The Grand Abyss
Dear Susannah
H.G. and J.V. would have loved Galileo. There’s something very Victorian about this clunking, wheezing, damp contraption, which seems to run on vapour and steam (which in a way it does, of course, the ion engines at the rear of the configuration emitting a steady stream of charged particles that push us through the vacuum, very different from the sound and fury of the rockets that launched us into orbit).
Condensation seems to cover every surface like the windows of a house in winter. The air is always stale and the food tastes like it comes from a pet store. The worst feature of each day is the two hours of exercise I’m required to perform in an evil contraption designed to compensate for the effects of muscle loss. As for personal hygiene, I won’t even go into that. But despite all this there is one compensating factor. The view!
The view captivates us all, even the professional astronauts who’ve seen it all before. The thing is, you can’t just glance through a viewport and then look away. The vista captures your gaze and won’t let go, trapping it Out There in the Grand Abyss. The eye, my eye anyway, looks for patterns in this black sky, searching out configurations, tracing lines from star to star. The same quest for pattern recognition that made our ancestors search the night sky for the shapes of familiar animals. I have spent hours doing this without being conscious of the time. It takes a tap on the shoulder or a polite cough or murmured greeting to break the moment, to shake me from my contemplations.
Despite the strains of the mission, I feel totally relaxed up here, my mind free and unburdened for the first time in years. The viewing ports are where most discussions seem to take place, natural hubs for all forms of social activity, around which we cluster like limpets, holding onto whatever’s available as we gaze into the deep. Infinity is no longer an abstract mathematical concept. Space has altered all our perceptions.
The abyss stares back at us, an implacable regard, asking silent questions none of us can answer. What is one human life compared to the life of a star? At one such exchange – I staring into the abyss, the abyss staring back – I remembered a line from Bradbury. Even when they were set on Mars, Bradbury’s stories were always about small town middle America, circa 1950, usually on the eve of Halloween. But he was right about one thing. Space makes you feel small. It squeezes you until you are less than nothing, shrinking you down to the size of an atom. There are infinities in that direction too, if only our eyes could see. Until you realise that all human life is momentary. With that comes the realisation that all mortal endeavour, even the rise and fall of civilizations, is transient. We are Well’s “infusoria”, busying ourselves in a drop of water that we take to be the entire universe, never realising that it is merely one particle of a much greater ocean.
The sense of serenity created by the view is enough to calm me when I’m stressed or tired or irritable, a better panacea than the endless diet of SimShows once used for the same purpose by most of Earth’s population. Serenity and permanence. As good a definition of eternity as I can come up with. It will have to do for now, until I can think of something better.
It’s not a good idea to stare into the abyss for long. Rapture of the deep can be dangerous, filling your head with odd ideas and thoughts, speculations that make you wonder what it would be like to go into an airlock without a spacesuit and blow the external doors, freefalling from the edge of the abyss. Tania, our on-board psychologist (amongst many other roles she performs) would be less than happy if she knew any of us were thinking along those lines.
I wish you could see this view, Susannah. The skies of space are as beguiling as anything seen on Earth. Just as varied, just as colourful. Simple truths are all we need to understand the complexities of the universe. The sun is a star and the stars are suns. And our sun is now just another star.
And will remain so until we begin our long fall back to the light.