I.

No one in the CIC was really that concerned about Constantini and his strange behaviour. The technician rarely told anyone what he was doing and had never been very talkative. Whatever he was up to, he probably had a good reason. Franklyn, the ship’s navigator, and Maybelline, the so-called “rear pilot”, wandered over to Albert’s workstation to take a look when they overheard his conversation with the Captain, but nothing dramatic appeared to be happening in the small, grainy black-and-white video showing the extravehicular man,  so they wandered back to their own places and quickly forgot about it.

Someone had some tunes playing on a portable device, and nearly everyone was either unconsciously bobbing their head to it or was outright swaying. The only two people who were actually paying attention to their instruments and readouts were Franklyn and Feorn, who were busy programming the navigational computer. Alberts himself was only half paying attention to the video screen that displayed the technician floating around outside the ship. Most of his attention was focused on Havisham, the derrick operator—a red-headed woman and recent addition to the crew. There was no particular reason for her to be in the CIC at the moment, except perhaps she liked the company. Unlike everyone else, she was full-on dancing to the music. Alberts was pretty sure she knew he was watching her.

Forcing his attention away from the woman, Alberts turned in his chair toward the navigators. “Franklyn, how much longer are we going to be ballin’ it past this gas cloud thing?”

The navigator looked up for a moment and paused. He had to shift gears in his mind from whatever he was working on before answering the foreman’s inquiry. “Hmm? Forty-five minutes.”

Havisham stopped dancing and asked, “Why are we ballistic, anyway? Couldn't we, you know, zip-zip, go around that thing?”

Alberts opened his mouth to answer, but Franklyn beat him to it.

“Well, we could, if you wanted to spend an extra 500,000 yuan.”

Havisham thought about it for a moment. “You mean it’s cheaper for us to sit here doing nothing—doing a bit of sight-seeing—than zip-zip?”

Franklyn grunted. “You see any money being spent right now?”

Havisham peered haltingly around the CIC for a few moments. Alberts and Oliphant, the Pater Noster’s pilot, were both sprawled out luxuriously in front of their workstations. Maybelline was seated next to Oliphant, leaning toward him to engage in conversation. Feorn was leaning over a charts table, with his hand on the side of his head and looking bored, waiting for Franklyn to get back to work.

“The… lights are on?” Havisham suggested. “That costs money, right?”

The navigator shook his head and raised his eyebrows in amusement, then got back to work with his assistant, plotting the ship’s course.

Havisham looked around the CIC again. There really did not seem to be much going on. The red light from the gas cloud, visible through the forward and side viewports, permeated the room, though everyone’s eyes had grown accustomed to it a long time ago  and they did not notice it any more.

“Maybelline,” Alberts called out. “Can you run along to the aft and see if you can get eyes on Constantini? This video feed is horrible. Take a flashlight and see if you can get his attention.”

Maybelline laboriously clambored to her feet, looking like she would much rather stay in the CIC talking to Oliphant, but nodded and hurried away.

Oliphant was watching the gas cloud with a wary eye. “I really don’t like that thing,” he said. “Gives me the creeping willies. If it was up to me, I’d give it the old zip-zip.” He gestured vaguely with his hand to illustrate the detour Havisham had suggested.

This comment annoyed Franklyn so much that he tore his attention from his work again. “You don’t actually believe any of that nonsense, do you?” he demanded.

Oliphant took a deep breath and turned to look at the navigator, but did not immediately respond. On Earth, a great deal of animosity toward the early Colonists and their descendents had been passed down through the centuries, and Franklyn’s contempt for the original Colonies (and everything to do with them) was far from an atypical attitude. The early Colonists had, for the most part, been highly religious and nationalistic, in contrast to the highly secularist and globalist attitudes which had been more common on Earth at the time, and although a lot had changed on Earth over the past few centuries, and relations with the original Colonies had grown considerably more amicable, there there still a large number of Earth people who thought very poorly of the Colonies and everything to do with them, even if there was very little logic behind the sentiment.

For some reason, throughout the original Colonial period, the Reformed Church had remained friendly with the Colonists (more so than any other Christian group), strongly empathizing with their views.  Oliphant had been born into some sect of the Reformed Church, and consequently he was a lot more willing to accept the original Colonists' stories and attitudes—including what some people would call their superstitions. He had actually contributed a number of books to the ship’s library penned by Colonial figures such as a fellow named Victor Sullen. In his surviving works, Victor Sullen had written about diabolical supernatural forces which his people had fought off during their first ventures into space. Many of those early colonies had eventually grown extremely wealthy, leaving Earth in the dust in terms of technological advancement and quality of life, leading to quite a lot of resentment from Earth people. The material prosperity of the Colonies was seen by some as a sign that God had blessed them, but many believed that an even greater sign of God’s blessing was that the descendents of these early Colonists seemed to have rapidly evolved strange new abilities—something different for almost every Colony. Some of them had grown inhumanly tough and resilient; others were known to be extremely strong; still others were rumoured to have developed the ability to do things that defied scientific explanation, such as teleport and levitate—but even Oliphant had difficulty believing that sort of thing, never having witnessed it himself. The Colonies where that sort of thing was said to happen were very far away. The most common new gifts that were believed to be possessed by the original Colonists were gifts of the mind, however—increased intelligence and intuitive abilities, perhaps even true prescience, the ability to see short distances into the future. People like Franklyn, though, scoffed at the idea, mockingly referring to it as “the Sight”.

Franklyn had something of a one-sided rivalry going with Oliphant where he was constantly throwing out comments meant to annoy the pilot and goad him into argument, which Oliphant usually ignored. Most recently, Franklyn had been trying to goad Oliphant over the issue of slavery, a practice which the early Colonies had adopted early on, finding it necessary to elevate the quality of life of their poorest members. Despite the inherited cultural attitudes toward slavery which they had brought with them, the institution had been rendered palatable by the fact that there was no racial component. All the early Colonies had been mono-cultural ethno-states, and all of them wrote quite extensive amendments into their Constitutions meant to preserve slave rights and define slave privileges. Due to the cultural dominance of the Colonies which eventually emerged on the interstellar scale, slavery had eventually been re-introduced on Earth as well, although a lot of Earth-people were still a lot less comfortable with it than the Colonials were, and often tried to use it as a rhetorical battering ram against the Colonies, citing it as evidence of their moral inferiority, which did not make a lot of sense as the practice was now universal on Earth as well as off-world. Oliphant had proven to be particularly immune to this angle of attack, however, revealing that his own grandmother had been an Earth-slave. Apparently she had married her master, divorced him when he cheated on her (consequently having her slave contract annulled), won an enormous settlement from him, and went on to remarry and live a happy prosperous life. Oliphant emphasized the humorous aspects of this story as he told it, concluding ironically that slavery had enabled his grandmother to attain a higher standard of living than she ever could have achieved on her own. Slavery was in fact almost universally accepted on Earth, but there were still hold-outs clinging to older ways of thinking, such as Franklyn. There were also a lot of strange laws on the books which reflected the weirdness of the time period during which slavery had begun to be re-legalized on Earth, a time period in which a lot of cultural issues had still been in the process of being resolved. For instance, there were still laws on the books (rarely if ever enforced) which proscribed asking people if they were a man or a woman, if they were a slave or “beast-kin”, if they were a robot, if their ancestors’ blood had been polluted by vaccines, or even asking people where they were from.

These were the sort of thoughts that had been percolating in Oliphant’s mind recently, so when Franklyn tried to goad him into argument by expressing incredulity over his superstitious dislike of the gas-cloud, he refused to rise to the bait, eventually turning away and casually responding: "All I know is, space is kind-of terrifying, and I'd feel a lot safer if we did have someone with ‘the Sight’ on board. It couldn’t hurt."

Oliphant assumed a relaxed position, putting his feet up, leaning backwards in his chair, and putting his hands behind his head.

Franklyn’s eyes would have bored holes into the back of the pilot’s head if they could. His own head began bobbing as he tried to think of some clever retort, but nothing came to him. He looked over at Feorn, but the young man merely blinked at him and pursed his lips, obviously impatient to get back to work.

A few minutes later, Alberts pulled out his data pad and commented, “What’s taking the Captain so long?” Rather than calling Captain Dale, however, he made a connection with Maybelline. “You got anything?” he asked.

Maybelline had jogged through the twisting capillaries of the Pater Noster all the way to the rear of the craft and found a porthole where she could get eyes on Constantini. Pulling a flashlight out of her belt, she shone it out the window and tried to get his attention, but the man did not seem to react. He was not very far away from her, his dark shape silhouetted against the bright colors of the gas cloud.

When Alberts called, she responded, “I’ve got eyes on Constantini, but he’s still not responding.”

“What’s it look like he’s doing?” Alberts asked.

“Umm…” Maybelline scrunched up her eyes and leaned toward the porthole. “He’s got some sort of tank.”

“Acetylene?”

“No. Doesn’t look like it. It’s corroded. Might be an old O-can. Not sure.” She scrunched up her eyes again. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was doing zero-g calisthenics.”

Alberts laughed. “Knowing Constantini, I wouldn’t put it past him. Hmm… All right. If you don’t mind, stay there for a bit. Call me if you figure out what he’s doing”

“Can do!” Maybelline responded, cheerfully. Alberts ended the call.

In the CIC, Oliphant called over his shoulder, “I could ping him with the ranging laser. That would get his attention.”

Alberts exhaled sharply through his nose. “Might also burn a hole in his suit. Hold off on that.”

At this moment Captain Dale finally made his appearance. The portside hatch of the CIC opened and he slowly walked in, looking at his hands. He was turning them back and forth, as if to examine both sides. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and beard as if expecting to find something there. He caught himself as he began to wipe his hands on his shirt, then looked down at himself. He looked confused. 

“You all right, Captain?” Alberts asked.

The Captain looked at the foreman with furrowed brows. “Do I look all right?” he asked. It sounded like a sincere question. 

Alberts hesitated. “...Yes?” Other than the confused look on his face, his unstarched shirt, and the bags under his eyes, the Captain looked normal.

The Captain seemed to pull himself together a little bit and came towards Albert’s workstation. “How’s Constantini?”

Albert pointed to the video feed. “No change, sir. I sent Maybelline aft to try to get his attention, but he seems to be lost in his own little world.”

Dale waved Alberts out of his seat and sat down in his place to get a closer look at the video feed. He studied it for a moment, then dialed up the technician on his data pad. The ship computers would automatically connect him to the communication system in the man’s helmet. “Hey Constantini, this is the Captain. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing right now?”

There was no response from the technician, and the Captain rubbed his eyes in what might have been frustration or sleep deprivation.

“Long day?” Alberts asked.

“What?” Dale looked at him blankly. “Oh… yes. I’ve been up for about 20 hours straight.”

“That was some nice music you were playing a while ago,” Alberts commented.

“You could hear me up here?” Dale asked.

Alberts nodded. “Yeah. Sound really carries on this ship, especially when the engines are off.”

Dale blinked. “Did you hear… anything else? No shouting, or anything like that?”

The foreman frowned, thinking back. “No… Don’t think so.”

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments until the Captain took a deep breath and seemed to put aside whatever was bothering him. He surrendered his seat back to Alberts and asked, “Was there any extravehicular maintenance scheduled for today?”

“Nope. Not on the work board, anyway. I mean, Constantini might have scheduled something for himself, but he didn’t write it up.” Seated at his workstation again, Alberts took another look at the video feed. “Hey! Looks like Constantini’s finished whatever he was doing.”

In the video feed, Constantini turned around slowly and began using his propulsor rig to push himself away from the fuel tanks.

Suddenly, Dale leaned in past Alberts to take a close look at the video feed. “Is that a gun?” he exclaimed.

This caught Oliphant’s attention at the front of the CIC. Using the controls on his workstation, the pilot patched into the video feed of Constantini and threw it up on a couple of large monitors around the CIC.

It was true. When Constantini had turned away from the chemical fuel tanks, a holstered revolver had appeared strapped to his side. He was now moving away from the Pater Noster toward the gas cloud. He was clutching the corroded tank in his chest.

A notification from Maybelline popped up on Albert’s data pad, reporting the appearance of the revolver, which she had also caught sight of.

“Yes, we see it,” Alberts messaged back.

Dale tried calling the tech again. His voice sounded calm, but it was hard to imagine there was a good reason Constantini would have taken a gun with him on a space walk, unless he intended to harm himself. “Constantini, please tell me what you’re doing. We’re nearly done with this passive maneuver and we’d like to be on our way again soon.”

Havisham was looking at the video feed of Constantini and looking around at everyone else in the CIC, trying to figure out what was going on. There was a strange tension which she did not entirely understand.

“You can come back in, man,” the Captain continued. “Whatever’s happening, we can work through it.” There was no response and Dale touched Albert’s shoulder. “How certain are we that he can hear this?”

The foreman shrugged, and immediately there was a loud burst of static from Dale’s data pad, ostensibly being transmitted by Constantini. There was nothing intelligible in the signal, however. Dale continued trying to raise the extravehicular man until eventually the technician switched off his propulsors and turned back toward the Pater Noster as if to gauge how far he was.

Dale tried one more time. “Constantini, man, talk to me.”

There was another burst of static, then Constantini raised the gun and pointed it at himself—or rather at the tank he was holding to his chest.

Havisham, finally realizing what appeared to be happening, turned away from the monitors so she would not see what happened next. 

In the video feed, Constantini’s body seemed to jerk, and the tank began to float away. A brief trail of escaping gases spewed from the bullet hole that had suddenly appeared in Constantini’s pressure suit, and he began to tumble slowly backwards, rotating slowly, silhouetted against the gas cloud.

There were various exclamations of shock from around the CIC. Oliphant jumped up, but there was nothing he could do. After a few moments of shocked silence, Albert’s data pad started chirping at him as Maybelline desperately tried to put a call through. He answered the call but did not really hear anything the girl said. “Just come back to the CIC,” he managed to croak with a dry mouth.

Dale slapped a structural beam with his open palm. He pressed his thumb into his chin for a moment then turned purposefully to the foreman. “Alberts, get two of your guys to bring Constantini back inside. And make sure they follow full quarantine protocols.”

Alberts blinked a few times, then asked, “Why?” surprised by the second part of the Captain’s request. Then he seemed to think better of questioning the precaution and hastily replied, “Yes, sir.” He dialed up two of his labourers. When both of them responded, he gave them their orders, “Lovecraft, Pullman… we’ve had an extravehicular mortality. Need you to retrieve the body.”

Both men had been asleep, but both of them very quickly became very alert at the news of a death, asking, “Who is it? How’d he die?”

Alberts shut them down. “Just go to the airlock and get suited up,” he told them. “Follow the suit beacon once you’re outside.”

Dale had moved over toward the portside CIC hatch. He addressed everyone there present. “All 

right. We’ve just witnessed a terrible tragedy. We don’t have a chaplain right now, and no one on this boat is qualified for counseling. So if you’re feeling anything very strongly, bottle it up, at least until we make port. Eat at your regular times. Sleep at your regular times. Do your regular tasks.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to take a shower to wake myself up, then maybe we can get to the bottom of what just happened.”

The Captain gave them all a tired-looking merchantman salute, then left the CIC.

Franklyn nudged his apprentice. “That’s why he’s the Captain. Good intuitions; always keeps a cool head.”

Feorn and Havisham were both staring around the CIC with wide eyes, adrenaline pumping through their veins with no outlet. Feorn scratched the tattoos on his arms as if they were bothering him. Eventually, not knowing what else to say, the apprentice navigator said, “I suppose this means we’ll have to do our calculations over again… if we’re stuck here for a while, I mean.”

Only just realizing this himself, Franklyn looked heavenward for a moment and grunted. Then he picked up a pair of calipers that were lying on the charts table and threw them down again. “Put a call through to Skapstoti, then, I guess, Feorn, would you? Push our docking reservation back a few hours. Maybe we’ll save a few shekels on the berthing fees.”

Feorn nodded but it was quite a few minutes before he was able to calm himself enough to gather the presence of mind to follow through on Franklyn’s command. He moved over to a dedicated communications workstation, put on a pair of headphones with a mic, and pulled up a communications directory to put a call through to the space station which was currently the Pater Noster’s destination.

Havisham was watching Constantini’s body slowly tumbling end over end on the closest monitor. Alberts went over to her. “Let’s get you out of here. Come with me.” He turned and led the way. Havisham followed meekly. “We’ll go to the galley,” he said.

Part way to their destination, a notification popped up on their data pads from Captain Dale. Apparently he had postponed his shower temporarily to send out a low-priority ship-wide announcement that a member of the crew had been lost in what appeared to be a self-termination. It was low-priority so it would not wake anyone who was sleeping. The message included a reminder to speak to someone if they were ever feeling exceptionally low and concluded with a reminder that the ship was scheduled to dock at Skapstoti within the next day or two, where they could visit the station church and green solarium.

Alberts was glad he would not have to break the news to anyone they met in the galley, but then he realized he should probably send an alert to the ship’s doctor, Doctor Burnstyle, to be prepared to examine Constantini’s body after Lovecraft and Pullman retrieved it. “Just hold a minute,” he told Havisham, then pulled out his data pad to send the message. When he was finished, they continued on their way toward the galley, where they found four men drinking beer at one table and two women having dinner  together at another. All of them  seemed pretty somber, so Albert concluded they had all read the Captain’s notification.

The galley was divided up into a large ‘men’s’ section, and a much smaller ‘women’s’ section. The men’s section was decorated with posters showing sports cars and grid girls, and the area in which the women were sitting had posters of cutesy animals and New Age chakra diagrams, which Alberts had never taken a close look at.

Alberts was pretty sure that Havisham was friends with the two other women, so he led her over to them and sat her down so that they could begin commiserating together in the way that women do. Then he went over to a dispenser and dug into his own beer rations to get drinks for all three of them. He brought it over to their table. “On me, ladies,” he said. “I have to get back to work.”