Spite Trip

The galley smells like burnt rehydrated coffee and someone else's feet. I stir my slushy. It's green. Nothing on this station is a color food should be.

"Twenty years I gave that woman," I say.

Manuel sips his synth-juice. Orange. At least his is trying.

"Fourteen," he says. "You said fourteen at the gate."

"Twenty in the pharmacy. Fourteen she was my boss. There's overlap."

He does the thing with his eyebrows. The one that means he's doing math and doesn't like the answer.

"And this trip cost how much?"

"Four hundred credits. Each."

"For a cargo station tour."

"It's not a cargo station tour, Manuel. It's The Chrysalis Experience."

He gestures at the galley with his juice pouch. The galley is four meters square. There's a dented kettle bolted to the wall. A vent above us wheezes like it's dying and doesn't want to make a fuss about it.

"Experience," he says.

"She said I'd never leave the ground. That people like me don't save up for things like this. So. Here I am. Orbiting."

"Spite," he says. "We're in orbit because of spite."

"Orbit of spite," I agree. "It's actually a lovely ring."

He laughs. Then he stops laughing and points at a placard taped to the coffee machine. It says WARRANTY VOID IF TAMPERED in three languages.

"Life support warranty is up in nine months," he says. "Nine. I read the brochure on the shuttle. The tether winch has a two percent failure rating and they list it like that's good."

"Two percent is ninety-eight."

"Thank you, pharmacist."

I am forty-three years old. I have worked retail pharmacy for twenty years. Diane Kessler said, at my going-away lunch, with a little bow of her head, that she hoped the trip was "restful" in a voice that meant she hoped I'd come back broke and humbled.

I paid for this whole thing out of my vacation fund. Every credit. And I will wring an experience out of this rust bucket if it kills me.

"Sue," Manuel says. "Look at the map again."

I look at the map again.

The map is a laminated sheet velcroed to the wall. It shows the public tour loop in green. We are not on the green. We are somewhere gray, in a maintenance corridor, where the pipes run at head height and drip something that smells like warm metal.

Okay. Smelled like. Past tense. I'm fine.

"We're fine," I say.

"We passed that same valve twice."

"That valve has a twin."

"Nobody twins valves."

"We're in space, Manuel. Space twins valves."

He sits down on a pipe access box. He is forty-one, broad in the shoulders, patient in the way of a man who has dated me for four years and knows arguing with me is a subscription service. He pulls out the little tablet the tour desk gave us. He pokes it. The screen shows a corridor diagram and a blinking dot. The dot is not where we are. The dot is mocking us.

"The dot's wrong," I say.

"The dot is the only honest thing on this station."

I push past him. There's a hatch at the end of the corridor. It's labeled CARGO BAY 4. ACCESS. Below that, in smaller letters, something in handwriting that says PRESSURIZATION DISABLED, DO NOT.

"Do not what?" I say.

"That's not reassuring."

"It's fine. It says disabled. Disabled means off. Off means safe."

"That is not how any of this works."

I press the pad anyway. Because I am forty-three, and Diane Kessler thinks I don't leave the ground, and a labeled hatch on a tour is a hatch you're allowed through. Probably.

The hatch opens. The lights beyond are dim and blue. The air is cold and the floor is a grid of grating.

And then my stomach lifts.

Not falls. Lifts.

"Manuel."

"I feel it."

"Why do I feel it?"

He grabs the doorframe. I do not grab the doorframe. I am already two steps in, holding my slushy, which is now floating out of its cup in a wobbling green blob, like a jellyfish with a grudge.

"It's the low-g bay," Manuel says. "Cargo handling. They keep it at a tenth gravity for moving the big pallets. Sue. Sue, hold the frame."

"I'm holding the frame."

"You are holding the frame with your ankles, which is not a thing."

I drift. Slowly. It's not flying. It's more like the floor resigned and took the ceiling's side. My slushy orbits my head. A green blob taps my ear. I swat it. That pushes me sideways.

"Okay," I say. "Okay okay okay."

"Kick toward the wall. Slow. Small kicks."

I kick. Small. I drift toward the wall. The wall is coming up fast in that way walls do when low gravity lies to you about speed.

I do not hit the wall. I hit the cart.

The cart is a flatbed, chest height even in low-g, loaded with bins. Loose bins. Open bins. The bins are full of bolts. Thousands of them. Little silver hex heads, packed like a bad sunset.

My shoulder kisses the cart.

The cart says thank you by dumping itself.

Bolts. Everywhere. A slow-motion galaxy of hardware. They spread out in all directions, glinting in the blue light, spinning gently, each one a tiny glinting asterisk. One hits my cheek. It doesn't even hurt. It just boops me, like the universe flicking me for attitude.

"Wow," Manuel says from the hatch.

"Do not say wow!"

"Wow!"

He pushes off and comes gliding over, arms crossed, using the ceiling rails. Show-off. Four years of dating an engineer and he still can't let me flail with dignity.

I catch a bolt out of the air. It's warm from the lights.

"I activated it," I say.

"You did."

"I opened a door and a room did this."

"The room was waiting for someone like you."

"It says the pressurization is disabled. That's not dangerous. It just means the air isn't, um." I stop. "Manuel. If the air isn't pressurized, why is there air?"

"Because the sign means the blowers are off. It's the last two words that matter. Do not what? Do not open."

He catches bolts by the fistful. Six in one hand. I grab two. We drift among them, this little private asteroid field of hardware, and I have to admit something to myself, quietly, while he's not looking.

This is the best four hundred credits of the trip so far.

I say it out loud anyway, because I'm not quiet.

"Okay. This is good. This beats the gift shop."

"The gift shop was a vending machine that ate your card."

"Correct. And this is weightless hardware. I'm winning."

He grins at me. That grin. The one from the first date, when he told me he fixed washing machines for fun and I told him that was the least romantic sentence I'd ever heard and then went home with him anyway.

He looks at the hatch. Then at me.

"Don't," I say.

"We could stay in here."

"We're lost in a cargo bay full of bolts, Manuel."

"So we're lost somewhere fun. There's worse. There's the galley."

"Fair."

A bolt drifts past my nose. I snag it and pocket it. Souvenir. Nobody's watching. Except maybe the cameras, but whatever, it's one bolt, it costs them nothing, they charged me four hundred credits.

Manuel floats down to the hatch controls and pokes the panel.

"Sue."

"What."

"There's no close button. There's a hold-open timer. It's counting down."

"How long?"

"Forty seconds."

"From when?"

"From when you pressed it."

I look at the timer. It's at nineteen.

"Manuel."

"I know."

"If that hatch closes with us in a tenth-g bay, how do we get out?"

He looks at the hatch. Then at the timer. Then he does the eyebrows again, the math ones, and this time he doesn't like the answer enough to say it out loud.

Fourteen seconds.

"Kick for the door," he says. "Now. Small kicks, aim high, and Sue?"

"What."

"Drop the slushy."

"Never."

Twelve seconds. I throw the slushy at the wall. It spatters green, gloriously green, and I kick off the cart, bolts scattering around me like startled fish, and the hatch light goes from blue to amber and the door starts to swing.

I am not going to make it.

Manuel's arm shoots out of the gap like something out of a movie. I catch his wrist. He braces one boot on the frame. The door pushes. He grunts.

"The winch," he says, straining. "Two percent failure rating."

"Do not talk about the winch!"

"I'm just saying, if this is the moment..."

The door gives. We tumble through into the corridor in a heap, and the hatch hisses shut behind us, sealing in a bay that is now just bolts. Bolts forever. Some poor cargo tech is going to find that and lose his mind.

We lie on the corridor floor in normal gravity. The cart's worth of adventure settling out of my hair. A bolt rolls off my chest and rings on the deck plate like a tiny bell.

Manuel is laughing. Full, helpless, lying flat, laughing.

I start laughing too. Can't help it.

Diane Kessler, I think. You said people like me don't leave the ground.

I've got a stolen bolt and a boyfriend covered in slushy.

People like me are thriving.

Back in our berth, which is a coffin with ambitions, I am still buzzing. Manuel peels off his slushy jacket and hangs it on the one hook. The hook that also holds my spare socks. His jacket lands on my socks.

"Manuel."

"Hm?"

"Your jacket is on my socks."

"I'll move it." He does not move it. He sits on the bunk instead, which is also my bunk, technically, since the three bunks are labeled A, B, and CRYO STORAGE and we only bought two tickets. He pats the mattress beside him. Pats it in a way.

"Oh no," I say. "I know that pat."

"What pat? This is a normal pat."

"That's a hopeful pat. That's a pat with plans."

He grins at me. The other grin now. "We almost died. Adrenaline. Studies show."

"Which studies?"

"Engineer studies."

He leans in and kisses me, and it's a good kiss, he's a good kisser, four years of data confirm this. His hand does the thing at my waist that usually works. It usually works!

I pull back.

"Sue."

"I know."

"You're doing the jaw."

"I am not doing the jaw."

"You're doing the jaw. The one where you're composing a complaint in your head and your whole face files it."

Fine. Fine! "There was ONE dispenser, Manuel. One. For the whole crew deck. It said NUTRIENT PASTE, STANDARD, and the flavor options were STANDARD and STANDARD."

"That's true."

"It wasn't even a machine. It was a tap. A tap of paste. Like a beer tap but for sadness."

"Okay."

"And you want to fool around in a room the size of a dishwasher with paste-tap breath."

He stops. Thinks about this. "Fair," he says, which annoys me, because I wanted a fight and he gave me a concession and now I have nowhere to put the fight.

"We have dinner reservations," I say, which is a lie, there are no reservations, there is only the tap.

"I'll brush my teeth," he offers.

"It's not about your teeth."

I flop back on the bunk and stare at the ceiling, which is fourteen inches from my face and has a sticker on it that says BUNK B in peeling letters. The vent wheezes. The wheeze has become the soundtrack of my life. Four hundred credits each. Eight hundred credits to sleep in a filing cabinet and eat sadness from a tap.

Diane Kessler said restful. I can hear her saying it. I hope it's restful, Sue. That voice. That voice could curdle milk at forty paces.

"There's an old emergency shelter pod down the corridor," I say. "I saw it on the way in. Pods like that have their own air scrubbers, you know."

"Are you sulking about a shelter pod?"

"I'm considering it as lodging. The pod has dignity. The pod does not have a paste tap."

Manuel looks at me. Then he gets up, all casual, and leans out into the corridor, and calls down it, casual as anything. "The pod's right here. Look. It even has a cushion."

"See, it has a cushion."

"You wouldn't last an hour in there."

"Is that a challenge?"

"It's an observation. You sleep with a fan, a white noise machine, and two pillows. The pod has one cushion and the hum of regret."

"I happen to find the hum of regret soothing."

"Then get in."

He's calling my bluff. He knows it's a bluff. I know it's a bluff. We've been together four years, this is our entire language, and the only way to win is to escalate past the point of reason. I climb in.

It's snug. It's really snug. It's shaped like someone who is shorter than me and has fewer opinions. I pull the hatch across and it seals with a hydraulic sigh and there's a little round window and through it I can see Manuel's face, unreasonably smug.

"How's the regret hum?" his voice says through the intercom.

"Peaceful. Quiet. I live here now."

"There's an inventory sticker inside, isn't there? Read it to me."

I look. There is an inventory sticker inside. "Thermal blanket, one. Water sachets, four. Flare kit, one. Candle, one emergency."

"An emergency candle. For emergencies. In a sealed pod."

"That's what makes it emergency."

I wiggle down onto the cushion. It's lumpy. The scrubber hums. It's actually kind of nice, in the way that a coffin you chose is nicer than a coffin you didn't. I close my eyes. I have a stolen bolt in my pocket. I press it against my palm.

Then the klaxon goes off.

It goes off THROUGH the pod wall, which is apparently not a wall so much as a suggestion, and the corridor lights go from white to amber, and a pleasant recorded voice says, "This is a depressurization drill. All personnel report to pressure stations. This is a drill. Repeating, this is a drill."

"Manuel," I slap the hatch release. Nothing. Slap it again. "Manuel, it won't open."

"It's drill-locked," he calls back, and I can hear him grinning, I can hear a grin through a hull, that's how long four years is. "It's a pressurized shelter, Sue. It thinks there's a depressurization."

"Well tell it there isn't."

"I don't have the console. You're in the pod. You have the console."

"I'm a pharmacist."

"Then prescribe yourself out."

The voice repeats. The klaxon does its thing. I fumble at the little