his arms went everywhere. He swallowed but couldn’t get his stomach out of his throat. He was floating. These were problems.
He closed his eyes and swallowed a few times, fighting nausea. His hands were gloved, he could feel that. His breath was loud in his ears. He felt no gravity. This meant his survival core had deployed.
He opened his eyes. He could identify the purple ball now. It was a planet.
There was glittering in the darkness. Stars, but also pieces of ship, everything from dust and debris to a gigantic section he recognized as almost the entire aft quarter, torn and peppered with holes. No way to reach it; he couldn’t propel himself. He was, he thought, slowly falling toward the planet. Nothing he could feel. But that would be what was happening.
He closed his eyes again until the urge to vomit passed. When he opened them, the planet was still there. It was hazy at the edges. He was actually looking at atmosphere, he figured. A planet wreathed in cloud. Dark purple cloud.
Some time passed. He had nothing to do but think and so he assessed his situation methodically, checking his logic at each step.
His survival core could keep him alive for roughly five days.
After that, he would asphyxiate.
He probably wouldn’t be killed by flying debris: It shared a common origin point with him, and they would move farther apart over time.
He didn’t think he would fall to his death, as it would take longer than five days.
He might be rescued. This would depend on what had become of Jackson, Beanfield, and Anders. His ping had a short range; if they were able to, they would search for its signal from the jet. This was a long shot, because it relied on them not only surviving the attack but also managing to return to the same area—as opposed to doing what a jetpod was designed for, which was aiming homeward and accelerating.
If they were able to return, he figured, it would happen soon. They might delay to let the salamanders disperse, or conduct repairs, and it might take a little while to find him. But after forty hours, he would have to face the likelihood that no one was coming.
He shut down everything nonessential. Broadcasting distress on ping: yes. Scanning for pings: tempting, but no. It wasn’t necessary to know rescue was coming a few minutes in advance. He turned down his thermals as far they would go.
He hung in space and watched the cloud planet. It was dark and unfathomable, an arc of light to its left side. He might get to watch a sunrise.
It was a bad situation. But it could have been worse. He had expected to die, and now he had five days and he felt relatively okay about this. It was almost peaceful. Before he’d made crew, a Service psych had told him, “If you’re chosen, you will be as far away from the rest of the human race as anyone in history,” and peered into his eyes to gauge his reaction. He had been okay with it. She had also asked, “What do you think you’re going to find out there?” This one he struggled with, because he didn’t know. But that was the point, he realized. “Answers,” he said. “I like finding the answers to questions like that.” Her expression had remained carefully neutral, but after the interview was over, she shook his hand and said, “I hope you find your answers.”
Maybe not. Maybe he was going to slowly run out of air here, wondering what had become of Jackson, Anders, and Beanfield. Maybe this sun would emerge from behind the cloud planet and cook him alive. Maybe the only answer was that he was an insignificant biological object in a universe of dispassionate physical laws.
He activated his recording function. It would consume a small amount of power, but he wanted to create a record. He wanted to make sure he left something behind, no matter what happened.
“This is Isiah Gilligan. I was ejected from the ship. My core has approximately a hundred twenty hours life capacity. I don’t know if the others survived. I hope they did. I’m looking forward