Golden Fleece

He went stiff for a moment, and his EEG showed much activity. I saw him open his mouth twice to respond, but both times he thought better of what he was about to say and stopped himself. Finally he did speak. “I love you,” he said softly. It had been over a year since he had said that to his ex-wife Diana: he’d given up saying it even before he’d given up feeling it, as far as I could tell. But his relationship with Kirsten was young enough that the words came without much difficulty. “I love you dearly.”

“And about us?”

“I’m glad we’re together.”

Kirsten smiled, a smile, in this darkness, that only I could see. A moment later, she said, “I love you, too.” She paused, as if thinking, and her hand stopped moving on Aaron’s chest. When she spoke, it was with a note of trepidation, as if she was afraid she might be saying the wrong thing. “I’m sorry about what happened with Diana.”

It was eight seconds before Aaron replied, and as each of those seconds ticked by, Kirsten’s medical telemetry became more agitated as she awaited whatever response Aaron might make. At last he spoke: “I’m sorry, too.”

Kirsten let her breath slip from her lungs as she relaxed, and she waited, now without apprehension, for Aaron to continue.

“You know,” he said, “when my parents divorced, they told us—my brother Joel, my sister, Hannah, and me—that they were going to remain friends. Hannah, she was always a cynic, she never believed it, but Joel and I thought they would, that we’d get together as a family still, at least on special occasions. Well, that never happened. Mom and Dad grew further and further apart. It used to be that they would talk when Dad would drop us off at Mom’s. She’d kept the old house; he’d moved out into an apartment. Originally, he’d come up to the door and Mom would invite him in for a coffee. But that didn’t last long. Soon Dad was just dropping us off on the landing pad.” He brought his right hand up to his chest, placing it over Kirsten’s. “Despite that, I thought—I really and truly thought—that Diana and I would remain friends after we split up. I mean, hell, we couldn’t very well avoid each other in this tin can.” He shook his head, and I suspect Kirsten’s eyes had adjusted enough now that she could see the gesture. If not, she certainly could hear his hair rubbing against his pillow.

Aaron fell silent. Kirsten waited, perhaps expecting more, but then said herself, “I’m surprised that she passed the psychological exams for this mission. I mean, if she was predisposed to—you know—to killing herself, I’m surprised they didn’t detect that.”

“Their testing left a lot to be desired. They let Wall Chang come, after all.”

“What’s wrong with Wall?”

“He’s building bombs down in his workshop.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious. He’s gone off the deep end. Two years of being—trapped—here seems to have been too much for him.”

“God.”

Our testing had, of course, been rigorous. But people are so unpredictable, and those cooped up in a space vessel for extended periods have always had a tendency to go loony. As far back as the late 1980s, there is an intriguing reference to a suicide attempt by a Soviet cosmonaut aboard the Mir space station. No details of the attempt are in any of the records I possess; I always wondered whether he failed because he tried to hang himself in zero gravity.

“I’ll tell you something else,” continued Aaron. “I’m surprised that they let me come on this mission, too.”

“What?” Kirsten stared at his dark form. “Why?”

“Well, look at me. I’m not a Ph.D., or a promising grad student. I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree. I was just a maintenance tech for Spar Aerospace in Toronto, and everybody knew I got that job because of my dad’s connections through the Thunder Bay Spaceport. Hardly the kind of guy I’d expect them to chose, let alone to put in charge of the landing fleet.”

“All of your superiors were probably too old for this mission. As is, you’ll be forty-nine when we get back.”

“Nope. Just forty-eight. You will be forty-nine.”

“A gentleman never reminds a lady of her age, Aaron.”

“Sorry. But what you say is right, I guess. Hell, my supervisor, Brock, was thirty-nine. He’d be—well, with the way he looked after himself, he’d probably be dead by the time the mission got back.”

“Exactly,” said Kirsten. “Besides, in some fields practical knowledge is a hell of a lot more valuable than theoretical training. I mean, I was a first-year resident when they chose me for this mission. There are times down on the hospital level that I’d kill for another five years of experience, for having, just once, set a real broken leg, or performed real surgery, or even counseled somebody who was dying, not that I’ve had to deal with that yet. I feel so, so ill prepared for most of what I have to do. I guess I’m in over my head.”