Midway: Chapter 21

  “There you are…”  

  Dhika found Tycho in the zero gravity bubble in the central hub of the ship, which was ahead of the fusion core and engines.  It was a giant clear plastic bubble which had been manufactured and installed a couple dozen years ago, partly for the sake of change and a challenge, but primarily to create a new place to go to on the ship and a place where new kinds of activities could take place as well.  It was a chance for the engineers to do something a little more extraordinary than the ordinary daily routine aboard ship.

  The sphere was huge, easily fifty meters across.  It had been constructed by inflating its clear synthetic material against the vacuum of deep space, but keeping it inflated was never the technically challenging part.  The hard part, was manufacturing a material which would resist overinflation but they rose to the challenge even though the vacuum of space was inclined to suck all of the ship’s atmosphere out through this delicate looking bubble.  Since initial inflation, never before imagined uses for the space had been invented, including a new favourite sport affectionately referred to as Gravityball.

  While the bubble could easily resist being pushed off against by the ship’s inhabitants, it was vulnerable to stray debris which might be littered in the interstellar medium, and possibly right in their flight path.  At about fourteen percent of the speed of light, it would not take a very large piece of that debris to puncture its material like a pebble thrown through wet paper towel.  The rest of the leading edge of the ship had layered protection against this sort of thing but the bubble was only engineered to resist overinflation.   This had yet to happen, but in the back of their minds anybody in the bubble was always aware of this low level of inherent danger.  Due to this risk though, it was usually deflated and retracted when not in use.   As an additional measure, only twenty-five percent of the crew were allowed in the bubble at any one time.   It couldn’t practically hold many more in any case, but the idea was to do whatever they could to minimize the potential for a massive one-time loss of life which could be mission ending.  

  People in the bubble were as safer from the high energy cosmic radiation which the ship was continually bathed in by their interstellar environment as they were anywhere else in the ship.  In Earth’s Solar System, radiation from the sun was the main concern but only because the sun’s powerful magnetic fields prevented much of the galactic cosmic rays from making their way into the heliosphere.  Outside of Sol’s warm embrace though, the only defence the ship had against a continual bathing in dangerous high energy radiation was the powerful artificial magnetosphere the ship generated with power provided from their fusion core.  The system robust enough to deflect away almost all of the incoming radiation.  It wasn’t perfect, but no more radiation got through on average than would typically penetrate through the Earth’s magnetosphere to the surface.  As a result they were as safe from cosmic rays in the zero gravity bubble, as they were in the rest of the ship.

  The bubble was also one of Tycho’s favourite places on the ship.   Aside from Gravityball practices and games, his personal use was the most frequent reason the bubble was ever inflated.  If Tycho had really wanted to hide though, Dhika would never have found him so easily.   She floated over towards him after opening the hatch and finding him there.  There were thin filaments creating a sparse matrix about the bubble against which one could push off or arrest against.  These were removed for Gravityball practices and games, but otherwise they were an essential convenience.  The variable lighting, which at the moment was entirely shut off to facilitate stargazing, was usually provided by powerful spotlights mounted on the inner hull of the ship and aimed at the bubble.  With a command the bubble could be lit up brighter than daylight in the arboretum.  “Yes Dhika, here I am…  Out here, in the middle of nowhere… my whole life.”  He had yet to look back at her; he just kept staring out into space and at the myriad of stars which he could only ever visit with his imagination.  

  “Like all of us are,” she added.

  “Unh hunh…” was his only disinterested reply.

  “What are you looking at there?”  She had noticed that he’d been looking intently at a large scroll when she arrived, but he’d pushed it closed and held it against his lap when she entered.  He now opened it up all the way again.

  “Earth…” he admitted, acting a little embarrassed.  It was not the telescope image which he was usually interested in nor was it Haven; it was instead a beautiful fully illuminated Earth taken from a base on the Earth side of Luna during a new moon.  Here was the ship’s home planet in all its rich glory with sparse but brilliantly lit white cloud cover, only somewhat occluding the deep blues of the ocean, and the variable greens, yellows, and browns of the continents.

  “That’s ironic,” Dhika mused as she floated up to him and embraced him from behind.  “given that your father said just the other day that we should all follow your example in looking forward instead of backwards,”  For the first time he didn’t flinch at the embrace and instead put a hand on her arm.

  “I am aware of the irony…” he said.  “I’m finding myself more interested in Earth than Haven now for some reason.  Now that… now that it’s a mystery,” he explained as he looked longingly at the image, gingerly touching his fingers to the screen.  The mystery posed by the missing transmission had been consuming much of his curiosity of late.

  “Or… maybe you’re just an insufferable contrarian?” Dhika playfully suggested.  Tycho let out a muted chuckle and stroked her arm.  “With all the excitement lately,” she offered, “it’ll be nice to fall into a regular routine again don’t you think?  To just… get on with our lives again?”

  “Un hunh…”

  “Oh Tycho,” she hugged him tighter for a moment as she said it, “why do you seem so unhappy, what can I do to help you feel better?  I`m here for you, any way I can be.”

  “No no, there’s… there’s nothing you can do.”  He finally looked back at her.  “I’m sorry Dhika, I’m just… distracted.  The murder, the mystery of the lost transmission… I, I guess it just helps for me to put everything into some sort of perspective… or something.”   The two of them looked out beyond the bubble, floating in silence together before the cosmos.

  “Tycho, you’ve… you’ve never mated have you?”  He ignored the question.  “You… you are attracted to girls, aren’t you?”

  He looked back at her, surprised.  “I am… It’s just,” he looked out past the bubble again, “oh I don’t know Dhika.  I guess it just never seemed worth all the effort and drama.  The… the whole idea of all that sound and fury always seemed so… so exhausting.”  That was indeed a part of it, but it was certainly not all of it for him either.   Tycho had always been a rather independent and self-isolating person.  From what he’d observed in others, what one gained in mating just couldn’t match up to balance out the loss of autonomy, independence, and freedom which one had to concede in the process; things Tycho so cherished and enjoyed.

  “I’m not talking about a relationship Tycho, I’m talking about sex.   Have you ever had sex?”  It was the very direct question which she’d never thought to ask before.

  “No…” he answered, embarrassed.

  “Well I have, and I think it’s great.  And I think it’s long overdue that you and I have sex.  Tycho… you and I are very close and I really care about you.   I don’t… I don’t want you to, to miss out on something you might… later wish you hadn’t.”

  Tycho was processing.  He had long figured that Dhika had a sexual relationship with someone else, but the less he thought about that fact, the less he had to wonder who it might be.   “Dhika, I…”  He didn’t know what to say.

  Dhika floated around to be face to face with him.  “I know there’s something weird about sex for you Tycho, but I want you to try it.  Once, at least… with me.  I’m not going to push you, and I’ll never speak of it again whatever you choose.”

  Tycho was confused, largely confused by a temptation to take her up on the offer which he had never felt before.  He looked very confused and conflicted to Dhika, so she kissed him again, hoping she could push away some of his fog of confusion.  He kissed her back when she kissed him, as though on instinct.  She kept waiting for him to pull away from the kiss like he always had, but this time he never did.