Slow Days - Chapter 2





Me: “Boss?”

Joseph: “Yeah?”

Me: “Can I come in?”

Joseph: “Of course you can!”

“Alright, I don’t want to see anything hairy”, I joke, as I open the door.

The captain is watering his tomatoes. It was a grotesque sight: This 40 something man floating in the middle of his cabin, slowly pushing water from a syringe into the dirt. His white hair was touching the plants above his head while he was working on the ones below. Strange way of taking a piece of home with you, I think. How much time does he spend in here? 10 hours? 20 hours per week? I slurp my third coffee empty and slide the bag in my pocket.

“I have the analysis.” I hand him a data stick. He offhandedly grabs it out of the air, slips it into his pocket and closes the zipper. “In theory, we can do it. We have enough fuel in the chemical engines to accelerate and if everything goes right we can use both what’s left in the ion thrusters and our chemical engines to slow us down just enough to dock at Ceres.” Joseph turns around and floats toward me. I can clearly see the wrinkles around his eyes and the scar on his cheek. “But I really mean if absolutely everything goes right. We have almost no margin for error.” He never told me about it. I never asked. Where did he get it? And why did he keep it?

“How much will it cost us?” He asks. I worry about him sometimes. He once told me he misses home and he would rather be with his daughters than out here. “We will spend about 5% extra on fuel but I highly recommend sticking to our flight plan. If we accelerate and anything goes wrong, we’re definitively flying to Pluto.”

He sighs. “Can you bring this here to the kitchen?” He throws a bag at me. It’s a blood-red, gooey substance. Maybe Pumpkin substitute? “Sure”, I answer. With a slight smile on his face, he adds: “I’ll be making pasta for us 5 tonight. Will you be there?” “Well Joe, it’s not really like I could go out anywhere”, I answer sarcastically. I think of the centimetres of metal, the separate me from death. They say you can never quite know for sure, what will kill you first: the void sucking the air out of your lungs or the blood boiling in your brain. “Thank you, Alecjo,” he answers with a firm but pleased voice.

As I open the door to leave I see that Italian face opposed to me. “What did he say?” Diana looks concerned. She could probably take our engines apart blindfolded and then put them back together, just the way they were. If she says it’s risky, it is. “He didn’t really say anything. I just told him what you told me.” Diana bites her lips for a second but then shrugs it off. “He invited us all for dinner, you know?” I see her eyes light up for a moment and a smile hush across her face. “Will you be there?”, she asks.“ I pause for a second and look at her. Her bun has loosened up a bit and her black hair is floating behind her back. "Please tell me, this will work out.” She looks me directly in the eyes as she thinks before: “It will. It always has and we’ve always returned home.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll save you a seat”