were working only in the weak gravity of an asteroid, where even solid stone was ridiculously light, but that was also the problem.
         You see on Earth you take a step and you know exactly where your next step is going to land, because it happens at most one second later.
         On the asteroid your next step might not happen for minutes, sometimes even hours, depending on how rowdy you are.
         Some people get too over zealous and end up suspended, almost in orbit for hours on end, hours for which they do not get paid.
         Everyone learns how to move on the asteroid surface pretty quick.
         In free-fall, such as in orbit around the Earth, you can simply rope yourself to the vehicle or station that you are roaming about on and then have no worries.
         On the asteroid where you might have to walk ten miles, you don’t have that luxury. Instead you learned quickly how to control your movements, how to step slowly and gently enough so that you don’t propel yourself right off of the surface and possibly right off the asteroid.
         I was about the same as everyone, I wish that I could say that I was a natural, but I wasn’t, I spent some “unpaid vacation time” up above the asteroid before I finally got my space feet.
         Walking was difficult at times but nothing could have prepared me for the trouble that mining on an asteroid is.
         An object at rest, tends to stay at rest, an object in motion, tends to stay in motion, Newton right?
         We get to know Mr. Newton very well up here.
         We start moving ores that would weight several tons on earth, a small explosion starts them moving and we guide them into the correct location on the ore train, which catches them and then eventually drops them onto Earth.
         Sounds simple, but it is a lot harder when you actually try it.
         None of the ores are perfect, if they were all perfect disks then maybe it would be a bit easier.
         While I’m wishing I could also use a billion dollars.
         Instead each explosion effects each ore differently, sometimes they start going too high, or too far one way or the other. Then we have to manually fire small jets to get it moving in the correct trajectory.
         As you may have noticed, we aren’t perfect either though, sometimes we burn too long and end up on a whole new trajectory which can cause us all sorts of grief, one time an ore even bumped into the barracks where we sleep.
         Luckily the handlers had got it slowed down enough that it did minimal damage but the threat is still there.
         We knew it was a dangerous gig, so we all followed the protocols to the letter, none of us wanted to die.
         I think.
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         It wasn’t a bad place to work and it kept me out of trouble, while I was up there I couldn’t buy anything, or go out and wreck the car, I was pretty much stuck with what the asteroid gave me.
         Each night there was a get together in the mess hall. There was free drinks and food, they just took out a general “sociable” fee from the paycheck.
         You could attend if you wanted to, or not, it was entirely up to you, either way the fee was taken out, so you might as well come and get some socializing in.
         That was the argument that I used to finally get myself off of my ass and go out. I had been idle too long.
         I didn’t know if I was ready, wounds of the heart heal slow, and truth be told I was scared. I don’t know what exactly I was scared of, but something scared me as I walked in and saw all of those faces.
         Now I don’t think of myself as an antisocial person. I like joking around and having fun with others.
         It’s just the beginning phase, actually meeting other people, especially when I have no one to introduce me.
         Beginning phases like this one, where everyone in the place is almost a stranger.
         I go to the bar and order a beer, smiling at a pretty woman who happened to be sitting near where I ordered.
         I was tempted to use that old cliché, “come here often?” but wisely decided against it since there was nowhere else to go in the mining colony.
         Instead I used a bit of tact, “looks lively tonight doesn’t it?” smiling at her in a way I hoped she could find endearing.
         She laughed and flipped her long red hair back slightly, “actually I was just thinking that tonight it seems rather quiet, yesterday was much louder. I think I prefer the quiet times though.”
         I had to laugh a little, “it’s actually my first time here.” I blushed madly and turned my face away, hoping that she wouldn’t see.
         I think that this is what I was afraid of, just being a general idiot.
         I was sure that she was thinking that I was a complete and utter waste of flesh when she suddenly said, “Do you want to get out of here?”
         I couldn’t have been more relieved, I smiled and tried to sound like this sort of thing always happened to me, “Sure want to roam about for a bit?”
         She smiled and I could feel my heart yearning for her. A shudder racked my entire body as if I had just stepped out onto the asteroid’s surface unprotected. I tried to hide it, I don’t know how successful I was, and all I knew was that I was worried now.
          “I would love to, roam as you called it,” she laughed then and I laughed to, ignoring my shudder before I held out my arm for her to take and then led her out of the mess hall.
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         The barracks are divided up into sections. One section is devoted to the mess hall, one for sleeping, one for the gear, one for cleaning and getting ready to go outside.
         The sleeping hall is further divided into two parts, most of it is just a mass sleeping arrangement where everyone sleeps on small cots just like in the military, there is no privacy except for a storage locker which is your own private space.
         The other, much smaller part of the sleeping hall is the private rooms, these are simple rooms, basically just four walls and a bed, but they serve their purpose and are decidedly better for intimate encounters than the cots.
         We walked past these rooms with only a wistful sigh passing from my lips, she didn’t seem to notice it thankfully.
          “What brought you up here?” she asked me, her tone changing in a charming fashion.
         I shrugged, “I wasn’t having much luck doing anything else, my parent’s figured it would be a good way of keeping me out of trouble while still making a buck or two, how about you?”
         Looking at her as I asked the question I immediately regretted giving her so much information. Her face had a mixture of pity and annoyance on it.
         She shrugged then and answered me, “Basically it was the same with me, my parent’s thought it would be better than jail, if I had stayed Earthbound that is likely where I would have ended up.”
          “Really? I never would have pictured you in jail.”
         She looked at me and smiled, “Maybe not, but then you have only known me for about ten minutes.”
         I laughed and looked down, blushing slightly, “Touché madamoiselle, avoir pitie de moi.”
         She moaned a little, “Mmmmm, parles francais monsieur?”
          “Non madamoiselle.”
         We both began to laugh so hard that I had to reach out to the wall to stop us both from falling right over. This left her up against the wall with me close in front of her, looking into her brown eyes.
         The laughter died away but our smiles stayed. I knew what had to come next, it was ridiculous but it had to happen.
         I leaned forward to touch my lips to hers, all the while thinking, ‘Oh my God what if she has a boyfriend, I could be a dead man,’ but not letting that thought affect me in any way.
         The kiss was soft and I could feel the heat rising in both of us as it lasted.
         She put her arms around my neck, pulling me closer to her, I put one arm around her waist, with my other arm I gently stroked the back of her neck.
         I didn’t even notice the guys walking by until one of them yelled out, “Get a room you two!”
         I tried to not laugh, really I did, but it was a hopeless case and soon both of us were laughing again.
         I took her hand and pulled her away from the wall saying, “I know a place where we can go.”
          “Not the rooms is it?”
         I just smiled, “No,” then mischievously added, “Maybe later,” and winked at her.
         She laughed and smacked me.
          “I’m going to take you to a little place that I go to a lot.”
         I didn’t mention that we would have to suit up just to get there.
         Oops.
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         Air on the asteroid was made from gases that were taken from comets. Years before the mining started comets were directed onto the asteroid’s surface so that when the time to mine came there would be an ample supply of gases.
         The result was better than expected. There was so much gas that even if the mining would take a hundred years there would be air to spare. This meant that we had extra air should we want to go outside in our spare time.
         Most people didn’t take this opportunity. They preferred to stay inside where it is safe and warm.
         I preferred going outside into the most hostile environment that man has ever conquered.
         It was this hostile place that I took her out into.
          “I’ve never been outside like this before, it’s always been with a full crew, I’m scared,” she whined slightly, but it wasn’t an annoying whine, in fact it made me like her a bit more.
         The air lock began cycling out, slowly draining the air away from around us. Our suits billowed out under the lack of pressure. She jumped a bit when the air lock dinged its readiness.
         The noise was in our radios of course, since sound cannot travel through empty space.
         The door opened silently, leaving nothing between us and the desolate landscape outside.
         I took a step forward, deciding that ‘ladies first’ might not be the best chivalry at this time. Moving two steps out of the door I turned back to her and reached out my hand.
         I could see her face clearly through the visor and I knew that she was scared, terrified even.
          “It’s okay, we won’t go far, but truly, it’s like nothing you have ever seen, it’s so much nicer this way, away from all the lights and noise of the mines.”
         She remained in the doorway, her fear now turning her face a deathly shade of white.
          “You have to trust me, just take a few steps out with me, we don’t even have to stay out for five minutes.”
         She finally realized that nothing short of complete refusal would dissuade me from my goal of getting her out there, so she finally took those two steps to me.
         Smiling I held her hand as best I could in the bulky gloves and then together we turned away from the lit doorway and looked out into the blackness.
         On Earth only rarely do you ever get true blackness, there is always a light on somewhere and the atmosphere seems to delight in spreading that light around. Only on cloudy nights do you get true darkness, and for looking at stars such a night is useless.
         Such a night is exactly what we had on the asteroid though. It had no atmosphere to speak of to reflect light back at us.
         All we had to do was look away from the door-light to see the heavens.
         And what a view, the Andromeda galaxy was prominent at this time, I could see its full glory and even hints of its two tiny companions. The Triangulum galaxy could be seen but only when you look slightly away from it, otherwise one would mistake its core for a single star.
         We said no words, all we did was look and wonder.
         There were no shooting stars, with no atmosphere they were impossible. The stars didn’t twinkle either, once again that was a product of the atmosphere. Instead they were crystal clear points of light, stretching out much farther than our eyes could see.
         Dark nebulae marked the Milky Way; emission nebulae marked regions where new stars were forming.
         I said nothing, I could have described it to her, but words are weak substitutes to the images. Instead I let her enjoy the view and didn’t interrupt her thoughts.
         Finally after maybe half an hour of gazing in wonder she looked back at me and whispered something so soft that at first I thought it was just some static.
          “Thank you.”
         I just smiled and bowed my head slightly.
         We didn’t say anything else at all, not until we woke up the next morning in each other’s arms.