Firedrop Garnish

  Chapter 3 – Prayers While Dropping...

  "Hey Sal! You sure you have your space-skin on tight?" David Jones' voice popped in the speakers inside of Sal's hemet. "Real bad news if you're leaking pressure. Might explain, though, why your eyes are so wide and buggy."

  "Keep the chatter off the channel," in Sal's helmet, Sissy's voice sounded as distant, as cold, as anyone else's in the harvester. "You were once a rookie yourself, Mr. Jones."

  "Oh, and I'll never forget it," David chuckled. "The grief the gang gave me then was truly awful. Too bad Sissy hadn't been there to protect my confidence."

  Sissy's gloved hand tapped Sal's shoulder. Sal hardly felt it beneath the layers of his suit.

  "You're not losing any pressure, Sal. I checked your suit myself before you stepped aboard the harvester. You're snug as a bug."

  Sal's crew mates laughed inside of his helmet. At least the dark visors that crowded the harvester with him hid the faces of his companions. Space had little to no room for mercy, but Sal thought there was at least a little mercy in the black visors.

  David snickered in Sal's helmet. "You're a lucky dog, Sal, to be able to call Sissy a mother or a lover. She's got to be one of those two to dress you up so tight in that spacesuit."

  "I'm switching off your mike, Mr. Jones," Sissy growled. "You forget the harvester training the company provided you. Sal's not had any of that training. He's not had the chance for instruction."

  Sal glanced around the harvester, trying to catch any sign of movement from his crew mates that might express any of the anger or frustration banished from the radio. But no one so much as twitched. He wondered what face behind the black visor belonged to David Jones. Sal felt as if sealed within a crypt. He preferred the laughter over the harvester's silence. The silence tempted his mind to imagine one catastrophe after another that would kill them in the void. His heart quickened. He felt himself sweat within his spacesuit, and his visor clouded from his perspiration. Windows were not installed on harvesters. There was not even a computer monitor to show the most rudimentary graph charting their progress towards AU803, towards the firedrop, towards the crushing gravity of Glazkov IV. There was only a digital clock mounted upon the wall, with its numbers ticking towards zero. Sal knew that when zero arrived, they would find themselves either successfully landed upon AU803, or they would start to feel the pull of that merciless gas giant outside their minuscule harvester.

  His companions sat still upon the harvester benches, offering no clue to the status of their journey. The harvester did not sway or rock. There was no roar of engines, no hum of machinery, no whine of ventilation fans. They all sat quiet and still, with their magnetic boots locked upon the floor so they did not float about transport, each crew member left alone to whatever thoughts they owned while the numbers on the digital clock ticked towards zero.

  One of the seated figures bent to his boots. The boots buzzed and hissed as they released their magnetic grip upon the floor. The unlatched crew member floated into the narrow space between the harvester's benches before tying his knees to the floor with nylon fabric wrapped around his legs and knotted into iron loops in the flooring. Secured in the middle of the harvester's rows, the crew member stretched his open palms outward and bent to touch the harvester floor with his visor, silently praying in that tiny capsule floating through the void.

  "Request a blessing for all of us, Ish." Sal recognized Roy Jacobsen's voice buzzing in his helmet. "I won't shun any god who might keep me out of Glazkov's mouth."

  The spacesuit between the harvester's rows bent closer to the flooring.

  "I don't understand," Sal stammered onto the radio chatter. "I thought worship of any form on a starship was banished following the First Fleet's mutiny and the conflagration around Titan. I thought the gods were forbidden from the stars to prevent another holy war in the heavens."

  Ish remained bent in prayer and gave no hint of any offense at Sal's remarks.

  Roy's voice answered in Sal's helmet. "That prohibition might make better sense with the brass back on Earth and the captain aboard the Klondike, but we've been offered up to gravity in this harvester. Seems to make plenty of sense to me to call on a higher power to guide us through all the pushes and pulls that work unseen on this thin shell. You may not have noticed, Sal, but it's not like we have any buttons or levers we can rely on should this harvester begin drifting off course towards angry Glazkov."

  Sal wished he knew a god to whom he might offer a prayer as he peered at those numbers ticking downward on the harvester's digital clock. He hoped that whatever god Ish prayed to would not take offense if an unbeliever, which Sal had always considered himself to be, sat in the company of such a crew. Like everything else in that slow drop towards AU803, Sal had no way of knowing one way or another. A god's power was little different than the force exerted by gravity. However he wished he might have known a ritual of prayer to help distract his mind from time's passage, all Sal could do was stare at that clock mounted upon the harvester's wall.

  Sissy tapped Sal's knee. Sal nearly jumped out of his magnetized boots at the touch, his heart skipping as he turned toward Sissy hoping to see a little assurance in Sissy's face or smile. But Sal could see none of Sissy's features behind her dark visor. What had been the color of her eyes? Had her hair streamed beyond her shoulders, or had Sissy cropped it short? Sal felt he needed to know such things as each second floated them closer to Glazkov IV. Yet the black visor refused to show him anything at all.

  "Relax," Sissy's voice popped within Sal's helmet. "Have a little faith. Think about the bump to your paycheck. Think about taking home your very own firedrop blossom when we get back home. Impossible as it is, try to imagine all that firedrop covering AU803 you're going to get to see with your very own eyes."

  The speakers in Sal's helmet suddenly hissed and whined. Sal grimaced at the noise ricocheting in his ears. Several gloved hands of those seated upon the benches instinctively rose to cover their ears. Even Ish unfolded from his prayers at the painful commotion, shaking his helmet until the shrilling subsided from his helmet.

  "That had to the sound of another of Glazkov's electrical surges," Sissy's voice whispered into the helmets. "I'm switching off everyone's radio. Just as well to keep silent the rest of the way and avoid a repeat of that kind of noise. Nothing we can do but drift and wait anyway."

  And hope, Sal realized, that no electrical surge erupted from Glazkov IV to tumble the harvester off of its narrow trajectory and doom them to the planet's crushing gravitational pull. Sal suffered the rest of the journey in silence, and no matter how he tried, could not avoid staring at that mounted clock and its numbers ticking towards zero.

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