A Quiet Day Off

Figures, Clarice thought, the one time I get to sleep in. By all logic and sense, she knew she should be dead. Instead, she was uncomfortable, annoyed and growing more so by the moment.

She could feel the side of her facing the sun heating up, the side in shadow growing colder. The only sound she heard was the beating of her own heart. When she’d opened her mouth, the moisture boiled off in the vacuum right away. High above the Earth, she found herself in an orbit where she saw the space station pass far below her.

Clarice wondered if she could get herself down there and knock on the door of the ISS. Her annoyance was momentarily allayed with the silliness of a tiny woman in pink pajamas knocking on their airlock and freaking out the astronauts.

She looked down at the Power Puff Girls pajamas she wore, compliments of being too small for most adult clothes. She tried to turn herself to change which side was toward the sun, but nothing seemed to help. She tried a swimming motion, but all it accomplished was to make her feel awkward.

A shimmer in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She whipped her head around toward where she’d seen it, and her body began to slowly rotate in the opposite direction. Of course, just when I don’t want it to.

She was still trying to figure out if she had seen something or just imagined it when it appeared in front of her. Clarice could still see the satellites and Earth below, and the moon beyond, but there was a black rectangle, reflecting no light, between her and what was beyond.

She reached a hand out and felt a solid surface. When her hand was touching it, she could hear the sound of machinery, and people. She tried to grasp on to it, find a place to hold on, but only managed to push herself away from it.

The black rectangle was slowly moving away from her, then an opened door rotated into view, as though it was pushing through from another dimension. Inside the door was a person in a space suit, tethered with a thick cable, and kicking off to come to her.

Once she’d been pulled into the airlock and the outer door closed, air began to rush in. Clarice took the first breath she’d had in far too long. She could no longer hear the slow pulse of her heart in her head. Sound filled the volume around her.

“Water,” she tried to say, but her throat was too dry. She pointed to her throat, and mimicked drinking.

The woman in the space suit removed her helmet and answered. “We’ll get you some water right away. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us for a bit.”

The inner door opened. A man floated near the door, holding a pouch with a straw and said, “Come on in.”

Clarice accepted the pouch and sucked at the straw. The soothing feeling of water returning to her mouth and throat was followed by the recognition that her lungs were every bit as dry. She still managed to croak out a “Thank you.”

The two astronauts seemed to know exactly what needed done and did so without any wasted conversation. While the woman got out out of her space suit and secured it in the straps near the airlock door, the man went about pulling medical equipment from a box that had been strapped to the wall.

He took her blood pressure while she finished the pouch of water. The woman took the empty and gave her another. While she worked on it, the man set up an IV and had the needle inserted before she knew he’d even started.

The woman put the blood pressure cuff around the IV bag and began pumping it up. She then turned to Clarice and offered her hand. “Mission Commander Agneta Ekstrand. You can call me Annie.”

Clarice shook her hand. “Clarice Whittaker.”

Annie pointed at the other astronaut, currently busy rechecking the pulse-oximeter he had placed on her finger. “That’s Ethan Valkai. If you hadn’t guessed, he’s the mission doctor.”

“Clarice,” he said with a nod.

“How many others are there on your mission?”

Annie laughed. “It’s just the two of us. We were told a body had launched into orbit, and we had to have a look.”

“A body what?”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “It was you.”

 Clarice shook her head. Nothing made sense. “But what? How did I get here? Why am I still alive?”

Ethan cleared his throat. “I don’t know how you’re still alive, to be honest. You’re a little dehydrated but show no signs of decompression sickness, and nothing indicates that you’ve been without oxygen for over an hour.”

“Probably not the answer you were looking for,” Annie said, “but I’ll fill in the rest as best I can.”

She pulled a tablet from the wall and showed Clarice a blurry video of something bright pink shooting up past a plane. Another showed the bright pink blur emerging from the tops of the clouds, a ring of wakes spreading through them.

“At this point,” Annie said, “you were traveling at just over Mach 7, and had the US government scrambling to call everyone to let them know they did not just fire a hypersonic missile from Idaho.”

“You’re saying, I just flew into space all on my own. And didn’t even wake up until I’d been floating out here for however long. How am I supposed to believe that?”

Annie cleared her throat. “Which one of us was floating barefoot in space in kids’ pajamas?”

“”Don’t knock my pajamas, Agneta the Tall. The adult clothes they make in my size all suck.” Clarice tried to cross her arms but the IV got in the way and she thought better of it.

“Please, just Annie, not Agneta.”

Clarice muttered, “Annie the Tall, then.”

”For all we knew, somebody’s kid shot into high orbit with no visible means of propulsion.” Annie helped Clarice to a seat where she could strap in and gave a couple more pumps to the blood pressure cuff still squeezing on the IV bag.

“What happens now?” Clarice asked.

“That’s a good question.” Ethan strapped into another chair. “When that IV bag is empty, let me know.”

“I will. Should I just pump it up some more when it slows down again?”

“Yeah. Not too much, just one or two pumps.”

“I think what happens now,” Annie said, “is we call home and see if they want us to land for quarantine on Earth or stay up here in quarantine with you until we determine whether you’re dangerous or not.”

Clarice looked at Annie, her disbelief pushed beyond what she thought possible. “Me? Dangerous how?”

“Well, the first thought I had, when I saw you moving in hard vacuum, was that you weren’t a human,” Ethan said. “Maybe an advanced robot, or possibly some sort of alien.”

“And?” she asked.

“You’re human, as far as I can tell,” he said. “Of course, there’s no way to run a DNA analysis up here, so we may be waiting a while for them to make up their mind as to what to do.”

“There’s also the issue that we don’t have a suit for you,” Annie said. “It’s a safety consideration on reentry.”

“However,” Ethan interjected.

“Yeah. However, you already survived insane acceleration and speeds that would tear any non-aerodynamic body apart, not to mention time in hard vacuum, and here you are.”

Clarice broke into a fit of crying laughter. The whole situation was just too much.

“Clarice, what’s wrong, dear?” Annie asked.

“Ethan, Annie, while it’s been nice to make your acquaintance, this was my first day off work in seventeen. All I wanted to do was sleep in, watch some stupid sitcoms, and drink a beer or two. I have to be back at work tomorrow morning, so I can’t quarantine for any amount of time.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I just want to go home.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to make it,” Annie said. “I’m sorry.”

Clarice closed her eyes and let herself go limp in the straps. “I just wanted a quiet day off.”