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thing's
noisy confusion in my head. I still don't have a handle on it.
Check my record, Adrian. I haven't got that many hours, but I've
worked my share of challenges. I just don't get it."
    "But you do remember doing it, don't
you?"
    "Well...Yeah...I guess. It’s such a hard
thing to sort out. I mean, it would be cowardly to say you couldn't
remember doing it, right? I mean I saw the video. Evil villain,
me."
    Six drinks later, Frank had battered himself
down into that little black hole that is the only one available to
someone under such guilted circumstances, that nasty little place
where you continue to punish yourself while promising to make up
for the mistake in every way possible. It can only happen to the
good ones, the ones who give a damn. I have been there more than
once, and so have most of the best people I know. It must be a
current-life requirement that individuals who wish desperately not
to screw up, must do so from time to time to remind them of that
fact. Things like bourbon have been provided so that we may sleep
under such duress.
    Frank would sleep tonight, but there would
be bad dreams. Frank's mean little story had measured pretty high
on the Tarn scale, but I could have taken him on one-on-one,
story-for-story and put him away cleanly. I could have told him
about the other time I had learned about suit tears in real space.
It was the low orbit time. A late separating nose faring had
damaged a satellite’s solar collector panel arm. The damn fool
engineer I was working with was supposed to know that you didn't do
a manual release on a broken panel mechanism like that. The bend
had coiled the release spring up so tight it was ready to go off
like a bomb. Only half of the solar array was left in tact--a
jagged glass edge shaped like a samurai sword. I hadn't been
looking when he hit the release handle. The blade edge jerked over
sideways and wiped up under his armpit and cut a seven inch swath
through the shoulder of his spacesuit that no one could repair.
    Yes Frank, I could have told you what it is
like to be halfway to the airlock and know you're not going to make
it. How it is to feel your own suit sagging under your partner's
leak so bad that you know if you don't unplug the octopus from his
back pack right then, you will die with him just as if the tear was
your own. So at the last possible moment you uncouple and right
then you both know he's about to die in your arms, and even that's
not the worst of it. When the pressure's gone the little bodily
explosions start and you can feel them through the baggy suit, but
you can't let go, you can't turn your friend loose to space. So you
carry the eruptions with you, and when you do reach the airlock
door you pick up the fringe of artificial gravity just outside it.
What's left of your friend begins to get heavy, and by the time
you’re in the airlock, you have a weighty, sloppy garment that's
more a bag than a suit. The little bits of freezing, escaped body
tissues drift down into the airlock and stick to the floor as the
outer door slowly closes. You stand around the crumpled bag with
the helpless med-team members, wondering what the right procedure
is to handle a soggy spacesuit full of death, though you can't do a
thing anyway until the damn airlock pressurizes. So you wait in
total vacuum, inside and out. Yes, Frank, we all have our crosses
to bear, but I think mine are worse than yours. Maybe we all think
that.
    I had kept my own service to two drinks. I
downed the rest of the one in my hand. The shower had somehow
become mandatory. At least one good thing had come out of it all. I
had suddenly discovered that I liked Frank Parker. His vagueness
about being able to remember the accident made me wonder, but there
was not enough to go on. I stripped off my coveralls and escaped to
the mercy of a hot shower.
     
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    There is something unsettling about a shower
that recycles the water from the drain. It's pure enough to drink,
but