Specially written for this issue on the theme of “sacrifice”

  — a slightly involuntary one in this case ……

  From : Impulse march 1966 edition

  One instant the space ship Yuri Gagarin was a thousand-foot long projectile of gleaming metal, the next it was a core of flame and expanding gas, torn fragments and burning particles. Seventy-three people died at that moment painlessly and suddenly. The cause of the explosion will never be determined since all the witnesses were killed and the pieces of wreckage that might have borne evidence were hurtling away from each other towards the corners of infinity. If there had been any outside witness, there in space, he would have seen the gas cloud grow and disperse while the pieces of twisted metal, charred bodies, burst luggage and crushed machines moved out and away from each other. Each had been given its own velocity and direction by the explosion and, though some fragments travelled parallel course for a time, individual differences in speed and direction eventually showed their effect until most fragments of the spatial debris rushed on alone through the immensity of space. Some of the larger pieces had companions: a book of radio-frequency codes orbited the ragged bulk of the ship’s reactor, held in position by the gravitic attraction of its mass, while the gape-mouthed, wide eyed corpse of an assistant purser clutched the soft folds of a woman’s dress in its frozen hands. But the unshielded sun scorched the fibres of the cloth while the utter dryness of space desiccated it, until it powdered and tore and centrifugal force pushed it away slowly. It was obviously impossible for anyone to have survived the explosion, but the blind workings of chance that kill may save as well.

  There were three people in the emergency capsule and one, the woman, was still unconscious, having struck her head when the ship erupted. One of the two men was in a state of shock, his limbs hanging limply while his thoughts went round and round incessantly like a toy train on a circular track. The other man was tearing at the seal of a plastic flask of vodka.

  ‘All the American ships carry brandy,’ he said as he stripped off a curl of plastic then picked at the cap with his nails. ‘British ships stock whisky in their medical kits, which is the best idea, but I had to pull this tour on a Russian ship. So look what we get…’ His words were cut off as he raised the flask to his mouth and drank deeply.

  ‘Thirty thousand pounds in notes,’ Damian Brayshaw said thickly. “Thirty thousand pounds… good God… they can’t hold me responsible.’ One heel drummed sluggishly against the padded side of the capsule and moved him away from it a few inches. He drifted slowly back. Even though his features were flaccid with shock, and his white skin even paler now, with a waxen hue, it could be seen that he was a handsome man. His hair, black and cut long, had burst free of its careful dressing and hung in lank strands down his forehead and in front of his eyes. He raised his hands to brush at it, but never completed the motion.

  ‘You want a drink, chum?’ the other man asked, holding out the flask. ‘I think you need it, chum, knock it back.’

  ‘Brayshaw… Damian Brayshaw,’ he said, as he took the bottle. He coughed over a mouthful of the raw spirit and for the first time his attention wandered from the lost money, and he noticed the other’s dark green uniform with the gold tabs on the shoulders. ‘You’re a spaceman… a ship’s officer.’

  ‘Correct. You’ve got great eyesight. I’m Second Lieutenant Cohen. You can call me Chuck. I’ll call you Damian.’

  ‘Lieutenant Cohen, can you tell…’

  ‘Chuck.’

  ‘… can you tell me what happened. I’m a bit confused.’ His actions matched his words as his eyes roamed over the curved padded wall of the closed deadlight, to the wire-cased bulb then back down to the row of handles labelled with incomprehensible Cyrillic characters.

  “The ship blew up,’ Lieutenant Cohen said tonelessly, but his quick pull at the flask belied the casualness of his words. Years of service in space had carved the deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and greyed the barely-seen stubble of his shaven head, yet no amount of service could have prepared him to accept casually the loss of his ship. ‘Have some more of this’ he said, passing over the vodka flask. ‘We have to finish it. Blew up, that’s all I knew, just blew up. I had the lock of this capsule open, inspection check, I got knocked halfway through it. You were going by, so I grabbed you and pushed you in, don’t you remember?’

  Damian hesitated in slow thought, then shook his head no.

  ‘Well, I did. Grabbed you, then the girl, she was lying on the deck out cold. Just as I stuffed her in I heard the bulkhead blowing behind me so I climbed in right on top of her. Vacuum sucked the inner hatch shut before I could touch it.’

  ‘The others…?’

  ‘Dead, Damian boy, every single one. Sole survivors, that’s us.’

  Damian gasped. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure. I watched from the port. Torn to pieces. Blew up. The blast sealed off the chunk of ship we were in just long enough for us to get into this can. Even then there wouldn’t have been enough time if I hadn’t had the lid open and knew the drill. Don’t expect those kind of odds to pay off twice in a lifetime.’

  ‘Will anyone find us?’ There was a faint tremor in his voice. Chuck shrugged.

  ‘No telling. Give me back the booze before you squeeze the bottle out of shape.’

  ‘You can send a message, there must be a radio in this thing.’

  Chick gasped happily after a throat-destroying drink and held the almost empty flask up to the light. ‘Save a little to bring the girl around. You must have been out on your feet, Damian lad, you lay right there all the time watching me send the SOS. I stopped just as soon as I tried the receiver.’

  ‘I don’t remember. It must have been the shock - but why did you stop transmitting, I don’t understand.’

  Chuck bent and pulled at one of the handles below them. The padded lid lifted to reveal the controls of a compact transceiver. He flipped a switch and a waterfall-like roar rilled the tiny space, then was silenced as he turned it off and closed the lid. Damian shook his head.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Solar flare. Storm on the sun. We can never push a signal through that kind of interference. All we can do is hold our water until it stops. Say, it looks like our girl-friend is coming around.’

  They both turned to look at her where she lay on the padded wall of the capsule, Damian’s eyes widening as he realized for the first time just how attractive she was. Her hair was deep, flaming red, lovely even in the tangled disarray that framed her face. Only the ugly bruise on her forehead marred the pink smoothness of her skin, and her figure was lush, clearly defined by the tight-bodiced, full-skirted dress. The skirt had ridden up, almost to her waist, revealing graceful and supple legs and black lace sequined undergarments.

  ‘Really,’ Damian said, putting his hand out, then pulling it back. ‘It’s not right, shouldn’t we… adjust her garments?’

  ‘Help yourself,’ Chuck smiled. ‘But I was enjoying it. I’ve never seen… what do you call them? knickers - quite like that before. Very fancy.’ But he was pulling her skirt down even as he said it. Her head turned and she moaned.

  ‘Can she be badly hurt?’ Damian asked. ‘Have you done anything for her?’

  ‘I have no idea, and no, in that order. Unless you’re a doctor…’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘… there is nothing we can do. So I let her sleep. When she comes to I’ll give her a slug of this paint remover. Never give drink to anyone unconscious, it could get in the lungs, First Aid Course 3B, Space Academy.’

  Both men watched, silently, as her eyelids slowly opened, disclosing grey, lovely eyes that moved their gaze across their faces and about the cramped interior of the capsule. Then she began to scream, emptying her lungs in a single spasm of sound then gasping them full again only to repeat the terrified sound. Chuck let her do this three times before he cracked her across the face with his open hand leaving an instant red imprint on the fairness of her skin. The screams broke off and she began to sob.

  ‘You shouldn’t…’ Damian began.

  ‘Of course I should,’ Chuck said. ‘Medicinal. She got it out of her system and now she’s having a good cry. I’m Chuck,’ he told the girl, ‘and this is Damian. What’s your name?’

  ‘What happened to us? Where are we?’

  ‘Chuck and Damian. What’s yours?’

  ‘Please tell me. I’m Helena Tyblewski. What happened?’

  ‘I know you, at least I’ve heard of you.’ Damian said. ‘You’re with the Polish artists at Mooncentre…’

  ‘Socialities later, boy. We’re in an emergency capsule, Helena, in good shape. We have water, food, oxygen - and a radio to call for help. I’m telling you so you’ll realize how well off we are compared with the others aboard the Yuri. There was an accident. Everyone else is dead.’

  ‘And… what will happen to us?’

  ‘A good question. You can help me find out. Drain this vodka bottle, I need the empty flask. And let me have your shoes, yours too, Damian.’

  ‘What are you talking about? What for?’

  Chuck began to loosen the wing nuts that held the deadlight sealed in place. ‘A fair question,’ he said. ‘Since I’m the only member of the ship’s company present, I’m automatically in command. But we’re a little too cramped here for me to pull rank, so I’ll tell you what I know and what I want to do. When the accident h

appened we were, roughly, a quarter of the way from the moon to Earth. Where we are now I have no idea, and it is important to find out.’

  The deadlight came free and he swung it to one side, disclosing the capsule’s single porthole. Outside, the stars cut ribbons of white light across the darkness, while the Earth made a wider, greenish band.

  ‘As you can see we are rotating about the major axis of this thermos bottle. I’ll need star sights to plot our position, which means we have to slow down or stop this thing. Luckily the outer hatch opening faces the direction of motion so anything ejected from it will slow us down. The more the mass and the greater the speed of ejection, the more retardation we’ll get. There isn’t much surplus to throw away in one of these capsules, that’s why I want your shoes. The temperature controls work fine so you won’t need them. Okay?’

  There were no arguments. Their shoes went into the lock along with the empty flask, some of the padding from the wall, and all the other small items that could be accumulated. Chuck sealed the inner hatch and pumped in oxygen from the tanks to raise the pressure as high as possible. When he threw the handle that opened the hatch on the outer door, the capsule seemed to start spinning around them and they tumbled together against the wall.

  ‘Sorry,’ Damian said, reddening as he realized that his arms were around Helen and he was lying on top of her. She smiled as they drifted away from the padding and there was suddenly no up and down as they floated in free fall. Chuck frowned at the stars moving leisurely by the port.

  “That should be good enough to get some sightings. If not we can jettison some more junk.’

  He undipped his comparison dectant from the holder on his belt and pointed it out the port, squinting through it. ‘That is going to take awhile,’ he said, ‘so relax. With this gadget I can measure the angular distance of up to five astronomical objects, it will remember the angles and its tiny, microminiaturized brain can even do some of the basic computations. But it will take time. So let’s trade confidences, get to know each other, real chummy if you get what I mean. Me, I’m the simple one. Bronx High School, Columbia, the Academy - then the moon run ever since. What about you, Helena? Our limey friend said you were an artiste. A singer? Going to let us have an aria or two?’

  Helena compressed her lips. ‘I am not that sort of artiste. I create, the newest and most expressive art form, light mobiles.’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ Chuck said, sighting on another star. ‘They always hurt my eyes and give me a headache. What about you, Damian, are you a bank robber or an embezzler?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Well don’t blame me for asking, not after all that mumbling you were doing about thirty thousand pounds, gone, gone.’

  Damian clutched his hands together, tightly. ‘I’m with the British Embassy. It was currency, in my charge. I was transferring it back to Earth. Now it’s gone…’

  Chuck laughed. ‘Don’t be an idiot. It’s just paper, it’s been destroyed. They’ll just write it off and print some more.’

  Damian smiled sheepishly. ‘You’re right, of course. I never stopped to think of that after the accident. Stupid of me.’

  ‘We all have our bad days. Now talk to yourselves for a couple of minutes while I run these figures through the meatgrinder.’

  The conversation lagged while he pecked at the tiny computer and, as the first shock of the tragedy faded the other two began to feel the pressing loneliness of their position. Once they stopped talking the only sound was the almost inaudible hum of the air-circulating fan, and the occasional click of the computer. The naked bulb shone down, the stars drifted by in the blackness of the port. They were warm and comfortable in their capsule. Six feet by twelve feet inside. A container of comfort, one man wide and two men high, packed with the necessities to sustain life. Yet two inches away, on the other side of the insulated wall, was the endless emptiness of space.

  ‘That’s that,’ Chuck said, and slipped the dectant back into its sheath. ‘Now let’s see what the chow is like in this commy canister.’ The others almost smiled at the welcome hoarseness of his voice.

  ‘What about your figures? Where are we?’ Helena asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Chuck said, throwing back a large padded lid in the end of the capsule. ‘That’s not exactly correct. I have a reading that places us somewhere between the Earth and the moon. But I wasn’t on the bridge and I have no idea where we were before the explosion. So I’ll wait awhile, at least an hour, then I’ll shoot some more sights. Comparing the two positions should give us an idea of our course and speed. Anyone thirsty?’ He reached in and removed one of the containers of water that were ranked like giant bullets in a clip.

  ‘I will take some, please,’ Helena said.

  ‘Just suck it through the teat in the end…’

  ‘I have drunk it free fall before, thank you.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I forgot you were an old space hand. Something to eat with it?’ He withdrew a flat, brownish package and frowned at it. ‘Looks like a cardboard deck of cards. Can anyone here read Russian better than I can.’

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ Helena said, taking the package and glancing at it briefly. “These are latkes, it says so clearly on the outside.’

  ‘Dehydrated potato pancakes…’ he choked out. ‘I’m beginning to think the rest of the people in the Yuri were the lucky ones.’

  ‘Not even in jest,’ Damian said. ‘Touch wood when you say that.’

  ‘I doubt if there is any in this capsule, if you don’t count the latkes.”

  When they had finished, Chuck counted the stores, then opened another lid to check the reading on the meter attached to the oxygen tanks. He tried the radio again, but there was only the waterfall of static. At the end of an hour he did his observations once more, then computations.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Damian asked.

  ‘Let me check again.’

  Only after he had done everything a third time did he speak to them. There was no humour in his voice now.

  ‘I’ll lay it right on the line. We’re in trouble. We had the luck to be behind the explosion - in relation to the ship’s direction of travel, that is - and it had the effect of cancelling a good part of our momentum.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you are talking about,’ Helena said firmly.

  ‘Then I’ll simplify it. If the ship hadn’t blown it would have reached earth in about two days. But this capsule doesn’t have the same speed anymore. It’s going to be three to four weeks before we get near enough to Earth to send a message and be picked up.’

  ‘So what is wrong with that? It will be uncomfortable certainly, the lack of privacy here with you two men…’

  ‘Will you let me finish. It will be more than uncomfortable, it will be deadly. We have food - though we could go without eating for that long - the water is recycled so there is no shortage there. But these capsules are too small to carry CO2 regenerators. Our oxygen will run out in about two weeks. We’ll be a week dead before we can send a message that anyone can hear and act on.’

  ‘Is there no way out?’ Damian asked.

  ‘I don’t know. If we…’

  ‘This is nonsense!’ Helena burst in. ‘We can radio the moon, Earth, they’ll send ships.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Chuck said. ‘I know what ships there are on the moon and I know their range. We’re practically outside their zone of operation now, not forgetting the fact that we can’t even contact them. If the solar storm lasts even a few hours more we have to write them off. They won’t even be able to pick up our signals by that time. After that it is the long haul to Earth, contacting one of the satellite stations, waiting while they plot our position and a ship can reach us. Three weeks absolute minimum, probably four.’

  Helena began to cry then, and he didn’t try to stop her. It was something to cry about. He waited until she had finished and then, since neither of the others had seemed to see the obvious answer, he told them, in a flat and toneless voice.

  ‘The amount of air that three people breathe in two weeks is the same amount that two people breathe in three weeks. It might even last a little longer with proper care.’

  There was a long moment of silence before Damian spoke.