Epitaph (Edited)

         The emergency bolts slammed home with a mechanical crash.  That simplified his options.  He had two: float aimlessly until he lost consciousness and died, or keep trying to repair the leak until he lost consciousness and died.  It seemed like a no-brainer, so he headed back to work.

         He pushed off of the nearest bulkhead, and drifted back over to where the coolant was venting into his breathable air.  The engineers who designed this craft certainly had a perfectly good reason for requiring this particular substance as an engine coolant.  It likely possessed a certain mass, m, coupled with a specific thermal transfer efficiency, y, which, when factored into the desired operating temperature, T, and pressure, p, made it the obvious choice to keep the propulsion system from turning this whole project into one big molten asteroid.  The liquid coolant’s tendency to flash to a toxic vapor in normal atmospheric temperature and pressure was clearly not an important part of the equation.  He could think of no logical reason for this particular conduit of coolant to be inside this corridor, however.  The vaporized coolant’s toxicity was well documented, and though it was slow-acting, he had already inhaled much more than the minimum lethal dose.

         He tore open the nearest emergency closet and began rummaging through it.  Emergency breathing apparatus: a little late for that.  Flashlight: not necessary, and the batteries were probably dead, anyway.  Survival blanket: borderline comical at this point.  Assortment of seals, patches and clamps: bingo.  He grabbed the repair kit and bounded back to the cracked conduit, the gas spewing out lazily.  He went to work applying the patch.  As he did, his hands went into autopilot, and his mind wandered.

         He thought back to the selection process for the project, and when he first discovered the peculiar character of the people chosen.  He recalled one particularly sneaky test.  They put him and two other applicants in an escape capsule simulator.  During a routine operations simulation, the evaluators actually set the simulator room on fire.  The two other applicants panicked almost immediately, pounding on the locked doors and screaming for help. He just started laughing at the idiotic irony of being killed in a simulator during the selection process, then casually searched for a fire extinguisher.  It turned out that they were looking for people with a bit of a sociopathic bent that found death more amusing than frightening.  He had wondered occasionally what went on in the heads of the other crew members, but at the present moment, it made a lot of sense.  As soon as the leak was detected, the emergency doors locked shut, literally sealing his fate, though he was effectively dead the moment he breathed the gas.  He was then faced with either pouting about it, or trying to stop the leak.  If enough coolant leaked into the corridor, the primary reactor would melt, along with the rest of the ship, but he didn’t bother to think it through that far.  H simply reasoned that as long as he was still alive, he was still a member of this crew, and as such had certain duties.  One of those was to fix stuff when it broke.

         He had the seal positioned over the leak, the gas still spraying out the edges.  With his other hand he threaded the clamping bands around the conduit and fastened it.  The seal was held in place, once it was fastened, but continued leaking.  He reached out for a wrench from the tool kit and missed.  His vision had started to get blurry.  He wasn’t sure if it was the cold gas spraying around his face or if it was his synaptic impulses beginning to get interrupted.  He reached again and grabbed the wrench, then began to crank on the clamping bands.  This was a rote task, and his mind wandered again.

         This time he considered the project’s immensity, and efforts and expense it took just to get here, and that “here” was farther away from Earth than most ever thought possible, let alone what anyone had accomplished.  Their current position was an estimated 4.5 million light-years from earth, but no one would ever know it unless they made it back.  “They”, of course, meaning everyone aboard but him.  If he could stop the leak, “they” just might have a chance.

         The bolt got tighter and tighter, and the gas’s flow gradually ebbed.  As the bolt bottomed out, he started seeing spots and flashes of light, and his vision continued getting dimmer.  He fumbled for a bottle in the repair kit.  He found it after a few clumsy seconds.  He squirted the gooey solution onto the seal to see if any bubbles formed.  As he waited, he heard a banging on the emergency hatch.  He looked up to see the crew commander in the porthole window, a look of anxious anticipation on his face.  He held one finger up, a gesture to wait.  He turned back to his work, and found no bubbles had formed.  The leak was sealed.  He turned back to his commander and gave a thumbs-up.  Relief washed over the commander’s face.  He pushed clumsily off the wall and drifted slowly over the porthole window.  He grabbed the handle and looked at his commander.

         “We can’t open this area until we vent the compartment,” his commander shouted through the thick window.

         “I know,” he said, long since resigned to his fate.  “Do me one favor.”

         “Anything,” his commander replied.

         “Don’t let them name anything after me,” he said with a grim smile.  He closed his eyes and floated back down the corridor.



938 words



Note: Originally written for the Writer's Cramp Contest, 8/04/10.  It has been edited from the original.  I hope it makes it a better read!   Let me know!