The Space Spinster (Slow Updates)

Log 18. Welcome to Venus

Time Stamp: 18th of the 5th month, year 2696 CE, 21:11

Location Stamp: Venusian Arrivals, Space Port, in orbit of Planet Venus, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy

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Next to the arrivals area, the Martian departure lounge felt like a palace. Basically, what we got on Venus was an empty can with hatches on both sides. One connected to the arriving ship so the passengers could walk in, while the other opened into the elevator bay. These elevators would take us all the way down, through the planet's toxic atmo. I almost liked this simplicity.

The company men filed through the sleeve, while Lola, Wasabi and I hung a little behind. They flocked to the elevator, yelling at the Venusian drones to work faster. Despite their demands, the hatch remained sealed even after the sleeve disconnected and started retracting towards the freighter.

"This is outrageous!" I wasn't sure if it was Jones' voice or not. All of them engineers spoke with the same rasp. "The flight was right on schedule!"

After this assessment, the engineers added a few scathing words. All this cursing did absolutely nothing to speed up the drones on the other side of the hatch. It, however, rattled Wasabi's already fragile nerves. The cat's muscles contracted with a force rivaling the gravitational pull of a dead star. He launched out of my embrace and shinnied up a service ladder welded to the wall between the rows of the built-in instrument panels.

"Get him, Vera!" Lola cried. I already took off after my cat, but Lola had a clear advantage. She stretched out her caterpillar body, vertebrae by vertebrae, segment by segment. One more inch, and she'd have Wasabi by the collar of his spacesuit.

Something hissed, and for once, it wasn't my cat.

The hydraulics! "Hold onto something!" I yelled in my best PT's pitch.

Hoping that this had inspired the engineers to move, I leaped three feet onto the wall. Thank God the bay had all its maintenance equipment exposed for easy access! Some instrument panel gave me a decent handhold. I grabbed it, pulled up and over. Then, carried by the momentum, I swung to a service ladder.

The hissing intensified far beyond what Wasabi could ever produce.

"It's depressurizing!" an engineer screamed. They knew their stuff, so I gripped the rung I was hanging on for dear life. Survival instinct demanded that I stare only at the wall in front of me, nothing else, but I twisted my head to see if Lola had Wasabi. She did, and they both clung to another ladder, as secure as one could be in our situation.

The wrong door of the airlock slid open into the vacuum of space. Newly weightless, the engineers jetted out of our metal drum along with air. As if in a dream, I watched the visor of my spacesuit lower over my eyes. Its seams liquified and sealed in. Most of the engineers, also suited, calmly floated to the articulated sleeve or found handholds on the outside of the arrivals bay.

Most, but not all. Some of these grizzled company men must have packed parts into the luggage instead of wearing the uncomfortable kit, or lost them and didn't bother to replace them before the flight, or whatever... Stars, I wish they didn't ignore the safety regs! Then I wouldn't have to watch them die in a soundless vacuum. A dreadful death, that. Not that I ever saw a good one.

The unluckiest engineer had her suit on. She was crawling along the side of the docking bay when a jet of vaporized waste blew from the plasma incinerator outlet and caught her side. Shit. Yeah, in space, one could do everything right and still fail miserably.

The suits had a microphone, so I heard Lola whisper, "Blessed Princes, they found the valve..."

The Princes featured in Mym's origin ethos, a gazillion eons ago. Clearly, Lola didn't think they came back to life and vented our dock, killing five souls. I tightened my grip, tasting bile in my throat, which wasn't the worst thing ever to hit my taste buds. I knew exactly who 'they' were. The Venusian workforce, the genetically engineered drones.