Three

you three are to navigate to and map out three planets on our outer rim. Elysium, Caesar, and Nero. Wallace, you are outfitted and know how to operated the mapping device, correct?”

  “I wouldn't be up here if I didn't, Houston.”

  “Fair enough. Elysium would be the furthest, but we would recommend heading to Caesar first and then taking stock of the operation. Should something happen on Caesar, we can bring you back more quickly.”

  “Upload coordinates for Caesar, Houston,” James said, trying his best to remain stable in the captain's chair.

  “Upload complete. Let us know if any assistance is needed.”

  James, Wallace, and Ives were floating through the darkness. Although the concept of time seemed laughable in space, their internal clocks told them that it was surely night time back home. To be safe, they decided to sleep in shifts and keep one watch of the voyage.

  “I'll go first,” Ives said. “I'm use to my kid keeping me up 'til morning anyway.”

  “No,” James said. “Let Wallace do it.”

  “Wallace? No offense, but he's not even an astronaut. He's a cartographer.”

  “I can do it,” Wallace said.

  “See? He can do it,” James said. “Besides,” he whispered to Ives. “Mission control has full control of us from down there. At least until we get past Caesar. Then the range dies out. Why pass up on free sleep?”

  Ives shrugged and locked himself in the hibernation tank. He wished he could imagine Julie beside him, but he could barely move his arms in the chamber.

  Wallace sat in the captain's chair, staring out of the window. His muscles were tense from his legs clutching to the base of the chair to keep him stable and his finger was stuck over the button to call mission control. Ives was right, Wallace was no astronaut, so the infinite space in front of him combined with the infinite problems that provided understandably scared Wallace. Perhaps if his eyes were not glued straight in front of him, like trucker in the early morning, he would have scene the mass of cold dust and debris careening through the galaxy. Wallace heard loud beeping and the thrush of air being released from the hibernation chambers behind him. Unintelligible words came out of the speaker above him. Wallace turned to see James and Ives opening their eyes. He saw them just in time to be oblivious of the imminent impact.

  Despite the tumbling of the Catalina, Wallace could feel himself shaking. He was tossed and slammed against all of the sides of the ship as he crawled his way up. Wallace could feel himself shrieking in panic, but could not hear it through the turbulence and the cacophony of alert sounds in the ship. In the fast spinning air around him, he saw red blood, vibrant against the now static white background. Through the mess of sounds that imprisoned him, he could hear ringing radiating from the inside of his skull. Ives and James began to stir in their chambers, until Wallace was slung against it. Wallace quickly turned dials on the chambers and noticed their movements quell. He tried to take one last look at the damned ship, but the constant spinning had finally taken it's toll on his typically land locked stomach. As Wallace entered the chamber of his own, he vomited. Before he could wipe it from his chin, he fell asleep.

  Back in Houston, the office floor was rumbling underneath the ferocious footsteps of mission control. Underneath the rummaging, beeping, and panicked screaming, the voices coming through their headsets seemed like whispers. One of the members of mission control felt his finger tips being bruised by being slammed rapidly against keys in front of him. He could feel his fingers and his mind raging like two separate demons fighting for the same vessel. His eyes began to peer into a space between the reality in front of him and the horror in his head. Then, he felt a warm hand on his back. He stopped and turned around, pulling his headset down to his shoulders.

  “It's done, boy,” a wrinkled man said. The mission control worker stared down at his hairy fingers and looked up his arm at his face. Ribbons and medals of valor decorated his lapels and his hat. Looming underneath all of this honor and dignity, there was a terrible, icy sorrow trapped in his old blue eyes. “The asteroid hit them too hard. The Catalina is still intact, but... It pushed the ship outside of our control range. They're not dead, but they're gone.”

  Ives felt tingling. The cool air of the hibernation chamber must have been creeping up his ear canals. Through all of the mumbling the doctor did in the clinic, this was one thing that he said clearly.

  “The air will get into your skull. If you feel lit, shake your head. No, not like that. You aren't disagreeing about what's for dinner, you're trying to keep air inside your head from popping your eyeballs out of their sockets! Shake it like a fighting pit bull. Give yourself a headache. A little pain is better than a little death.”

  Amidst the darkness of the hibernation chamber, Ives shook his head. He felt his brain bounce around the padding of his skull and his neck whipping around like a ribbon in the wind. He felt the tingling going away. He also felt tiny specks of something falling and flying from his head. With his eyes still closed, his senses returned to him. The cool air of the hibernation chamber had faded away to stinging heat. Ives could feel it radiating across his back. Ives opened his eyes,

  Searing light obscured his vision. Ives placed his hand over his brow to shield his pupils from the arrows of light. Keeping his eyes covered, he lifted himself up. With his head hung low, he noticed red dust and rocks falling from his body as he arose. Finally, his eyes adjusted to the new light and he saw a landscape of red rocks and rubble. The furthest ones wavered in the heat. Ive's hair fell into his eyes. He swiped it back and felt his ear where it was once tingling. It was swollen out and still stinging as he touched it. He looked down again and saw trails of ants, walking in a mile long trail. Ives turned around to see if the land behind him had any more promise than the empty red broken land in front of him.

  There he saw metal scraps. In the stark light around him we was able to make out a few of the letters on the scraps. It said lina, and was obviously flakes from the ship he was just on. Around the scattered wreckage, he saw this two shipmates, Wallace and James sprawled on the red ground. As Ives ran forward in a half sprint, half stumble he made tried to find if the red ground below was quenched with red liquid, but he could not tell. He fell upon the first one he came across, James. Ives shook and screamed.

  James's head wobbled, as Ives checked his ears for those devilish ants, but he was clean. With James somewhere in between of life and death, Ives slapped him with his dirty, stained hand. Finally, James opened his dark eyes and Ive's shielded them as best as he could with his own hand.

  “Are you okay?” Ives asked. He noticed James's eyes rolling around as he came back to the living realm. “Are you okay?” He asked a second time.

  “Is this Caesar?” James asked, spitting red dust out of his mouth as he spoke.

  “I don't know where the fuck this is. It's red, like Mars. But, we aren't dead. I don't know a place like that.”

  “Where's Wallace?”

  Ives got up and approached Wallace's body. It was sunken in the red ground and surrounded by shards of glasses. Ives could see small puddles of blood leaking from underneath him. Minor wounds. He heard stampeding footsteps from behind him as Jame's pushed him aside. Amidst the red dirt that was flying about, Ives saw James pounce upon Wallace like a jungle cheetah on a crippled gazelle. Although this was terrible, Ives did notice that Wallace's body recoiled in struggle, meaning he was alive. Ives pulled James off of him. James was puffing clouds of the dirt like a dried up dragon.

  “You were on watch, man!” Ives was dragging James backwards. James was kicking into the air, as if he was hoping to launch one of those ants into Wallace's ear. “What the fuck happened!?”

  Wallace shook as he got up. Blood dripped slowly from his dirty jumpsuit. Wallace shrugged and pointed, “check the logs.”

  James, although extremely dry, slipped out of Ive's hands and ran towards a mass of the crashed Catalina. Although wires were exposed and sparks flew into the air while
he mashed on keys, the screen seemed operational. James's face sunk as his eyes flowed down the screen.

  “An asteroid,” James said, turning away slowly. His stare was peering through Wallace. “You let an asteroid hit us? Then you fucking turned our chambers up? I knew I remembered some bullshit!” He charged forward. Wallace put up his small fists, but Ives tackled Jame's into the ground.

  “I'm getting really tired of doing this, James.,” Ives said pinning him to the ground. “We got hit by an asteroid. This shit happens in space. Besides, you were the one who put Wallace in charge of the shift.”

  “That's true,” Wallace said. He was walking towards them slowly. He brushed off the shoulders of his jumpsuit with his hand, leaving a streaked blood stain across it. Glass fell to the ground, shimmering in the sun light. “This is, of course partly my fault, but none of us are blameless. If anything, we should be cursing mission control.”

  “Good luck on that,” said James, as Ives helped him up. “Everything is busted except for the travel logs. Even those are cut off after the asteroid impact. No telling how long it's been since then. Hell, we're probably outside of the communication range.”

  “By the looks of this,” Ives said, running his fingers through a large beard that had