Tarq woke up. She wasn’t spinning fast, but she was spinning. The stars moved from one corner of her visor to the other. The constellation – Big Dong – was barely visible in the bottom left corner when she went to sleep. Now it was in the top right corner. That’s how she knew she was spinning. No point fighting it. No point in rationing oxygen either. The sooner it ran out the better. She’d been sleeping too much. Her eyelids and brow were bleary with rest.
‘Whatever happens, don’t press this button without securing yourself to something,’ Mitch had said. He’d been showing her around the shuttle all afternoon, with its nests of wires, buttons and foil. His voice was like an extractor fan at this point, whirring away in the background. ‘You press that button you’ll get sucked out into space. Fix this cord to yourself as soon as you get in the airlock.’
All that health and safety rubbish – don’t press this, don’t forget that. Even if she had time to remember all the stupid rules, just telling her wasn’t the way to teach her. Now she knew which button she wasn’t supposed to press, but not before she pressed it. That’s just how her brain worked. She was a doer type learner – kinesthetic.
‘This stuff’s important,’ he’d said. ‘Wake up!’
She’d been daydreaming out of the airlock window, wondering what the constellations were called or if anyone had ever taught her and she’d just forgotten.
‘I was listening,’ she’d said.
‘You didn’t look like it.’ He licked his lips too much, and they were crusty in the corners. ‘What did I just say?’
‘Press the button and get sucked into space.’
He had waved the cord at her as a reminder.
‘Always attach the cord,’ she’d added.
‘Good.’
Little did he know that she had no idea which button she wasn’t supposed to press. The likelihood of her hanging around in the airlock pressing random buttons was pretty slim. Not her job, not her problem. Anyway, as long as she attached the cord everything would be fine. She could go around pressing all the buttons.
He didn’t say, ‘Make sure the cord is fixed properly. Give it a tug.’
That might have been a helpful tip. Instead of waving it in her face he could have told her how easy it was to miss the clasp on the cord and leave it hanging there.
If only he could see her now, slowly spinning through the vacuum, a radiation sponge in a suit of wires, buttons and foil. Her options had become severely limited. She could sleep or she could wake up. She could count the number of visible stars or come up with dirty names for the constellations. She could wait.
At least she would live on through Mitch and his health and safety tours.
‘Don’t be like Tarq,’ he’d say. ‘Make sure you fix this cord before you press this button.’