Last Stop: Titan

The mask covered the lower half of her face and a scarf was wrapped around the top, leaving only her eyes free to peer out of the viewing window. Her eyes were fixed on a singular bright spot in all the black. Titan. She shivered and pulled her outer jacket closer to herself. After staring for a few minutes more, she turned away with what could almost have been revulsion. She readjusted her scarf, pulling the knot behind her head tighter.

Moving slowly through the dark, cold corridors, she stepped over obstructions nimbly, as if practiced many times. She was heading towards the command sphere; she wanted to see how far they had all come. She picked her way farther and farther, avoiding certain corridors she knew to be particularly dangerous.

Finally, she entered the command sphere, forever pointed towards Saturn. She gazed out of the arc of glass that consumed the face of the ship. Right now, the protective slats were at a sharp angle and she had to bend and weave her head to find Titan through the gaps. There. She found it and held it in her view for several minutes. Pulling herself out of her reverie, she unzipped her outer jacket to adjust the one beneath it, then zipped it back up again, shivering. The command sphere was colder than her quarters.

She approached the captain's console and deftly navigated through the tree of shipboard options, finding the variables she wanted. 769 million kilometers. Only about 431 million kilometers to go. Mission time: 13:20:43 UTC-6:00, 4/7/2098 AD. It had only been a year and a half, but so much had happened. She closed out the captain's console and retreated to the middle of the bridge.

She could almost see the other members of the crew bustling around at their stations, taking notes and marking times. Receiving updates—which were jokes, really, considering they were leaving Earth from almost a light-hour away, putting them a full three-quarters of an hour in the past. Sending packets of data—again, packets that wouldn't be received until 45 minutes past transmission. Comms would take even longer once they reached Titan.

Now, it was all pointless.

A strained buzzing at the lower end of the audio spectrum jolted her out of her musings. She reached up to pull the scarf up above one ear to listen. Now that she could hear better, she recognized the particular sound and knew exactly what problem it implied. She sighed in relief and replaced the scarf over her ear, which was already stinging from the cold. She tightened the knot in her scarf again and left the command sphere to work her way downship.

She cast a final glance back into the room, then decided to lower the slats completely. She moved towards the navigator's console and maneuvered to the appropriate control system. She entered the command, and when prompted, provided the navigator's passkey, which she had written down and taped next to the console. She watched to make sure the slats closed completely before leaving the console. There was a hydraulic manual lever as well, which had annoyingly been proven to be necessary in six times out of ten.

As she crossed over the threshold, she paused and her body tensed, though one couldn't tell by looking at her; she was wrapped in so many sweaters and jackets and scarves that she looked to be twice as large as she actually was. The top two layers would come off on occasion, but the rest of the layers stayed on permanently, on top of the temperature-regulating neoskin suit she wore. She had found a pair of boots twice as large as her own feet in order to wear four pairs of socks.

She kept her back to the command room, but didn't continue forward. At the outermost reaches of her hearing, she heard them again; whispered conversations, a laugh...She was waiting to see if she would hear him. Though she strained her ears, she couldn't pick his voice out. Her shoulders slumped, and she left the bridge.