head hurts as well.Normally, the suit would pump
me full of painkiller, relaxants or a sleeping
draught, and whatever it is helps your muscles to
build up and your body to repair itself.My body
can't do those things for itself, the way most
people's can, so I'm at the mercy of the suit.
It says its recycler is holding out.I don't like to tell
it, but the thin gruel it's dispensing tastes
disgusting.The suit says it is still trying to track
down the site of the leak; no progress so far.
I have my arms and legs inside now.I'm glad,
because this lets me scratch.The suit lies with its
arms clipped in to the sides and opened into the
torso section, the legs together and melded, and the
chest expanded to give me room.Meanwhile the
carbon dioxide frosts outside and the stars shine
steadily.
I scratch and scratch.Something else more altered
humans wouldn't have to do.I can't make itches go
away just by thinking.It isn't very comfortable in
here.Usually it is; warm and cosy and pleasant,
every chemical whim of the encased body catered
for; a little womb to curl up in and dream.The
inner lining can no longer alter the way it used to,
so it stays quite hard, and feels - and smells -
sweaty.I can smell the sewage system.I scratch my
backside and turn over.
Stars.I stare at them, trying to match their
unblinking gaze through the hazy, scratched surface
of the helmet visor.
I put my arm back into the suit's and unclip.I reach
round onto the top of the blown-out chest and feel
in the front pack's pocket, taking out my antique
still camera.
'What are you doing?'
'Going to take a photograph.Play me some
music.Anything.'
'All right.' The suit plays me music from my youth
while I point the camera at the stars.I clip the arm
back and pass the camera through the chest
lock.The camera is very cold; my breath mists on
it.The viewer half unrolls, then jams.I tease it out
with my nails, and it stays.The rest of the
mechanism is working; my star pictures are fine,
and, switching to some of the older magazines from
the stock, they come up bright and clear too.I look
at the pictures of my home and friends on the
orbital, and feel - as I listen to the old, nostalgia-
inducing music - a mixture of comfort and
sadness.My vision blurs.
I drop the camera and its screen snaps shut; the
camera rolls away underneath me.I raise myself up
painfully, retrieve it, unroll the screen again and go
on looking back through old photographs until I fall
asleep.
I wake up.
The camera lies beside me, switched off.The suit
is quiet.I can hear my heart beat.
I drift back to sleep eventually.
Still night.I stay awake looking at the stars through
the scarred visor.I feel as rested as I ever will, but
the night here is almost twice standard, and I'll just
have to get used to it.Neither of us can see well
enough to be able to travel safely at night, besides
which I still need to sleep, and the suit can't store
enough energy during the hours of sunlight to use
for walking in the darkness; its internal power
source produces barely enough continuous energy
to crawl with, and the light falling on its
photopanels provides a vital
supplement.Thankfully, the clouds here never seem
to amount to much; an overcast day would leave
me doing all the work whether it was my turn or
not.
I unroll the camera screen, then think.
'Suit?'
'What?' it says quietly.
The camera has a power unit.'
'I thought of that.It's very weak, and anyway the
power systems are damaged beyond the junction
point for another source of internal energy.I can't
think of a way of patching it in to the external
radiation system, either.'
'We can't use it?'
'We can't use it.Just look at your pictures.'
I look at the pictures.
There's no doubt about it; education or not, once
you've been born and brought up on an O you never
quite adjust to a planet.You get agoraphobic; you
feel you are about to be sent spinning off, flying
away into space, picked up and sent screaming and
bawling out to the naked stars.You somehow sense
that vast, wasteful bulk underneath you, warping
space itself and self-compressing, soil-solid or
still half-molten, quivering in its creaky, massy
press, and you; stuck, perched here on the outside,
half-terrified that despite all you know you'll lose
your grip and go wheeling and whirling and
wailing away.
This is our birthplace though, this is what we
deserted long ago.This is where we used to live,
on balls of dust and rock like this.This is our home
town from before we felt the itch of wanderlust,
the sticks we inhabited before we ran away from
home, the cradle where we were infected with the
crazy breath of the place's vastness like a metal
wind inside our love-struck heads; just stumbled