by Robert GARNHAM

There’s no wind in space. Ex­cept for so­lar wind, of course. That goes with­out say­ing. But there’s no ac­tu­al wind wind, no breeze, no weath­er, no at­mos­phere, noth­ing like that. And what this means is that there are no wind chimes in space. Or at least, that’s the per­ceived wis­dom, and it’s just as well as I hate wind chimes. I hate the noise they make and I hate the way that peo­ple put out these wind chimes like they’re so god­damn spe­cial, like they want to find just a lit­tle bit of mag­ic in the world, well let me tell you buster there’s noth­ing mag­ic about wind chimes. I thought space would be one of the places where I’d be safe from wind chimes. How wrong I would turn out to be.

When Wayne ar­rived in the cap­sule, Aus­tralian Wayne with his doc­tor­ate in as­tro­physics, when the cap­sule docked and the air­lock opened and Wayne came through all smiles and high fives, the first thing he said was, “Fel­las, I’ve brought some wind chimes with me, I hope you don’t mind,” and every­one slapped him on the back and there were more high fives and that’s when I point­ed out to him that there was no wind in space.

“So­lar wind,” he point­ed out.

Smug bas­tard.

The sta­tion com­man­der, as a good­will wel­come ges­ture, hung the wind chimes in the ac­cess tun­nel be­tween sci­ence pod B and the main ac­com­mo­da­tion cap­sule, and what with the lack of grav­i­ty, they just kind of hang there point­ing in four dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions like the hand of an arthrit­ic ro­bot, and every time some­one pass­es through the ac­cess tun­nel, those tin­kly bas­tard wind chimes ring out around the space sta­tion, and I just want to throw them out of the air­lock, and then jump up and down on what­ev­er ex­per­i­ment Wayne has been assigned.

“Re­minds me of home,” Wayne told us, af­ter Com­man­der Stacey had hung them in place.

“Do you live some­where par­tic­u­lar­ly windy?” Stacey had asked.

“Not par­tic­u­lar­ly,” Wayne had replied. “In fact, the cli­mate is very set­tled out there in the out­back. Hard­ly a breath of wind at all. Which makes it all the more aus­pi­cious when the wind chimes chime. You’ll have to for­give me if I get a bit emo­tion­al every now and then.”

I looked out the win­dow at plan­et Earth. We were just pass­ing over the Pa­cif­ic Ocean. It seemed that we were al­ways just pass­ing over the Pa­cif­ic Ocean, but then the Pa­cif­ic Ocean does take up quite a bit of space on the plan­et. And I was float­ing near the draw­ers in which we kept the ex­per­i­ments sent in by school chil­dren. We were sup­posed to mon­i­tor these ex­per­i­ments, more as a good­will ges­ture than any­thing else, as the ex­per­i­ments had hard­ly any ac­tu­al sci­en­tif­ic worth, but it was more of a case of out of sight, out of mind. I hadn’t opened the draw­ers in a long time, and the ex­per­i­ments that I had done had bored me senseless.

“Say,” Wayne said. “Do you guys get homesick?”

Grow up, I thought. But I got home­sick all the time. I didn’t want to tell him this. Or any of the oth­ers. I missed my wife and my kids as much as the next per­son. I cer­tain­ly didn’t miss the wind chimes. It was all a nat­ur­al part of the sit­u­a­tion we had found our­selves in and we would all have to find ways of deal­ing with it.

Dis­cor­dant tune­less tinkles.

“You see, that’s the one thing that they can’t re­al­ly pre­pare you for,” Wayne continued.

Per­haps, I thought, I re­al­ly should open the draw­ers con­tain­ing the ex­per­i­ments sent to us by the schools. It would take my mind off so many things, wouldn’t it?

…

When I told Debs that I would be spend­ing al­most a year on the space sta­tion, she did not re­act with the sad­ness that I’d been an­tic­i­pat­ing. In­deed, she had seemed some­what glee­ful, and that af­ter­noon I’d caught her danc­ing in the back­yard of our sub­ur­ban Tex­an home. It was the most beau­ti­ful and hyp­not­ic dance I’d ever seen. Her hands per­formed cir­cu­lar move­ments around each oth­er and around her lithe body in much the same man­ner as the var­i­ous moons around the plan­et Jupiter.

“Aren’t you con­cerned about miss­ing our five-year an­niver­sary?” I’d asked.

“Oh, I didn’t re­al­ize it was com­ing up.”

That night we’d sat in the hot tub. I lay my head back and I looked up at the stars. I con­cen­trat­ed on the satel­lites, those mov­ing dots of light whose mys­te­ri­ous mech­a­nized or­bits are known on­ly by com­put­ers, and I said some­thing like, “Oh, Debs, pret­ty soon I’ll just be one of those dots of mov­ing light, steady and sure and man-made and re­flect­ing the sun’s light back to this low­ly sub­ur­ban back­yard, and every time I pass, I swear it, every sin­gle time I pass over, I’ll say a lit­tle prayer, and of­fer a lit­tle wish,” and she’d replied, “I might re­dec­o­rate the lounge.”

A few weeks lat­er as we pre­pared to blast off from the launch pad, ground con­trol had patched through mes­sages from our loved ones to the three-man crew. Chil­dren, wives, lovers, part­ners. It was a serene and touch­ing episode. Deb’s voice had been ac­com­pa­nied by shop­ping mall Muzak and she told me that she was look­ing at car­pet sam­ples. Her last words to me were, “You can’t go wrong with beige.”

And now here I was, or­bit­ing the plan­et sev­er­al times a day, eat­ing din­ner from a tooth­paste tube and try­ing not to throw some wind chimes out in­to the inky depths of space.

…

Wayne ap­par­ent­ly was an ex­pert in tor­tois­es. Quite why an as­tro­physi­cist should be an ex­pert in tor­tois­es is anyone’s guess. But he would get very ex­cit­ed every time we passed over the Galá­pa­gos Islands.

“Galá­pa­gos!” he’d say, “I salute you, sir!”

It was not like the Galá­pa­gos could re­spond, either.

“Did you spend time there?” I asked.

“No, but I have an affin­i­ty with the place. And do you know why?” he asked.

“Go on.”

He leant to­wards me.

“The tor­tois­es,” he said.

Due to the va­garies and tra­jec­to­ry of the space sta­tion’s or­bit, it wasn’t al­ways guar­an­teed to fly over the Galá­pa­gos Is­lands, but every time that it did, Wayne would blurt out, “Galá­pa­gos! I salute you, sir!”

I knew all about Dar­win and the tor­tois­es. Wayne didn’t have to of­fer any ex­pla­na­tion, and as, os­ten­si­bly, we were all sci­en­tists on this mis­sion, he shouldn’t have felt it necessary.

“I re­mem­ber one long hot sum­mer,” he said, lean­ing back as best he could. “The heat was in­tense. Do you know what that’s like? Not a breath of wind, ei­ther. I was down by the well with Greg — that’s my broth­er, I’ll have to show you some pho­tographs — and we were just dis­cussing the like­li­hood of a drought and what this would mean to the live­stock. Did I men­tion we kept live­stock? And I re­mem­ber look­ing up at the sky, this per­fect blue sky, with the sun sit­ting there high in the mid­dle of it, and I saw the sun right then and there as what it ac­tu­al­ly was, an in­ter­plan­e­tary body whose grav­i­ty and ra­di­a­tion led to life on this very plan­et. And it was at that mo­ment that I de­cid­ed, that ex­act mo­ment, that I would train to join the space agency, that I might do my part to make sure that these droughts nev­er hap­pen again, and I tell you what hap­pened, I’ll tell you, right? That’s when the wind chimes chimed. That ex­act mo­ment. The first sub­tle breeze in weeks. The wind chimes chimed and it was as if I could taste the fu­ture on my tongue. I saw it as an omen. Greg saw it too. Greg heard it. Like an idea made mag­i­cal, a sound­track to the fu­ture it­self. Those steel tubes jin­gling to­geth­er, ever so slight­ly. My life has nev­er been the same since.”

He then looked out of the port­hole window.

“Galá­pa­gos! I salute you, sir!”

“That’s the Isle of Wight.”

…

Com­man­der Stacey float­ed in a non­cha­lant man­ner and told us this anec­dote about when she was a kid, and it was a hot night, and she just couldn’t sleep be­cause it was so stuffy and un­com­fort­able, when she came up with the idea of pre­tend­ing that her neigh­bors had been kid­napped. She would phone the po­lice and im­i­tate them beg­ging for help, plead­ing with the po­lice to come to their ad­dress im­me­di­ate­ly, know­ing that the po­lice were bound to send one of their he­li­copters and that she could open her win­dows and cool her­self in the down­draught from its ro­tors. We all laughed, of course, and then Wayne re­galed us with the sto­ry of a friend of his who worked at the lo­cal zoo, and each night he had to shoo away one of the neighbor’s cats. There were two rea­sons for this, he had ex­plained, the first be­ing that the cat would saunter around the zoo and up­set all of the oth­er an­i­mals there, the sec­ond rea­son be­ing that it had some­how found its way in­to the red panda’s en­clo­sure and go to sleep, and when they opened the zoo every morn­ing, the pub­lic just thought that it was a re­al­ly naff zoo ex­hib­it and that the zoo had run out of ideas.

I could not think of a sim­i­lar anec­dote with which to en­ter­tain them. I have lived a life con­di­tioned to the ig­no­rance of the su­per­flu­ous. Though I re­peat­ed my sto­ry that I was on­ly on the mis­sion at all as a re­place­ment to Cap­tain Jake McGuire. Oh, Cap­tain Jake McGuire, hero­ic test pi­lot and grin­ning poster boy of rock­et sci­ence, who had been thrown off the mis­sion af­ter he’d de­vel­oped a par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty case of dan­druff. Dan­druff, you see, floats off the scalp in every di­rec­tion at once in ze­ro G and gets in­to the con­trols and the vents and the fans and the wiring looms of the space sta­tion, there­by po­ten­tial­ly caus­ing short cir­cuits, fires, mal­func­tion­ing equip­ment. At once brave Cap­tain Jack McGuire was nick­named Flaky Jake and his as­tro­naut ca­reer was done. This is why so many of the top as­tro­nauts are slapheads.

“Do you miss your wife?” Wayne asked, “And kids?”

Of course I did, but I didn’t want him to know this. Frag­ile mas­culin­i­ty is mas­culin­i­ty all the same, and they’d all be wait­ing for me when I got home. In­stead, Wayne start­ed talk­ing about a friend of his whose bizarre fetish in the bed­room was to shrug on a beekeeper’s out­fit, and it was at this mo­ment that ground con­trol re­mind­ed us that what we were say­ing was be­ing live-streamed to 158 schools across the world.

…

Bore­dom in­sist­ed it­self up­on me to such an ex­tent that I de­cid­ed to open the draw­ers of ex­per­i­ments that the schools had sent to us. We were not oblig­ed to com­plete any of them, but it did won­ders, ap­par­ent­ly, for pub­lic re­la­tions if we at least were to make the ef­fort. With­in twen­ty min­utes I had an­swered quite a few burn­ing ques­tions sent in by var­i­ous ed­u­ca­tion establishments.

Yes, sting­ing net­tles still stung in space.

No, the blue­ber­ry muf­fin had not re­tained any of its fresh­ness in ze­ro G.

No, it was not pos­si­ble to play tid­dly­winks in space.

Sad­ly, the mouse had died.

No, Fe­lic­i­ty Beck­ett from Port­land, Ore­gon, I can­not hear you play­ing your flute from space. Not even if I concentrate.

Us­ing a tis­sue and a comb to play a tune still worked in space.

The mois­ture con­tent and nu­tri­ents of the sam­ple of tum­ble dry­er fluff had not lost any of their chem­i­cal composition.

And so on.

I de­cid­ed to do one last ex­per­i­ment of the day, and that was an in­trigu­ing box de­liv­ered by a school some­where in West Sus­sex, who won­dered whether it was still pos­si­ble to ad­here to the un­writ­ten rules of tea eti­quette in an en­vi­ron­ment where there was no con­ceiv­able mea­sure of up or down. In­deed, the ex­per­i­ment was set out as more a so­ci­o­log­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion than a phys­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic en­deav­or, and as such, three teacups, a teapot, a milk jug, a sug­ar bowl and a tray had all been provided.

My first im­pulse was to re­ply with a very for­mal and pre­scrip­tive re­sponse point­ing out that the phys­i­cal im­ped­i­ments to a for­mal tea par­ty on the space sta­tion pre­clud­ed a strict ad­her­ence to the un­writ­ten rules of tea eti­quette, but then the pro­fes­sion­al side of my train­ing took over and I de­cid­ed that I would at least give it a go.

“For­give my ig­no­rance,” Wayne said, “But what are the un­writ­ten rules of tea etiquette?”

He had float­ed over in a quizzi­cal man­ner, hav­ing been cal­i­brat­ing some piece of im­por­tant space hard­ware when he had seen me open the box which con­tained the teapot.

“I’m not sure.”

I read from the piece of pa­per which the school in West Sus­sex had in­clud­ed in the ex­per­i­ment box.

“The nap­kin must be fold­ed and placed to the left of the saucer. On­ly the host of the tea par­ty should pour the tea. When the tea pot is left on the ta­ble, it is po­lite that the spout faces the host. One must leave the saucer on the ta­ble sur­face and raise the cup in­de­pen­dent­ly of the saucer. One must on­ly look in­to the cup when sip­ping. Tea must be stroked by the spoon, and not stirred, nor should the spoon touch the sides of the cup. One must not ex­tend one’s lit­tle fin­ger.”

We both float­ed there for a while, look­ing at the tea paraphernalia.

“Sounds like too much ef­fort,” Wayne said. “The whole pro­ce­dure is some­what tortoise-like.”

“In that case, then I should think it would be just your kind of thing.”

The teapot was pleas­ant­ly con­struct­ed in chi­na with a blue and green flo­ral pat­tern around its mid­sec­tion. The three cups were of a fine bone chi­na and al­so car­ried the same flo­ral pat­tern, with jaun­ty han­dles which had been ar­chi­tec­tural­ly con­struct­ed with a small flour­ish where the low­er part of the han­dle joined the side of the cup. The sug­ar bowl and milk jug were sim­i­lar­ly patterned. 

“I might put all of this back in its box,” I said.

“Sen­si­ble ad­vice, and… Galá­pa­gos! I salute you, Sir!… And I wouldn’t blame you for tak­ing such a step.”

And yet… And yet the two of us just float­ed there, look­ing at the tea mak­ing equipment.

“Stacey!” Wayne yelled, “Pop the ket­tle on!”

Stacey was in the sec­ond sci­ence module.

“We haven’t got a ket­tle!” she yelled.

…

So­ci­ety is noth­ing with­out rules, and the same goes for sport, com­merce, sci­ence, and any kind of en­deav­or in which the re­sult ben­e­fits ei­ther in­di­vid­u­als, cus­tomers, stake­hold­ers, or the com­mon good. Re­mind­ed of this by the pro­posed tea eti­quette ex­per­i­ment, I spent the evening pon­der­ing on Debs and the kids, won­der­ing if at any mo­ment dur­ing our re­la­tion­ship I had trans­gressed, or gone against the as­sumed rules of our en­gage­ment. Cer­tain­ly, there have been times dur­ing which I’d been keen to share what­ev­er tri­umph I’d ac­com­plished dur­ing my years as a test pi­lot in the Air Force, but maybe even to do this was a trans­gres­sion of sorts, a sud­den and un­called for con­cen­tra­tion on the self.

Maybe I’d have come home, and ex­plained in breath­less de­tail just how much skill I’d em­ployed in tak­ing an ex­per­i­men­tal jet to the fringes of the at­mos­phere to per­form ma­neu­vers which had tak­en the craft al­most to the point of de­struc­tion, maybe this is what I’d come home and ex­plained, when it wasn’t re­al­ly my part to go in­to such de­tail, about how the me­chan­ics and the tech­ni­cians back at the air­field had praised my air­man­ship and tech­niques, maybe I’d come home and ex­plained all of this and she had had a pret­ty rough day, or replied with some­thing mun­dane like, “Yes, but you left the re­frig­er­a­tor door open all night.” Or that time that she told me she was preg­nant and the first thing I did was com­plain that now I’d have to go to the lawyer and change my will. She’d hurled her shoe at me.

“You seem some­what de­ject­ed,” Com­man­der Stacey point­ed out, lat­er on that evening.

The first of the un­writ­ten rules of tea eti­quette was that the nap­kin should be fold­ed and placed to the left of the saucer. The nap­kin, I re­al­ized, stood for one’s hopes and dreams and achieve­ments, while the saucer was the safe­ty re­cep­ta­cle that was the space sta­tion it­self. Or my mar­riage, one or the oth­er. One must there­fore ig­nore one’s pri­vate hopes and dreams and achieve­ments, fold them, place them on the saucer of the cup of life.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

“Are you sure? As com­man­der, I have cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ties when it comes to the well-be­ing of my staff…”

“Such things should not be dis­cussed,” I tell them. “There are cer­tain tenets of ex­pect­ed be­hav­ior which ben­e­fit or main­tain the prop­er so­bri­ety nec­es­sary for the ex­e­cu­tion of our tasks.”

“If you say so.”

For is this mis­sion of ours on the space sta­tion noth­ing but a mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­ny, a set of traits and ex­pec­ta­tions which are un­der­tak­en with no clear writ­ten rules, but the as­sumed stric­tures of what has come before?

“But if there is any­thing which is both­er­ing you, then you will come and talk to me, won’t you?”

“Things are fine,” I told them.

“You know, it’s on­ly nat­ur­al that one should think about one’s loved ones, for ex­am­ple, or the pres­sures of the job…”

“Things are fine,” I repeated.

The nap­kin was se­cure­ly fold­ed next to the cup and I would pre­tend that I would nev­er need it.

Com­man­der Stacey float­ed away with a back­ward glance.

…

Be­cause Com­man­der Stacey was the host of this ex­pe­di­tion. I un­der­stood that, and I un­der­stood that be­cause of this, there were cer­tain du­ties which on­ly they had cause to wor­ry about. They were be­ing paid much more than I was, for a start. They had the rank and the train­ing and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The same way that the host of a tea par­ty has a cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­pense tea. The sec­ond un­writ­ten rule of tea eti­quette was a two-part clause which I reread just to make sure that I un­der­stood it. On­ly the host of the tea par­ty should pour the tea. When the tea pot is left on the ta­ble, it is po­lite that the spout faces the host. On­ly they should bear the brunt of what­ev­er un­pleas­ant­ness might im­pinge it­self up­on our cer­e­mo­ny, whether that be the im­plied psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment of one of their guests, or mere­ly a view of the teapot spout.

In the mid­dle of the ac­com­mo­da­tion cap­sule there was a large vent, con­nect­ed to var­i­ous pieces of equip­ment by a long tube, the same con­sis­ten­cy and con­certi­na de­sign as that which one might at­tach to the rear of a tum­ble dry­er. In the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, while my oth­er as­tro­nauts were slum­ber­ing in their sleep bags which were an­chored to their usu­al places on the walls of the space sta­tion, I set to work mov­ing this vent so that it faced Com­man­der Stacey’s po­si­tion. In such a way, should they wake at any mo­ment and stare straight ahead, they might see the vent fac­ing them and be the on­ly per­son in that room in­con­ve­nienced by its ex­is­tence, should they ever have cause to wor­ry about such things.

The vent pumped in cool air, man­u­fac­tured by one of the many life sup­port ma­chines. If they con­cen­trat­ed hard enough, they might feel a slight breeze, pre­sum­ably cool­ing and re­fresh­ing, the same way that the host of the tea par­ty might, (de­pend­ing on the di­men­sions of the ta­ble), be sub­ject to the steam ris­ing ever so sub­tly from the spout of the teapot.

“What are you do­ing?” Wayne asked.

I looked up and saw that he was awake, watch­ing me in­tent­ly as I worked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I told him. “So I thought I’d do some light maintenance.”

“Did Com­man­der Stacey ask you to do that?”

“It need­ed do­ing,” I replied.

But Wayne was half asleep and as he drift­ed back off in­to slum­ber, he mouthed the word, tor­toise, and then he was gone.

I float­ed down to the ob­ser­va­tion dome and I sat there for a while look­ing at the plan­et’s sur­face as it passed be­neath us. We were fly­ing over the Pa­cif­ic, as nor­mal. The sun was re­flect­ed back from the blue sur­face of the ocean, the same sun which would soon wrap its way around the earth and wake my wife and kids, and wel­come them with a new day. I won­dered, not for the first time, how the dec­o­rat­ing was get­ting on in the liv­ing room.

Be­cause my fam­i­ly, did they not sup­port me at all times? Were they not al­ways there, catch­ing me when I dripped splash­es of hot, sweet­ened fragili­ty, could I not rest up­on them the same way that a cup rests on a saucer? We fit­ted ex­act­ly, my saucer fam­i­ly and me. We were made by the same man­u­fac­tur­er of chi­na ce­ram­ics, po­et­ry, porce­lain, the same dain­ty pat­tern of in­ter­lock­ing hearts, the saucer de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to ac­com­mo­date the cup, the cup de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to fit in­to the saucer. Yet they were down there on the plan­et, the same way that the saucer stays on the ta­ble dur­ing a tea par­ty. And in such a way I was, I now glee­ful­ly re­al­ized, ad­her­ing to the third un­writ­ten rule of tea eti­quette. One must leave the saucer on the ta­ble sur­face and raise the cup in­de­pen­dent­ly of the saucer. And that was the key word, in­de­pen­dent­ly.

…

One must look on­ly in­to the cup when sip­ping, be­cause sip­ping is the ac­knowl­edge­ment of those struc­tures of life to which we must all ap­ply our­selves. In oth­er words, con­cen­trate on the in­te­ri­or, and be­come, if not al­ready, deeply introspective.

The next morn­ing, I was tasked with the al­lo­ca­tion of our break­fast ra­tions, plas­tic tubes con­tain­ing a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-con­coct­ed ap­prox­i­ma­tion of food. The Full Eng­lish is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­gust­ing mush. But one must on­ly look in­to the cup when sip­ping, so once I’d opened the re­frig­er­at­ed box in which our sup­plies were kept, I fished out on­ly the one tube, and had it all to myself.

“Noth­ing for us, then?” Wayne asked.

The oth­er as­sump­tion that one must take from the rule is that it is rude to re­move one’s fo­cus from the task at hand. So it wasn’t un­til I’d fin­ished the tube of break­fast mush and sat for a while in a qui­et, con­tem­pla­tive si­lence, that I replied to his comment.

“Nope.”

Dur­ing my months of train­ing at the space cen­ter, we had been taught to be as con­sid­ered and aca­d­e­m­ic in our re­spons­es and gen­er­al out­look as one might ex­pect from any pro­fes­sion­al. Lan­guage had to be con­cise, in­for­ma­tive, pre­cise. We were taught not to rush in to snap judg­ments or opin­ions, to keep the emo­tion to a min­i­mum, and to treat the spo­ken word as a con­duit for facts.

This is what made Wayne’s re­sult­ing ex­plo­sion of pent-up rage all the more sur­pris­ing. He went ape shit. He flew across the ac­com­mo­da­tion cap­sule with his arms out­stretched, like a re­al­ly naff Su­per­man, and the next thing I knew was that he had his fin­gers wrapped around my throat. It was on­ly when Com­man­der Stacey whacked him over the head with a sink plunger, that he fi­nal­ly relented.

And all he could say, as he rubbed his head, was, “Why the hell have we got a sink plunger?” (Ap­par­ent­ly the suc­tion it cre­ates mim­ics the vac­u­um of space).

…

Her face was bare­ly vis­i­ble on the lap­top screen. But even so, I was try­ing to peer around her, to see what col­or she had cho­sen for the walls of the lounge.

“How are the kids?” I asked.

“Kids are kids.”

“Do they miss their Daddy?”

“They haven’t men­tioned it.”

She smiled, and she moved a strand of hair be­hind her ear. 

“The dec­o­rat­ing is al­most finished.”

“Can I have a look? Move the cam­era, so that I can have a look.”

“It will be a nice sur­prise for when you get back.”

“But I want to see it now.”

She let out a sigh and moved her lap­top. The pic­ture went a bit fuzzy and when it cleared, I could see our lounge. The walls were mag­no­lia. It was nighttime.

“It looks the same.”

“Yes, I just re­paint­ed them the same col­or as they were before.”

“You didn’t change anything?”

“There’s noth­ing wrong with magnolia.”

“I thought you were set on us­ing beige?”

“Yes, but then when I got to the hard­ware shop, I looked at the mag­no­lia and I thought, well, if you’re aim­ing for beige, then you might as well go the full dis­tance and have magnolia.”

“You can’t go wrong with beige. That’s what you said.”

“Well, it turns out that you can.”

“Tonight is our five-year an­niver­sary,” I said.

“That was last night. Lis­ten…” She low­ered her voice. “Are you near anyone?”

I looked around. Nei­ther of the oth­er crew were nearby.

“You’re safe.”

“I had a phone call from Ground Con­trol. From a psy­chol­o­gist. They said it was just a rou­tine call, but…”

“But what?”

“They were ask­ing all kinds of questions.”

“Like what?”

“They were ask­ing if you were all right.”

I laughed.

“Nev­er been better.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve been drink­ing a lot of very calm­ing tea.”

“Mag­no­lia tea?” she asked.

“I didn’t re­al­ize there was such a thing.”

“Any­way… It feels like they’re wor­ried about you. And that makes me wor­ry about you, too.”

Nei­ther of us said any­thing for a long time.

“I quite like tea. Have I ever told you that be­fore? You know, a nice cup of tea can be very refreshing.”

“You’re ac­tu­al­ly drink­ing tea up there?”

“No. But I’m… pre­tend­ing to.”

“Right.”

“Al­so, I know it sounds sil­ly, but when I get home, I want to get some wind chimes.”

“I thought you hat­ed wind chimes?”

“And then we can sit in the back­yard on those hot, hu­mid nights, drink­ing tea and lis­ten­ing to the wind chimes.”

Debs laughed. 

“OK, “she said. “I’ll go out to­mor­row and I’ll get us some wind chimes. If that’s what will make you hap­py. Wind chimes and a teapot.”

It was at this mo­ment that the sig­nal cut out. I stared at the blank screen for a while. I had been sure that tonight was our five-year an­niver­sary. But it’s dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out the time zones.

…

Tea must be stroked by the spoon, and not stirred, nor should the spoon touch the sides of the cup.

Which is an easy one, be­cause as in­hab­i­tants of the space sta­tion, we’d learned how to fly from cap­sule to cap­sule with­out touch­ing the frag­ile sides of the vehicle.

But it meant more than that, didn’t it? It meant that we had to go through life with­out caus­ing any up­set or un­due ag­i­ta­tion, ei­ther clock­wise or anticlockwise.

I’d once worked with a Ger­man la­dy called Ida, and of all the words she taught me in Ger­man, the one that I re­mem­bered most was Kreis­be­we­gung, which meant cir­cu­lar mo­tion. And you would­n’t be­lieve how many times dur­ing a day I’d find my­self us­ing the Ger­man word Kreis­be­we­gung. I’d be clean­ing the win­dow of my car, for ex­am­ple, on the in­side, with a duster, my hand go­ing around and around, and I’d say to my­self, Kreis­be­we­gung. Or I’d be in the lounge, pol­ish­ing the cof­fee ta­ble, and I’d look at my hand and I’d say to my­self, Kreis­be­we­gung. Or at the space cen­ter, I’d be on the cen­trifu­gal force ma­chine go­ing around and around and around and around, feel­ing the G‑force and bare­ly able to turn my head, and I’d shout out at the top of my lungs, “Kreis­be­we­gung!” and they’d stop the ma­chine and open the cap­sule and they’d say, “What was that?” and I’d re­ply, “Cir­cu­lar motion.”

In fact, it was prob­a­bly at that mo­ment that they de­cid­ed to go with Flaky Jake for this mis­sion, un­til his ill-fat­ed date with the dermatologist.

“I’m so sor­ry I up­set you the oth­er day,” I said to Wayne, stroking his arm.

He looked at me and he smiled.

“I see in you,” he said, “the for­ti­tude and the com­pas­sion of the hum­ble tortoise.”

“Well,” I replied, “you’ve got to stick your neck out.”

Which I knew didn’t make any sense.

“Please stop stroking my arm,” he said.

“It’s more of a massage.”

“That’s not a mas­sage. A mas­sage is con­duct­ed, usu­al­ly, in a cir­cu­lar motion.”

“Kreis­be­we­gung,” I said.

“Galá­pa­gos! I salute you, sir!” he replied.

Com­man­der Stacey was mea­sur­ing the neu­tri­nos they’d cap­tured overnight in a very sci­en­tif­ic neu­tri­no trap.

“How many?” I asked.

“Six,” they replied.

The neu­tri­nos looked like the tea leaves left at the bot­tom of a cup.

“Did you use a strain­er?” I asked.

“Ex­cuse me?”

“Check the strainer.”

“I’m wor­ried about you,” they said.

I be­gan to stroke Com­man­der Stacey’s arm.

“Is this in­ap­pro­pri­ate behavior?”

“Ac­tu­al­ly,” they said, “that’s quite nice.”

And nei­ther of us said any­thing for a while, and the space sta­tion just kind of hummed and clicked like it al­ways did. That af­ter­noon the re-en­try craft would be ar­riv­ing bring­ing with it a fresh crew and it would be tak­ing me back home. For some rea­son, Ground Con­trol had de­cid­ed to short­en the length of my mis­sion by a few weeks, and I knew that once it docked with us, things would nev­er be the same again.

I left Com­man­der Stacey and I went to the store cap­sule, shrugged my­self in­to my space suit. I would need it for the re­turn jour­ney, but there was noth­ing bet­ter than be­ing pre­pared, even though I had a few hours. When I came back, my head knocked against the wind chimes, and I made a bee­line for the draw­er full of ex­per­i­ments that I’d been work­ing on.

I wrote some notes.

Yes, it is pos­si­ble to fol­low the as­sumed rules of tea eti­quette in ze­ro G.

Which was not strict­ly true, be­cause I hadn’t fin­ished the ex­per­i­ment yet. There was one left, one vi­tal rule which I had not yet ful­ly ex­plored. One must not ex­tend one’s lit­tle fin­ger. Now this, I un­der­stood, was not as sly­ly sex­u­al as one might imag­ine, rather a more cod­ed ref­er­ence to phys­i­cal­ly in­sert­ing your­self in sit­u­a­tions which might oth­er­wise cause of­fence, wor­ry or harm.

“Where are you go­ing with that?” Wayne asked, as I lift­ed the box con­tain­ing the tea-mak­ing para­pher­na­lia out of the ex­per­i­ments drawer.

“Out,” I replied.

“Good day for it,” he observed.

I placed the teapot, the cup, the saucer, the milk jug, the sug­ar bowl, the strain­er and the spoon on the tray, filled the pot with hot wa­ter from the pro­tein mush prepa­ra­tion urn, and then in a very grace­ful man­ner, I flew across the ac­com­mo­da­tion cap­sule to the air­lock. Amaz­ing­ly, the var­i­ous pieces which made up the tea set re­mained in their po­si­tions and were not overt­ly af­fect­ed by ze­ro grav­i­ty. I placed the tray on my lap and pulled the heavy door closed, locked it, and then opened the oth­er, un­til there was just my­self and the vast ex­panse of space.

It didn’t take much of an ef­fort to push my­self away from the air­lock and out in­to space. I prob­a­bly had enough oxy­gen for half an hour or so, but then, how long does it take to have a cup­pa? Five min­utes at the most. I turned around and looked at the space sta­tion, not­ing how it looked, in the ris­ing sun, like the in­nards and di­ges­tive sys­tem of a ro­bot, then turned and faced the earth it­self in all its blue and green sub­lim­i­ty. The tray still on my lap, I let out a sigh, and then bus­ied my­self pour­ing the stewed brown liq­uid from the spout in­to a cup. Nat­u­ral­ly, most of it flew off in­to space, so I had to put my hand over the cup in a man­ner which sure­ly would have of­fend­ed even the most lib­er­al tea eti­quette ex­pert. Once sat­is­fied that the tea would stay in the ce­ram­ic cup, I put down the teapot, left the saucer on the tray, lift­ed the cup and…

Clink, against the glass face of my space helmet.

“Bug­ger,” I whispered.

The life sup­port hose led back to the air­lock where Com­man­der Stacey and Wayne were now pulling me back. And to my left, I could see the re-en­try craft approaching.

I tried to sip the tea again.

Clink.

One par­tic­u­lar­ly hard yank, and the tray tum­bled from my lap, the tea pot, the saucer, the strain­er, the milk jug, the sug­ar bowl, all of them drift­ed off in­to or­bit around plan­et earth with all the oth­er pieces of space junk.

Back­wards, I was be­ing pulled. Back­wards, back­wards, back to the air­lock and the space station.

Filed under Fiction on June 14th, 2024

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