Fellowship & Fairydust

Mae leaned against the hatch, listening to her son wax poetic about Penelope. Her heart surged with pride. She prayed God would keep her from dying here where he would carry the blame forever. It wasn’t his fault things happened. She wiggled her fingers. They were so cold, and her thoughts kept bumping into each other.

“Mom, how ya doing?” Michael asked. His voice cut through the muddle.

“Good, son. How are you?” Her words sounded loud in the quiet.

Michael didn’t answer.

“Listen. I love you. I’m proud of you. Penelope sounds like an amazing woman.”

Michael coughed. “Penelope is incredible. I’m going to propose to her when we get home.”

Mae stirred in her seat and slowly climbed to her knees until she pressed her forehead against the window between them. Her body didn’t want to work. She was so tired. “Hey, hey, come here.”

Michael appeared with red-rimmed eyes. He leaned his forehead against hers with only the glass between them. He stretched his hand, palm against the glass.

“There you are. There’s the face I love. So much like your daddy.” She laid her hand against his. He was still her boy, still her baby. He was made up of the best parts of them. “Everything will be okay. One way or another. Not a thing happens without God’s planning. You marry Penelope and make lots of grandbabies.”

“Mom, don’t talk like that.” Michael said.

“It’s all right, baby. The Lord is my shepherd. He goes with me everywhere I go. Everything will be all right…” Her eyes closed as her words died away while her son beat against the airlock with his fist.

***

“Michael, Michael,” Abel’s voice interrupted Michael’s rage. “Use the crane arm. The one they used to assemble Solace.”

Michael scowled. “How?”

“I can’t fix the pod. I can’t fix the malfunction. You have to bring the pod into the belly bay. It’s the only way to save her. Hurry.”

Michael jumped to his feet and pulled himself from nodule to nodule. When he plucked the pod from the side of Solace Station, that whole section would decompress. The station was made in segments and could be closed off. It would happen automatically, but as he ran from one node to another, he spun and slammed his hand against the close doors button.

“Mae, come in, Mae.” Michael could hear Abel over the PA system.

It might be a slim hope, but it was all they had. As he ran, he went over scenarios. The hatch was secured – of course it was. That was the whole problem. She had no heat, no oxygen, but in some kind of universal irony, it would protect her. If he moved quickly, he could get the pod in the belly bay and flood it with oxygen and heat. He sped through the short corridor and threw himself into the crane seat.

***

Abel’s stomach flip-flopped. This was a risky maneuver. There weren’t any manuals for this procedure. Why did things always have to go wrong before they planned for them? The smartest minds on the planet couldn’t think up every eventuality.

All he could do was wait. Wait and worry and wonder.

“Mae. Come in, Mae. Talk to me, Mae.” He spoke into the mic. The eyes of everyone in the control room were glued to the screen, watching Mae. She wasn’t moving. Almost thirty-four million miles away, he was helpless.

But Mae’s words came back to him.

“And more than that,” she’d said. “He’s listening, waiting to answer with his best.”

What if she was right?

What if God cared that the woman was dying?

He grabbed his handheld processor from his desk. He typed the words “how do I pray” into the search bar.

About 121,000,000 results in 0.41 seconds.

He clicked on the first link.

Praying at the most basic is simply talking to God. Just begin.

No, that’s not what Mae had said. She was always talking about her prayer closet.

Abel tossed the handheld to his desk and ran down the hall. The janitor’s closet would have to do.

***

            The electric engine whirred as Michael spun the crane one hundred eighty degrees on its pedestal. It’d been a long time since he’d operated anything like this. From his vantage point, he could see the circular shape of the defunct pod, wrapped in the extendable heat shield.

Michael pressed the joystick forward. As the gigantic white arm reached up over the centrifuge and across the station, he opened the pincers.

Seconds were hours. It was taking too long.

Go. Go. Go. If God could keep her alive…

There. He closed the pincers around the pod. Michael bucked in his seat as the crane jerked forward and back as he yanked backward on the joystick. Alarms blared. Catastrophic failure was eminent. Lights flashed.

Again.

Sparks exploded from the connections and the heat shield ripped. She flopped to the floor of the pod.

God, don’t let me kill her.

Again.

Finally, he wrenched the pod free.

As he pulled Expectation away from its dock, without a sound, everything inside that segment of the station exploded into the space around Solace. Papers, containers, and an extra space suit drifted quietly away.

Through the windows on Expectation, he could see his unresponsive mother lying at a contorted angle in the bottom of capsule.

***

Abel sank to his knees and cleared his throat. He steepled his fingers and then pressed his palms together. If they heard him talking to himself in the janitor’s closet, maybe he could hide behind the mops or something in the dark. He’d left the light off in the janitor’s closet. He was self-conscious enough as it was. But Mae mattered more than all of that.

Just begin.

“Ummm,” he said, and then cleared his throat again. With the back of his hand, he wiped sweat from his forehead. “Uh, God, you see, I don’t know You. I mean, we’re not on speaking terms. Or we weren’t, but Mae is one of Yours. And I want her to be mine. And I guess I don’t have pride where she’s concerned. But she’s dying out there on the Solace Station, and I can’t do anything.”

He coughed. The smell of bleach singed his nose and irritated his throat. “Uh, listen, Mae is a good woman. She needs saving. Don’t let her son, Michael, carry her death around. I’d be grateful, God. Thank You for listening. Mae said You do.”

He put his hand on the handle. “Oh, uh, amen.”

***

A cool beach wind blew across her face, and Mae smiled. It was lovely there. She wanted to stay, but it was time to go. It was like the last few seconds before the bungee cord yanked her backward. And then…

A sharp pain burned in her chest. Mae couldn’t catch her breath.

A coughing fit racked her lungs. Oh, it hurt. Her head hurt. It all hurt.

Like she’d been tossed in a baby’s rattle and shaken.

After what must have been the longest breath in, the world slowly came back into focus. The pressure on her chest was beginning to ease. She wasn’t flying anymore, stars spinning across the sky. Her whole body tingled like it had lost circulation and was only just waking.

Michael held her across his lap. He was whispering something to her. Her fingers hurt. Her toes were worse.

The bright white lights of the station’s belly bay glared in her eyes. Nearby, the pod leaned on its side, the hatch flung wide.

Mae reached up to smooth her hand against her son’s cheek. “Ssshhh,” she said, but coughed again. “It’s all right.” Her throat was dry, and she was still so tired.

And then she was weightless. Michael whispered in her ear, “Glad you’re back.”

She could only ask, “Why is there cheering in the module?”

And then darkness closed around her again.

***

NASA scrubbed the rest of their mother/son mission, and they were instructed to begin their return flight as soon as the replacement trio of cosmonauts arrived.

After Administrator Scobee and Deputy Administrator Smith announced the near-disaster to the rest of the planet, they let the Eavesdroppers back in on the radio channel, and thousands of get well wishes arrived in every sync after.

Michael was made the temporary mission commander, and Mae begrudgingly spent the next five days in the med bed recuperating. Miraculously, she’d survived with only scrapes, bruises, and a slight concussion from the rescue attempt.

It’d take almost a year, but they would have a heroes’ welcome when they returned.

Best of all, in the next download, Abel had resumed their friendship with an awkward message loaded with questions about her testimony, her faith, and praying. And he thanked her for hi-jacking the com systems and sending her email early.

Mae puzzled on his words. She hadn’t broken the rules and done any such thing. She tried to remember to ask him in her next response, but it got lost in the jumble of answering faith questions and fan mail.

 

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