Murmansk-13

“I know people need a release on these long trips. I damn sure know I do.” She brooded now.

“How long have you been at space?”

“Too long.” She removed her hand from his slight paunch and rested it between her thighs.

“I find that hard to believe, you’re what, twenty-nine?”

“Twenty-eight, but thanks,” Tor looked up at the mottled artex deckhead and rolled his eyes. “With all due respect Captain, you may have flown longer than I have, but all I get to see is the shit when it goes wrong. Guy’s like you just turf them off to me and hope I write a nice career saving report.

“It’s not kids with sniffling noses or hypochondriacs or pillheads, or the holier-than-thou holistic types who come for your advice and then throw it back in your face. It’s major fucking trauma, crushed limbs, hypoxia and bends. It’s a lot of death and I’ve got to see it on the most haphazard stations in space.”

Her chest heaved, he supposed that was her other method of release. “Why not go terrestrial?”

“I fucked that opportunity a long time ago. I was a pillhead and I hated the kids, the hypochondriacs and the holistic medicine pricks. Only people who’ll hire me are companies with thankless jobs in space. And I guess I prefer it. At least the folk here aren’t piss pathetic types.”

“Sounds like you picked the wrong profession.”

“Yeah,” she paused as if to go further then let the sentence slip away. In quiet they watched the denouement of the half-watched film, David Hemmings fighting off an ageing Clara Calamai.

The quiet slid awkwardly into the credits, Tor sat stiffly watching the list of cast slip past. Hoping the doctor would excuse herself. Instead she said: “I guess Falmendikov had some help.”

Her raw voiced summation stirred Tor from his torpor. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t see how he could override the cryobed otherwise.”

“I guess he figured a way to make it malfunction, I suppose it will all come out in the report. Don’t blame yourself.” Tor felt her body tense, immediately he regretted what he said.

“I don’t. Do you?” Her pale, sun starved skin reddened.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” he took a deep inhalation of breath and tried to replay the throwaway sentence. “I meant, if you did.”

“Well I don’t,” she withdrew from the bed, splaying sweat stained bedsheets on the deck. She pulled her leggings over pert buttocks and turned to look at Tor. “I blame you, you’re the Captain and the only damn report that will matter is the one we hear, if, if we get home.”

Indignation slowly pushed Tor’s voice higher, the throbbing headache once again gnawed at the back of his eyes. “And you don’t think we will?”

“Not with a limpdick like you in charge.” The doctor pulled a little white tank top over her tall frame, nipples and rib bones pushed through the material.

“Fuck off, Doctor,” Tor said with deadpan hostility.

“Gladly,” Dr.Smith replied picking up her poncho and storming out of his cabin.

Tor let the silence resettle. “…What the fuck?” He retrieved the bed sheets from the deck and muttered, “fucking brat,” to the empty cabin.

The wetness on the sheets had cooled, uncomfortably so he kicked them away. Tor autopsied the infuriating exchange in his head, anger colouring his subjectivity. He surmised everybody was on edge and already going nuts. The crew were scared and cryosick, the worst facets of each personality were bound to be amplified in their situation. Still he knew to steer clear of that crazy again.

Tor blew out his cheeks and got up, pacing the length of his bed. A last beer remained in the cooler in his living quarters, he retrieved it and returned to the bed.

He slaked his dry throat with a German pilsner and looked once more at the photo on the bedside. For once he didn’t focus on Olaf.

It had been a long time since he’d felt a pang of remorse in his extramarital activities, while he didn’t expressly admit to his whoring, he knew Lucia was not the naive sixteen year old he’d met in a Salvador strip joint. If anything, she’d been uncommonly nuanced for a teenager back then. A pragmatist who’d been impregnated by an older, wealthier European. Even her family had taken a practical approach to the affair and Tor felt proud for honouring her by looking after them as wife and child. He even supposed he loved her in an abstracted sort of way.

As the anger subsided, the perpetual undertone of loneliness returned. He drained the bottle of beer and rewound the VHS. Heavy lidded, he let the trailers for upcoming Italian slasher flicks from seventeen years ago play him to sleep.

Chapter 4

Tor woke to the hiss and blizzard of static. His eyelids felt hot, lashes claggy with yellowy gound. He wondered how long he’d slept as he rubbed the mucus from his eyes and fumbled for the TV controller castaway amidst the shag pile.

Reluctantly, he twisted his body from stained ivory sheets and buried his toes in the rug. Heavy headed, he tried to stand and was greeted with the after effects of oversleep and a bottomless nausea in his gut.