NEWMAN

From an outside perspective, there was nothing wrong. Ivan was simply strapped to the side of the Chinese space station, eyes open to the void like they all did when sleeping, and that was it.

But he did not reply to anything. Prodding with a physical or magnetic grasp did not elicit any reaction. There was no magnetic grasp going on from Ivan, but none of them did during sleep periods. She quickly realized there were no obvious life signs to check. Heartbeat? Without ears, how did you listen to it? Pulse? A quick check with Shuko showed that there wasn’t any to feel in any case. Their wrists lacked any visible veins, and there was no pulse to feel, even on a living Spaceborne.

Of course, if your bodies were adapted for life in space, any circulatory system, if they had one, would be heavily protected against the lack of pressure on the outside.

So, Juliana found herself facing an inert body, and lacking any tools to check what was happening. And it was increasingly obvious that Ivan was not waking up, no matter what stimulation both she and Shuko could attempt to put on.

‟That was a kind of a joke now, me waking him up every time. The Japanese barbarian fighting the Russo-Japan war a century later.”

‟And you failed,” she replied, placatingly.

‟I was a bit frantic, maybe. But at least you woke up.”

There was so much they did not know about Spaceborne biology. Disease, needs, everything was a discovery.

Then she got an idea. She turned, and dug into Ivan’s bag, pulling out a simple ration pack. The thing was frozen and dehydrated, true, but it hadn’t stopped them from absorbing the organic goop. She painstakingly peeled out the plastic, stashing it somewhere just in case, and slipped the ration under one of the steel cables that wrapped.

‟Feeding him?”

‟It looks like it’s autonomous. If he’s asleep, it should work,” she replied.

‟And if it doesn’t.”

‟Then… it’s an indication. It’s not like we have lots of biological signals to check for.”

‟That’s… ghastly.”

‟That we might die just like that? Yes. I think we started to take everything as granted. But this?”

‟And us? If Ivan just died… it could happen to any of us,” Shuko said.

‟Which makes it important to understand the how, when, and why.”

She contemplated the Russian strapped on the side of Tiangong, feeling depression setting in. She’d battled it by action, by going on to push forward in any direction, as long as it was forward. But mortality was still on the cards, it seemed.

It was easy to forget that space was not friendly. Even to a Spaceborne, it seemed.

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‟What’s the ISS status?” she asked.

Shuko took time to think, running mental calculations.

‟They should pass in range in another two orbits,” he finally announced.

‟Then we keep watching. And wait until then.”

‟He’s dead?” Yaytsev asked, once again.

‟Can’t confirm it… but the ration strapped on him isn’t being absorbed. Like at all. Maybe we don’t eat while sleeping, but…”

‟But you wouldn’t bet on it,” the Russian replied.

‟No. I wouldn’t.”

‟My sleep cycle comes up soon, I think. Thanks for making me feel safe,” he ironized.

‟We have no idea what caused this.”

‟Much better. I feel good already.”

‟I’ll keep watch,” Frank injected.

‟And how would you distinguish between sleep and death?”

Hearing them snip at each other from nearly a thousand miles away made her feel queasy.

‟That’s not going to be something we can manage. Not now. Not yet. So, don’t sweat it, people.”

There was no response.

‟We’re going to keep watch for… let’s say twenty orbits. If nothing changes, then we’ll see.”

‟See what?” Yaytsev asked.

She could hear the tiredness – not a physical one, a mental one – in his voice.

‟New plans. Tiangong is a bust…”

‟And a costly one.”

‟… and we’ll head back. If nothing else.”

‟What about Ivan Radanovich… commander?”

‟We’ll see.”

That was all she could commit to.

In many ways, it was a kind of wake. She and Shuko stood to watch next to the station and watched over what increasingly looked like a corpse.

There was no way there could be a decomposition cycle in space, could there be? Juliana thought.

The way their modified biology worked might not even include bacteria. People were a kind of composite organism already, full of microbes, mites cleaning their eyes, and so on. But Spaceborne might – and probably should – work without the entire baggage of evolution.

Once again, she lamented the lack of tools to study this strangeness. She was distantly aware she was simply hiding from reality by focusing on distant and impossible concerns.

By the twentieth orbit, she had to face the truth.

‟He’s never waking up.”

‟Then what do we do?” Shuko asked.

‟We head back.”

‟With him, I mean.”

Burial in space was a thing of science fiction movies. She’d never thought it could be a real thing. Let alone that the body was already in space.

‟We can’t let him here,” she said, almost immediately.

‟We can… deorbit him. Let Earth’s atmosphere be the funeral pyre,” Shuko proposed.

‟Don’t you think Yaytsev should be asked about that?”

‟We’re not Russian or Japanese or American anymore, commander.”

‟That might be the case… but try to argue that to his face. I might be the commander, but I am certainly not telling him I’m going to just ignore him on the ultimate fate of one of his countrymen. Even if it’s former.”

‟Your call, commander,” he said.

She wished, once again, for lungs and atmosphere to sigh. There was something profound, visceral, about sighing.

‟We take him back. We will… we will all see him gone.”

Turning the steel cabling used to moor themselves to the station took a small time. While it responded a bit to magnetic grasp, it was still something that was best manipulated with physical muscle, as the term implied. They looped it, making a harness for the corpse, and handles.

Then they both spread out grasp lines across the magnetic field and slowly separated from the station.

Unlike the coming in, where they had moved together in formation, this time, they would be tied together, moving as one.

Tiangong slowly started to recede. Even if Juliana felt like they were getting stronger, and better with grasping, this time only two moved the mass of three.

‟I’m going to hate this station,” she said.

The terminator announcing the eclipse was starting to show up. In half a dozen minutes, she wouldn’t be seeing it, just registering it on her magnetic senses.

‟It will not last long,” Shuko said. ‟The perigee is too low, with too much drag. Abandoned like that, it’s going to last two years, top. Then it will burn.”

‟Is that why you wanted me to bury him here, maybe? The burial ship being burned in the endless sea?”

‟That’s more of a Viking burial than a Russian one. Russians have graves or ordinary cremation.”

‟Most of you Japanese have a cremation.”

‟Yes. And if… if I should die. Then, deorbit me. That’s my will.”

‟Noted. But that’s not going to happen,” she said as they entered the eclipse, and the night buried all details.

‟We can’t predict the future… Juliana.”