Star Sweeper |
Issue 16
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“Hey, Madge, look at this.”
I turn my head and see a red, flashing circle on Tara’s monitor. Through training, kinetic launch, and the daily protocols of being in orbit, I’ve come to feel as though we’re so prepared that nothing could possibly surprise us. But we’re not omniscient; the monitors can only really show us what we expect to see. “What is it?” I say. Tara taps out a command to identify the object. Beyond the thick walls of the shuttle, a signal reaches out toward the UFO, bounces back, and becomes letters on the screen. “Just as I thought,” Tara says. “One of those old mega-constellation pieces of crap.” “Can I see?” I reach out a hand for the tablet. The Velcro holding it to the module rips sharply as Tara passes it to me. The data is still typing itself out at the bottom of the screen, listing log dates and propellant storage levels. It ends with a date and a sign-off. “It’s twenty years old, shouldn’t it be up for collection?” “Nah, these old models still have five years on their lease. I remember when those things started launching—no regulation whatsoever. SU had to apply retirement dates in retrospect, and they were pretty lenient at first.” I scan the data again. “There isn’t even a materials breakdown…” “Wasn’t required back then—like I said, no oversight. Don’t worry about it, we’ll get those figures when we need them. God knows we’ll start picking up a lot of those soon enough.” Tara takes back the tablet and glances through the data herself. “It’ll be coming up beside us if you wanna take a look?” I glide out of the flight deck and pull myself into the center module, bumping my hip on the entrance. I’m still not quite used to maneuvering about the shuttle, but it’s hard to look clumsy in microgravity—no matter how badly I fumble, I still float. At the cupola, I roll back the blankets on the windows, and the universe peers inside. It’s brighter out there than you’d think. Every time I pull back these blinds, I find myself gazing out into the emptiness, jaw dropped, probably looking like my brain’s fallen out my ear. Tara says old shuttles didn’t have viewing decks—there was barely enough space aboard for a few personal items, let alone a ring of giant windows. This one is big enough that I can lean the whole length of my body along the frame and gaze down at the Earth, 250 miles below. The Pacific is a vast blue carpet striped with clouds. I can’t imagine staying sane here, in these cramped little rooms, without being able to stretch myself out on the ocean. To my left, I spot the UFO—not unidentified anymore, I guess, but it was never flying either. It looks like it could, though: its solar panels are stretched out like wings. The solar cells are probably rotted to shit by now, burnt by overexposure. Its insides must be riddled with tin whiskers. On its casing, there is a large dent—from a collision with some other piece of orbiting debris—but I’d never have guessed how old it was if I didn’t recognize the name printed in a block font on its side. A long-defunct company, whose engineers would have transferred their expertise and records to a Space Unification team at least ten years ago. The CEO is probably enjoying a lovely retirement somewhere while the courts are still trying to get an ecological genocide charge to stick. It’s not a satellite anymore; it’s junk, designed to be discarded in one of the upper shelves of our sky to rot, drift, and eventually fall into the atmosphere. Burn up into pollutants. If not for Star Sweepers, it would one day slip out of orbit and hurtle back to ground. Best case: the remains would sink to the bottom of the sea. Worst: they’d crash through someone’s ceiling. “Nice view?” Tara’s head pops up through the entrance to the module. Her greying hair, even tied back, bobs around her head like an air bubble. “We’ll be coming up on Ladon in about 30 minutes—you’d better suit up.” #
I met Tara on the ground, three days before launch. Tall, stone-faced, early forties but already mostly grey. She approached me in the mess hall and stuck out a hand. The first thing she asked after I introduced myself was, “So how’d you get into this?”
I stammered at first. “W-well, I just stumbled into an internship by chance, really.” I was lying a bit—the truth would have sounded like such a cliché. I’ve loved space for as long as I can remember. My Grandma used to have a telescope in her garage, and when I visited, she’d set it up and help me find Venus. Looking back, I realize that space never looked right. It was never that clear, inky black like in textbooks—often, it was grey—and the stars never seemed bright enough, as if we were peering through tinted glass. Even Venus grew duller by the year. It was only later that I’d learnt why—it turns out space debris is pretty opaque. “What about you?” I said as Tara sat down across from me. “Oh, I always knew I’d be an astronaut,” she said. Her voice echoed through the hall amongst the rest of the chatter, where mine had cowered. “Build a colony on Mars or something—that's what the future looked like when I was a kid. Didn't imagine I'd end up an orbital cleaning lady, though.” “Do you like it?” “It's all right. Still wish I was going further afield, but no dice.” “Probably a good thing. Can you imagine how much time and money it would take to get to Mars?” She shook her head and laughed. “You’d make a great SU ambassador. You already know your lines.” I shrugged. “I want to make a difference.” “Yeah, you and everyone else in their twenties. Just don’t expect to be changing the world on your first mission, OK?” #
The metal braces grip my forearms, tight enough that I can feel them through my suit. I squeeze the triggers under my fingers, and one of the large metal hands layered on top of mine grabs the outer rail of the satellite—Ladon 4, the one we’ve come out here to retrieve. The exoskeleton swings me smoothly up to her side, dragged into slow motion by the vacuum. I am strangely numb to the movement, as though the universe is shifting around me, my body less of an agent than I’m used to on the ground.
Behind me, two long grey cables trail from my hip to the shuttle. With my metal hand, I unclip one of them and attach it to the satellite’s core. I unspool the third, shorter cord that’s clipped onto my thigh and secure that to the unit too, closing the loop between shuttle, satellite, and astronaut. “Contact made,” I say. “How’s it looking?” Tara’s voice crackles through the receiver in my helmet. I cast my eyes over the satellite again. It’s smaller than the ancient one from earlier, its core unit only a little taller and wider than I am. Its solar wings seem to stretch out endlessly on either side. “All good as far as I can tell. Nothing big missing.” “OK. Let’s start with the panels.” Initiating the retirement protocol should be easy enough—all I have to do is connect to the control unit and type in the universal code. With little delay, the solar panels begin to tilt and fold inwards, towards me. They move slowly, eking out the last dregs of the unit’s battery power, reserved for this express purpose. I imagine a whirring that, without the benefit of an atmosphere, I don’t hear. The outermost panels come to a stop on either side of me. I grasp the edges of the nearest solar panel with my robot hands, tug it sharply, and it comes free—like children’s building blocks pulled apart. It’s mostly metal and glass, and the size of my torso, but I don’t feel the inertia of getting it moving; the exoskeleton applies enough force on my behalf. “The chute is almost with you,” Tara crackles. I turn, hovering beside the satellite with the first panel in hand. A metal chute runs along the shuttle–satellite cable like a train on a track, only a few feet shy of me. Its gaping mouth creeps closer, unlit inside—a few feet in, it is darkness wall to wall. When it comes within a foot of me and stops, I ease the solar panel into it—a soft push, and the panel is off, sinking into the chute’s dark innards, bound for the padded interior of the shuttle’s cargo hold. According to Tara, space shuttles never used to have cargo holds. I guess they didn’t imagine they’d be bringing much back home with them. I repeat the process for as many panels as I can reach and then prompt the unit to fold its wings in on themselves again to bring the rest closer. I keep working, trying to keep my mind off the sweat forming in globules on my skin, thick and unmoving. “You’re doing a great job, Madge,” Tara says as I drop the last solar panel into the chute. “How you feeling?” “You’d better buy me a drink when we get home,” I huff. “This is harder work than I thought.” Tara’s laugh distorts into a hiss through the comms. “The unit’s next. You wanna take a minute?” “No, let’s get it finished.” “OK. Sending over the breakdown now.” On the small screen strapped to my forearm, a breakdown of the unit’s material components appears line by line. “Oof,” I say, “86% aluminum.” “Yeah,” Tara sighs. “It’s a pretty small one, though.” I should know; I waited an extra six months for a mission that the team were happy to put me on. Ideal for a first timer—a simpler model, so less time out here in the suit. Less chance of me fucking up. “I’m ready to get started when you are.” Tara’s worry seeps through the receiver, evading her attempts to hide it. “Do you want directions?” “I’m good.” The retirement protocol should do most of the work for me, and the unit’s manual is ready on the screen at my forearm if I need it. “Opening the front panel now.” With metal fingers, I take apart the unit piece by piece, dropping each into the chute at my back: the hatch door, propellant tank, lithium-ion battery, and endless sheets of computer hardware strung together with multicolored wires. Technically, I don’t have to be too careful with it—all the components will be catalogued and dissected back on the ground, the metals melted down and repurposed. But I don’t toss the parts into the chute like they do in the training videos. Someone still made these, delicately pieced them together, and someone will have to pry them apart if I mangle them. These metal hands are magic, in a way: if they treat these parts like junk, they’ll become just that. Most of the way done, and I wish I could wipe the sweat from my brow. I bring my arm up, but it clunks against my visor, reminding me where I am, the layers of glass and metal and nylon separating my wrist from my forehead. I sigh. My small bunk will feel like a king-size bed tonight, I’m sure. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. The beeping comes from just behind my left ear. There’s a red light flashing in my peripherals. “Tara?” Is it comms? This can happen sometimes, temporary disturbance caused by dust or radiation. The worst thing I can do is panic, but each silent second that goes by quickens my heart rate. “Tara, are you there?” “I’m here. Madge, the suit is reporting higher CO2 levels than normal.” “Why?” “I’m not sure. Keep calm and head back to the shuttle, OK?” “OK. Turning back now.” I reach down and unclip the tether connecting me to the unit. My vision is a little spotty—I’m not sure if that’s from a meaningful lack of oxygen or just adrenaline quietly entering my bloodstream. The braces on my arms grip a little too tight, and the pools of sweat in my suit are suddenly oceans. I am not a metal frame with robot arms but a fleshy human body. I am small. I turn around and grab the cable that extends back to the ship. The chute is already retracting, and I go to pull myself in the same direction—something pulls me back the other way. I half turn, but the satellite unit gets there first. The casing bumps into my side, sending a vibration through every inch of my exoskeleton. “What the—?” The unit is still tethered to my thigh, following behind like a dog, never more than a foot away as I drift slowly toward the ship. I must have unclipped the wrong cable; the one that should be holding the satellite unit in place is following the chute as it retracts. My hands are shaking. “Tara—Tara, I unclipped—” “It’s alright, just detach yourself from the unit and return to the ship.” “But we need to—” “We can reattach later, Madge. Right now, I need you to focus on getting back inside.” The ship is surging towards me—no, I must be moving toward it, maintaining my momentum. I unclip the remaining cable from my thigh, but the unit keeps coming, following close at my heels. I don’t think—I can’t think, because the red light is still flashing and my helmet is beeping and this giant metal shell and the whole of the universe are crowding in on me from all sides. I push the unit off my back with one metal arm. It spins as it careens away from me, from the ship, in the direction of the big blue ocean gleaming up at us. My head stops spinning once the airlock is shut and the room is repressurized. Tara floats around me as she detaches the exoskeleton from my back and removes my helmet. “Where’s the unit? Did it go far?” I say, still gasping in air. “Breathe, Madge.” “It was heading toward ground—if we don’t grab it soon, it’ll start re-entry.” “Don’t worry about that right now.” “But we have to—” “At the end of the day, we got the battery and the panels—” “But it’s almost 100% aluminum! It’ll burn up and leave a hole in the ozone!” Aluminum atoms tear into ozone molecules, stealing away half of the pairs, lingering unwanted in the air as aluminum oxide… My throat is contracting. Each breath catches on my teeth. “It’s only a casing, Madge, it’ll hardly leave a hole. You did what you could.” “No, I made a mistake, I fucked it up—I should’ve—” Tara grabs me by the shoulders with both hands. With nothing holding either of us to the ground, we drift, and I have to put my arm out to stop my back from hitting the module wall. “Madge,” Tara says. “Stop spiraling and breathe. Your suit malfunctioned. You had to get back to the ship. Your life is worth more than a few ozone molecules, OK?” I stuck in a breath. And another. First thing they drilled into us in training: don’t panic. The worst thing you can do is panic. And here I am, on my first mission, panicking. “OK,” I say. “I’m sorry.” “I’ll chalk it up to the low oxygen,” Tara says and continues removing my suit. #
#
Tara and I started talking more after launch. There isn’t much else to do up here. Between eating, sleeping and routine engineering checks, we only have each other for entertainment.
On our third day in orbit, we were sat in the center module together, eating ‘lunch’—there’s no time up here, but it was our second meal since waking, so we called it lunch. You need the illusion of Earth time to keep you sane. After ten minutes spent chasing a floating M&M with her mouth, Tara piped up. “You know, when I first started out, I was on re-entry management.” “You worked for SU back then?” I said, eyes wide. “I’d just started secondary school when they launched that program.” “I get it, I'm old. Thanks.” “No, sorry, I mean... I remember when the first drones were launched.” They started burning up space junk two years into the Space Unification project. Unmanned missions rounded up old satellites and dropped them into the atmosphere over the ocean. Hunks of metal started washing up on shores, and bright streaks and bursts of colorful light would appear in the sky. SU’s shooting stars, people called them—blue-green balls of light with orange streaks at their backs, turning to glitter. Space junk securing its final resting place scattered above our heads. “I used to listen out for the alerts,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s so weird to think we were both watching.” “I'm not sure that's unique to us—a lot of people watched the re-entries. Didn’t stop them sacking that program off after a couple years.” I opened my mouth to respond but she held up a hand. “I know, I know—hole in the ozone, blah blah. Getting reassigned still sucked, OK?” “Sorry.” I plucked another M&M from the bag, let go, and it hung in the air in front of me. With a gentle tap, it drifted Tara’s way. #
I don’t watch the video sent up from Observation Port 134. I stare out the cupola while Tara watches on her tablet. I hear laughter broken up by radio static.
“Completely destroyed upon re-entry,” Tara says as the video ends and she puts the tablet on standby. “No harm done.” I stare at her. “No harm?” “Madge, give it a rest, would you? Did you see how much you pulled off that thing, how much we’re taking back with us? You did a brilliant job, especially for your first time.” “No, I didn’t. I panicked and launched a hunk of metal into the atmosphere.” “You made a mistake. It happens. And a little unit like that won’t have much effect in the long run. For heaven’s sake, do you beat yourself up when you throw something in the wrong recycling bin?” I think for a moment. “Sometimes.” “God, your generation!” Tara laughs. She pushes herself off the window and gestures for me to follow. “Come on. I wanna show you something.” When she begins playing with the ship’s controls, I lean in to try and figure out what she’s doing. “You’re not taking me on a joyride, are you?” “We’re not going far. Just a slight adjustment…” Outside in the vacuum, little nozzles spurt gas and nudge us this way and that. I stop watching—right now, it feels like we could be the next piece of metal plunging into the atmosphere. After a few minutes, Tara shuts off the manoeuvre controls and brings up a camera image on the console. We’re right above South America, a green expanse under a spotted blanket of cloud. “What do you see?” Tara says. “Er, I see… land?” She tuts. “And on that land?” “Grass? Bushes? Trees?” “Trees! Exactly.” She points to the upper left quadrant of the continent, which is almost entirely a rich, dark green. “When I first came up here, most of that land was yellow. This is the greenest I have ever seen the Amazon—the greenest it’s been in almost a hundred years! Now, you tell me: is that good news or bad news?” I hang my head; I know what she’s doing. “Good news.” “Yeah—amazing news! And to add to that, we have a cargo full of materials—materials that you salvaged—that will mean no one has any excuse to go hunting for oil or ore there any time soon.” “OK, OK, I get the point.” I can’t help but smile. The Earth has gone dark for the tenth time today, so we take the opportunity to watch yet another sunrise. Orange arms splay out across the blue curve of the Earth as the sun emerges from its brief slumber. Within a few minutes, it’s over, the star becoming its usual ball of yellow light on a blue-black canvas. I catch sight of Venus—the brightest star in the sky—and point it out to Tara, like I always do. It’s bright, brighter up here than I’ve ever seen it through a telescope. And I could be imagining it, but it seems like every time I see it now, it grows brighter, brighter, brighter. |
Meg Horridge is a UK-based writer of speculative fiction, currently working toward a PhD at Lancaster University that centres on writing a collection of utopian short stories. Their work has previously been published in Flash Literary Journal and The Cabinet of Heed.
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