Under The Shepherd Moon

UNDER THE SHEPHERD MOON

Peter Richard Adams

“My God, they're full of colour!” she said, looking through the starboard porthole.

Wilkinson switched the Pod’s controls to automatic and joined her. “Of course. What did you expect them to look like?”

“I don't know, just different degrees of beige I suppose... Like in the books. I never expected them to be so... beautiful.”

Wilkinson laughed and, for the third time today, Cadet Maureen Potts felt belittled.

The first time Private James Wilkinson had made her feel this way was only moments after they’d been formally introduced at breakfast.

“Hey, are you going to have a little coffee with your sugar?”

It was lame joke, of course, but the way he'd said it... The way he'd phrased it so perfectly as to make the others on the table laugh at her... It just made her feel stupid. It wasn’t her fault that this far out from Earth the air resyc made her feel groggy… And everyone knew that the only was to combat this was to ingest a lot of sugars. But the way he’d said it… Well, it had sparked off Lily good and proper and it had taken quite an effort to stop her from making a scene.

Being part of an altercation out here was in no one’s interest. A trip to Saturn's rings was a once in a lifetime trip for any member of the Service, let alone a teenage cadet. Even though as a competition winner she knew she’d been shielded from some of the worst aspects of the preparation, she’d still had to work really hard on the competition application to even get considered. After that of course, had been the training. The endless, soul-crushing, repetition of the training. Three times through everything. No exceptions. It didn’t matter if it was a primary school basic such as how to eat in zero gravity or the advanced theory of how to successfully land a Pod without automation; you had to prove you could succeed without discrepancy three times or you were out. It was so frustrating that she feared making a mistake from sheer boredom but that was the way with the Service; drum everything into you so that you could act almost mechanically to prevent all possible dangerous situations from arising. It was even part of the Cadet’s Creed: “Danger is no stranger and I shall do my best, for God and for the Queen, to keep the monster at bay.”

Yes - for all the testing and training, the sickness-inducing space elevator, the tedium of the month’s journey to Mars, Jupiter and finally on to Saturn’s Mimas Moon Base - being part of an altercation out here was in no one’s interest. It was far too long a way to go home without having seen the rings. Not that Lily seemed to agree. Lily seemed happy to throw a tantrum every chance she got. Sometimes she felt certain that Lily would cause such a fuss that they’d both get sent home but now it wasn’t Lily who was spoiling it for her. It was Private James Wilkinson, her pilot on a dream trip to the Keeler Gap of Saturn’s A-Ring and the viewing platform on the moon of Daphnis.

If she hadn't felt bad enough at breakfast, she'd felt even worse when the time had come to suit up. She knew she was slight for her age and was unusually self-aware enough to understand she was body-conscious. Yet when Wilkinson had seen her practically swimming in her suit and smirked as he asked the Quartermaster for a child's suit - even though he knew they wouldn’t have one �" well, that was the second time he’d got under her skin. It had been too much for Lily to stand. The arrogance of the man. The pig headedness. Sure he might be a few years older. Sure he had a stripe on his arm. But it gave him no right... How dare he? So what if she looked clumsy in her suit? The suit is just a tool: a means to an end. She'd worked so hard for this opportunity. She’d earned it. He by comparison had just been assigned here. She’d swallowed it down of course - being part of an altercation out here was in no one’s interest �" but Lily had been so very, very angry. It had been then, as Wilkinson was checking the Pod’s pre-flight readouts, that Lily put the nick in his helmet seal.

Now, as the Pod moved slowly across the A-ring, its dust spreading beneath them like a vast mosaic in the weak light of the distant Sun, the shepherd moon of Daphnis began to creep into view through the foreport window. The sight from its viewing platform was commonly considered in Service texts to be among the greatest glories of the galaxy, yet it would have some distance to travel to beat the scene already playing out in front of them.

The Pod touched down. “Are you ready for this?” Wilkinson asked, donning his helmet as they entered the airlock. “It’s important that you are. If you should panic in the void then I’ll have only seconds to get you back inside. You can take as long as you want to prepare. There’s no hurry.”

She pulled her helmet into place, locking the seal into place.

The airlock lifted and they headed out onto the barren surface. The gravity was weaker here, but not so different to Earth. Even if it were weak enough to bound she would still have had no desire to complete the hundred yard walk from pad to platform any quicker. It was too incredible for that; the sky filled as the rings circled from the heart of Daphnis before guttering into darkness while Saturn loomed behind her dimly illuminated by the Sun’s far-flung light.

For Wilkinson it had begun slowly. Just a slight heavier-than-normal quality to his breathing across the intercom. It was when it became a crackled groan that she turned to look at him. If she hadn’t known then it may have been almost imperceptible in this curious light. Yet there it was, underneath his left ear, a silent trickle of air disappearing into the emptiness around them. Lily giggled as Wilkinson fell to one knee.

“Maureen. There’s… something wrong.” Already it was taking place. Under the glow of his helmtorch it was clear that he was experiencing void embolism; his body expanding to make making his suit tight against his figure.

Everyone knew that if there was no coming back from the embolism so there was no training that the Service provided for this situation. The Creed couldn’t save you and no repetition of tasks would come to your aid. Every part of the Service was geared to the prevention of accidents, not dealing with them when in progress. Lily found this hilarious.

“Please.” Wilkinson’s voice was so weak, and his tongue so swollen, that it was now barely recognisable as a human sound. He was clumsily attempting to crawl the couple of metres to her but to little avail. His face bloated, forcing a crack to appear on the visor that released another trickle of valuable oxygen into space. Over the intercom, through the rustle and hiss, came the faint but clear popping sound as veins expanded to bursting point and beyond.

She stared intently as his engorged eyes streamed blood across corpulent cheeks, but it was not his gaze she met. Somewhere, ghostlike, in the reflection of the visor, beyond his swollen grey and gory face, beyond the rings of Saturn and the darkness of the void beyond, Lily stared back. Laughing.

She turned and took her final steps toward the platform. Behind her, Wilkinson gave an airless choke and vomited, forcing the visor to give way and spill crystals of blood, CO2 and tissue debris into the vacuum.

She reached the viewing platform.

"My God,” they said as one. “They're full of colour!"