Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

which he fastened around his waist. Then he opened the hatch and crawled outside. Using the handholds recessed into the hull, Victor pulled himself toward the back of the ship to check how the rear plates were holding up. His hand slipped from one of the handholds, and Victor instinctively reached for the safety cable fastened to his chest harness to steady himself.
    Only the safety cable wasn’t there.
    In his haste to come outside he had forgotten to anchor himself to the ship.
    Victor clawed at the hull, trying to get purchase, desperate to stop himself, but his body was in motion now, moving toward the rear of the ship, and he had already passed the last handhold. His bulky gloves slipped along the metal surface, stopping on nothing. He was screaming now, his voice hoarse and cracked from lack of use. He was slipping down the side of the ship. There was nothing to grab. He was going to die.
    Then he saw it ahead of him. A tube of some sort, a small metal pipe at the back corner of the ship. Beyond it was space. If he missed it, he was gone. He would drift until he ran out of air. He approached the pipe, and just before he reached it he knew he wouldn’t be able to grab it. It was too far away, just beyond the reach of his fingers.
    In a single swift movement, his hand whipped to his tool belt and came back with a long wrench that he reached out and hooked around the pipe at the last possible moment, stopping himself. His heart was pounding. His breathing was labored. The wrench’s hold on the pipe was slight and precarious. It could easily slip off. He gently pulled and drew himself back to the ship.
    The wrench slipped from the pipe, but he was moving in the right direction now. He slowly drifted toward the cockpit, climbed inside, and fastened the safety cable onto his harness. He cursed himself for being so stupid. He had come all this way, risked his life, with intelligence that the whole world needed to see, and he nearly ruined it all by failing to fasten a single metal ring to his harness. Brilliant, Victor. Real genius.
    With the cable secured, he returned outside, checked the plates, found them in order, but then decided to install the spare plates anyway on top of the existing ones. Might as well. The spares weren’t doing any good inside the ship. Besides, he needed the labor. He needed to occupy his mind with work for a little while. He had built and engineered every day of his life since becoming Father’s apprentice, and the past five months had been nothing but mind-numbing idleness.
    When he finished the installation, he resealed the seams twice to be sure they would hold. He knew he was stalling. The seals were fine. He simply didn’t want to get back in the ship.
    Eventually, he returned to the cockpit. His hand lingered on the hatch for a moment before he closed it, his eyes scanning the expanse of space above him. He was only a few months away from Luna. He could endure this a little longer. He sealed the hatch and began to accelerate. The computer reconfigured his flight path to account for the delay and revised the time of arrival, putting him at Luna three weeks later than originally expected. Victor felt like hitting something. Three weeks. That was much longer than he had anticipated. But it was too late now. What’s done is done, he thought. Sighing, he sat motionless in the flight seat as the quickship picked up speed.
    *   *   *
    A month later a feeling of hopelessness overcame Victor. He felt certain he was off course. Or the computer had a glitch in it. Or he was running short of air. He kept catching himself staring at nothing. Food lost all appeal. His sense of taste was gone. Or maybe the proteins in the food had broken down so much from radiation that the food no longer had any taste to deliver. Either way, he had no appetite. He lost weight. His wrists and ankles felt thin and flimsy. He had brought rubber strips for resistance exercises, which he had been doing religiously every day since setting out. Now he ignored all exercise. Why bother? Little good it was doing. His bones were probably twigs at this point. He had struggled for months with insomnia. Now he seemed to sleep all the time. He hadn’t touched his handheld in days. There were books he had started and hadn’t finished, puzzles he had left unsolved. He didn’t care.
    A hand was gently shaking his shoulder, rousing him from sleep. Alejandra was beside him, wearing the pristine and pressed white gown.