As Normal as it can get

NIGHTS ARE NORMALLY DARK. You know that. But this night was a few shades darker. It’s not like you have day and night aboard THE LITTLE STAR, as that’s what our spaceship is called. This felt like the night to me, as we were technically behind the Earth. Yup, we were behind the Earth, and the Earth’s shadow fell on us. There were hardly any other stars around, and even the nearest one was too far away to give much light. These factors made it dark at the time. So, back to the story. I was lazing around (well, drifting would be a more appropriate term) our spaceship, staring into the nothingness outside, when I spotted a comet. I immediately knew this was special because the head of the comet was much smaller than usual, but its tail was about four times longer than the average comet. “Hey! Vijay! Veeru! Anika! People! Come fast!” I called out to the crew. And they came running, well, not exactly running, but floating through the ship.

“What’s so exciting? What happened? Ouch!!” Vijay asked, bumping his head on the wall. 

“THAT happened” I replied, pointing at the comet.

“Wow. That’s just amazing” Anika said, vocalizing all the others’ thoughts.

“What's that?” Veeru asked, having just got a hold on the handle beside the window.

“That's probably a comet, if you don't know,” I replied, laughing.

“Well, I know that, but that's obviously not a regular comet. It's special” he said, scowling at me for a second, and looking back outside. And I couldn’t see anything after that. In fact, nobody could see anything. That was because the power got cut. Alarmed cries rang all through the craft, as everyone was startled by the evident power outage. Many of them just maintained a shocked silence, though.

Just try imagining. You are in a spaceship, and it is dark. There are no lights, and there’s no gravity. The passing comet, the only source of light now, is moving away from you. You can’t see where you’re going, and you can’t stay still as there’s absolutely no gravity around. Can you picture that? If you can, then you must be able to understand the gravity of the situation (Sorry, bad pun). It’s like the darkness is pressing in on you from all sides. That’s how it was. There weren’t supposed to be power cuts in a spaceship, especially this one, as this one contained a special mechanism recently developed.

 I’m not going to tell you who made it, what it is, or how it works, as it’s top secret. Actually, I don’t know these things myself. And that proves that it’s really, really secret. All I can tell you is that it is supposed to extract maximum power from the sun and supply it in a steady, constant flow. It looked like this technology hadn’t worked properly, as the outcome was a power cut. 

A power cut in space is a big thing. It meant that the temperature could go down or up. In our case, it was steadily deteriorating, making the whole crew shiver. And that’s not all. Even though we knew enough not to scream or not to waste energy unnecessarily, the oxygen levels were depleting. Even if everybody took deep, long breaths, there wasn’t enough oxygen to last for long. An announcement made by the captain rang through the ship,  “Everybody, get your oxygen cylinders. I repeat, everybody, get your oxygen cylinders.”

At this, everybody silently moved to the emergency room, where all the cylinders were kept. No oxygen was to be wasted, and we understood that. We were guided by the emergency lights, which had flickered on in strips across the length of the floor and the ceiling. It’s not like there’s any difference between the floor and ceiling, though. It was like a ball, where you could walk on the ceiling and hit your head on the floor. The emergency strips did not provide much light, but that was enough for the time being. It was better than having no lights at all. One of the astronauts, Karthik, was dispatched to go and check on the power generator, the machine which took the solar power from the solar panels attached to the spacecraft, and converted it to electricity. This had to be done from the outside, as there was no opening inside. This was due to safety purposes, which I could write a book about, but I’m skipping that as it’s not related to the topic. 

Now, where was I? Oh, I was just telling you that Karthik went out to check the generators. He quickly wore his suit and took all the things needed to venture outside, as time was of the essence. And also, we were freezing, so we, too, wore our suits, which thankfully still had their heat regulators working. So, Karthik went out, opened the hatch behind which the generator lived, and guess what he found! First, he was so surprised that he didn’t say anything at all, as the captain asked him over the speakers to kindly verify the problem. And then, he burst out laughing. All of us inside the ship were extremely surprised as the laughter rang out through the craft, bursting from the speakers inside. It must have been really, really funny, as it was hard-drilled into our brains by our trainers that no oxygen, not a bit, was to be wasted in space. 

As the captain again asked him, he said, “it’s not a malfunction or anything!” and he burst out laughing again. We remembered that our suits, too had speakers and mics connected to his, so we hollered at him “What’s wrong with you? We’re here in the dark, with no electricity, and you’re joking around like a clown!” To that, he replied by turning his suit-camera on, and we, too, saw the problem. We burst out laughing, too, and it was a bad idea because it made us hit each other, by mistake.

So, I think I’ve delayed telling you what exactly it was, so…

The problem was basically this little kitten. It had somehow got inside the generator-shaft. It was snuggled quite close to the main circuit, which staunched the flow of electricity. It had probably breathed on the oxygen which circulated through the entire ship, including this particular shaft. It had got the required heat from the generator. Karthik slowly picked it up, without scaring it in any way. He always had a way with animals. He loved them, and they, in turn, loved him. He slowly picked it up, held it in his arms, and came inside swiftly. It didn’t have a suit, so it needed oxygen. By this time, the electricity was back. We removed our suits, and soon, life was back to normal. Well, as normal as it can get in space!