The Deep Breath Before the Plunge
Dear Susannah
Once more Gandalf’s words come back to me, uttered on this occasion before the Battle of Minas Tirith. The inward breath before the great trial, to summon courage and resolve. It feels odd not being able to see Earth any more. Nothing but stars now.And that inescapable sense of falling, always falling, towards our destination.
As in a dream.
****
As I’ve mentioned before, there are times when I feel as though I’m locked inside a submarine. Run Silent, Run Deep. The Enemy Above. Etcetera, etcetera. But are we the hunter or the hunted? Are we being stalked by predators as we travel through these dark forests, by creatures conjured by the dark matter that drifts between the stars like fog through a wood? Or have I simply been staring at the view for too long? I suspect the latter. But it’s difficult not to stare at the heavens, at the celestial depths through which we are plunging; at the distant beacons that are lighting our way through this endless dark. That panorama is compulsive viewing in a way no SimShow could ever be. I struggle to pull my eyes from the silent drama of the cosmos, from views of Genesis that any clergyman might sell his soul to see. The face of the deep across which god might have moved at the dawn of creation. Maybe. But if this isn’t god’s kingdom, I don’t know what is.
****
Good progress so far. The sun’s behaving herself and there have been no unwelcome visits from the Outer Dark, no asteroids popping the fragile skin of the twin hulls (walls within walls, again like Tolkien’s White Citadel). No solar flares or asteroid strikes, though of course it’s tempting fate to say so. Earth is now so far behind that even the digital scopes on the exterior of the hull struggle to make it out, only managing to resolve the globe as a misty blur. I miss the hypnotic blues and greens I used to stare at from orbit. Now there is only darkness and – to our eyes at least – the oddly bright stars. If any of the digi-scopes contain an AE35 unit, I’m not going Outside with my tool kit if it breaks down.
For the most part this voyage is passing quickly, much to my surprise. Each of us is simply too busy to be bored. It takes almost thirty minutes to move from one end of the spacecraft to the other, passing through each of the modules, from the dungeon at the rear to the flight deck at the prow. In some ways, Galileo is more castle than spaceship, with thick walls and a crypt-like radiation shelter designed to keep us safe. From her battlements we can survey the dark forests of the interplanetary deep, woods we enter from time to time in the battle armour of our EVA suits, conducting spacewalks either for experimental purposes or to undertake repairs to Endeavour’s hull, or to the external instruments. I have gone on two such excursions so far as little more than a tool carrier, fulfilling my role as ship’s handyman. On both occasions the experience has been exhilarating and terrifying in roughly equal measure, preparing me in a way for the EVA I will need to make on Hyperion’s surface. Both excursions were very different from the immersion tanks we trained in back at Gregarin. Those were still underwater dives rather than EVAs.
By the time I did my first real EVA I was used to the feeling of weightlessness. That helped. Even so the experience was close to overwhelming. Everything is normal, as normal as it can be on a spaceflight, until the moment the outer airlock slides across and you find yourself confronting the immensity of open space.
The void.
You have to step out of the airlock, or rather float out, but that first step is the hardest. At the start of both EVAs I hesitated, afraid – no petrified – to go any further, staring out into the darkness in a state approaching wide-eyed terror, as though I were standing with my feet on the edge of a precipice, which in a way I was. I don’t think I would have emerged from the airlock at all if I’d been alone. Fortunately I wasn’t, Tanya urging me out the first time, Mina the second. Space walking in the forest of the night. The darkness permanently dusted with stars. One step is all it takes to reach those stars. The politicians and policy makes who see little value in the human exploration of space would do well to remember that.
Spacesuits. I’ve never felt comfortable inside one. Tanya points two fingers at my eyes, a stabbing motion which under different circumstances might be considered aggressive, but which here means, "Look at me, eyes on me." That has never been difficult. It’s an easy distraction to succumb to. As I look at Tanya my panic subsides. I find myself wondering about her own suit and what she might be wearing beneath its densely woven exterior. The contrast between the outer and inner garments is profound, like that between concrete and silk. She looks good in a suit, the great glass faceplate magnifying the clarity of her gaze, her eyes trained on me, steading my nerves, a counterweight to my instinctive panic.
As the suit closes around me I feel like the victim in Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, entombed alive brick by brick inside a damp chamber from which there can be no escape. "For the love of God, Montresor!" Fortunately I have my Annabelle Lee to keep me safe.
Every man should confront the universe at least once in his life. How else can he know the limits of his soul, or how far he can trust himself? I have confronted mine and am not displeased with the results.
See also: https://www.facebook.com/thescreamingplanet