Wake-up Song
Austin McReynolds washed his face in icy cold water and wondered if they had run water pipes along the outside of the Orpheus. A song was playing over the ship’s speakers. The engineers had explained it was a tradition in space exploration to have a wake-up song each morning.
“I should have given them a playlist,” he muttered to himself as he dried his face then tossed the towel. The magnetic lining in one corner caught the metal wall. A few lyrics stuck in his head… something about floating in a tin can and being stuck out in space. He knew something about what that felt like, probably more than the song’s author.
Austin looked at himself in the mirror. In the last ten years his raven hair had been replaced with mostly gray. He had been growing his beard out for a few months now. It was a ruddy brown but it also had some gray. He was just short of six feet, but he wondered if a few months of lower gravity would make up the difference. At fifty-five years old, his height would make little difference in his life. He was long-limbed, thin, and pale with a little gut around the middle.
The wake-up song finished. It sounded like an old song. He had to admit he enjoyed it more than some of the others that sounded to him like a series of car crashes. He had complained about the younger crewmates’ choice of music during the first few days of their voyage but was met with smiles and “oh, it’s not so bad” and other dismissive responses. Since throwing someone out of an airlock for poor taste in music would be hard to explain to the board, he would have to tolerate or ignore it for now. He needed to put the morale of the team ahead of his own to successfully accomplish the mission.
He quietly opened the small bathroom door and stepped out into the cramped bedroom. His small cabin included a bedroom, a bathroom, and an office. He had never lived in such a small and austere place. The cabin was one of ten located on C Deck of the Orpheus.
The light from the bathroom fell across a woman’s face. “Turn off the light…” she mumbled, pulling a pillow over her head. Somehow, his wife, Hera Byrne, was still mostly sleeping through both their morning alarm and the wake-up song and had been doing so since their first morning aboard ship.
“It’s your fault for still being in bed, my love,” Austin pointed out with a gentle voice. “Time to get up. We have a busy day.” She didn’t respond to him.
Austin shook his head as he skirted the bed and opened the cabinet where his clothes were stored. He proceeded to dress, pulling on one of his seven identical one-piece jumpsuits. All ten of the ship’s crew wore them. The engineers had informed him that the matching jumpsuit thing was common in old sci-fi movies but real astronauts had been wearing regular clothes for many years. Austin was not swayed. Could someone wearing gym shorts all day compromise the mission? He couldn’t know what he couldn’t know. So they would all be uniform.
Plus, Hera thought it would be nostalgic and would remind people of the old sci-fi shows which depicted people going on adventures. It gave an exploratory vibe to their voyage that people hadn’t seen in a while. Hera had compared it to the positive change in public interest when space exploration had stepped away from merely shuttling people back and forth to Earth’s near orbit and started sending actual people to the moon and Mars and other places. She was passionate about igniting that public interest again. Humans had been floating around the inner solar system for more than twenty years. This expedition was going far beyond populated space. In fact, they were the first manned expedition beyond the asteroid belt.
After zipping up the front of his jumpsuit, he looked over at Hera. Still no movement. He retrieved his wristband from the charging plate and slipped it onto his left wrist. He took three steps to leave the bedroom and enter the study. He closed the door behind him without any concern for the noise it caused and sat down at his desk.
Austin was the Chief Executive Officer of Galactic Horizons Corp, a multi-billion dollar company, and the most successful extraterrestrial mining and transportation company.
Austin didn’t remember who had picked the name Eurydice for their destination, the elusive Planet X, or Planet Nine it was also called. Their mission was to orbit the planet with the Orpheus, drop fifty drones, leave a dozen satellites in orbit, and return home.
The only way they could make the journey in a manageable timeframe was to keep the ship’s constant acceleration at nearly two meters per second squared. The interior of the ship was oriented such that the constant acceleration pushed everyone towards the floor of each deck thereby simulating gravity at around 0.9 G. However, the constant acceleration was murder on the fuel budget. Months ago the company had launched five resupply ships along their planned course. Projections had them refueling twice before reaching Eurydice and thrice on the way back.
“Good morning, Virgil.”
“Good morning, Austin,” the ship’s master intelligence responded. “How can I help you?”
“Bring up my dashboard, please.” The wall lit up with graphs and lists.
Austin looked over the live status readings on his dashboard. It distilled the essentials so he could get a glimpse of the overall mission progress at any moment. They were on schedule without any problems. The readings from the main engine were optimal. The Solarstorm IX was the most efficient and powerful plasmoid propulsion engine ever built. It was delivering constant thrust which both gave the sensation of gravity and sped them ever faster towards their destination. All of his other dashboard gadgets were green except for fuel which switched from yellow to red while he watched. Fuel reserves were down to nineteen percent. But that was why they were refueling today.
The door office slid open and Hera poked her head in. Her long blonde curls were a mess and she was holding her robe tightly around herself. She squinted into the bright room, her signature unequal pupil sizes giving the appearance of one green and one gray eye. Her shoulders were shrugged and she was rubbing her arms. At a very fit and proportionally balanced thirty-nine years old, even when fresh out of bed, she was intoxicatingly beautiful.
“Morning, Captain. I’d be happy to report for duty if you could warm it up in here.” She was always cold in the mornings aboard ship. And her morning breath was somehow worse than it had been back home.
“Morning, Dear,” Austin responded. He wasn’t the captain because they didn’t have a captain, but he didn’t mind her calling him that in private. He was the mission commander, though, so close enough. “You’re overreacting. It’s not that cold.”
“It is cold,” Hera insisted flatly, as she had other mornings. “Anything exciting happening today?” That was also a regular question.
“You can ask Virgil.”
Hera smiled sweetly. “But I asked you.”
Austin waited a beat so he wouldn’t respond with something nasty. Hera was his wife and while she was technically his employee, he tried to treat her as the former and not the latter. She was currently under contract as a consultant with the company, but he still had to remind himself that he couldn’t have the same expectations for her as he did the rest of the people that worked for him. Expectations, like for example, asking Virgil about calendar items, reading her messages, and checking her calendar herself before asking him what she should do as the mission’s media representative and fitness coach.
Before they met, Austin had followed Hera’s media posts for years, not because he cared about her exercise routines or her diet tricks, but because he found her extremely attractive. Then he happened to watch one of her videos with the sound on and was delighted to find her passionately talking about space exploration and how she’d like to go some day. He decided he was the man to make it happen for her.
Not long after, the company launched the first cruise ship from Earth to the moon and expanded their lunar manufacturing facility to include a first-class resort located in the Daedalus crater on the far side of Luna from Earth. Austin invited a number of media types and made sure Hera was on the list. Since Hera had nearly a billion subscribers, it made perfect business sense to invite her. They met in person at the moon resort during the opening social. He had been there for months and had developed his ‘moon legs’. She was struggling with the reduced gravity, like all of the other first timers. He deftly and confidently hopped over to her, offered her a drink, and introduced himself. They chatted for a few minutes and seemed to hit it off.
After the event, she returned to Earth. He messaged her and amazingly she responded. They decided to meet again, on Earth this time. Soon they were dating. He put a platinum ring on her finger that sported a four-carat diamond, both mined from 16 Psyche. He couldn’t promise her the moon, but he did promise to take her back to Luna for their honeymoon. He enjoyed the trip more than he had expected and in more ways than he had expected. Hera had a child-like appreciation for all things space-related which he found endearing. And having her on his arm made everyone he knew jealous.
Austin mustered a smile and explained cheerfully, “It’s day thirteen and we are nearing Saturn’s orbit. Although, unfortunately, the planet is currently on the other side of the sun. But we couldn’t stop to see the sights anyway and it is better to avoid the gas giant’s gravity well. It would slow us down.”
“That’s exciting. So we’re like a quarter of the way there?”
Austin nodded with raised eyebrows, a little surprised that she understood that much. “Exactly. Today we will be catching up to the first resupply ship. That will be exciting. You should interview Danni and Long. But do it early, they’ll be busy later.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea.” Hera reached over and ruffled his bearded chin.
“Virgil, did I miss any calendar items?” Austin inquired.
“Yes, Hera is leading a callanetics class in an hour that you are scheduled to attend.”
“I’m sorry, I have a meeting with the board in five,” Austin apologized. “It’s probably going to be a long one. I don’t think I’ll make your class.”
“I’m not surprised.” Hera leaned down and kissed his cheek. “I’m going to get dressed.”
