He fumbled with the spanner, trying not to let go of it.
was hard enough holding onto it through the glove, let alone placing it over the nut. Over the last several months he had lost several tools like that. One false move and they just float away into space, lost forever. He hated outside maintenance. He paused, looking at the shiny metal ring spanner thinking about its history. The number of times it had been picked up and used throughout the centuries. Such a basic tool. Such a simple idea. He was snapped out of his musings by a loud crackling in his helmet.
This had been happening for several days now. He was only getting brief snatches of what mission control was trying to tell him. He had lost two-way communication with Earth a few hours back. It was only one way now and continually breaking up. He knew there was some sort of panic going on back there in the control room, he managed to figure out that much, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. He had heard the words ‘third world war’ several times. Could this be the real deal or just another beat up to sell more newspapers? To maintain revenue from advertising.
Advertising had swamped the world back there. This had been one of his main reasons for taking on space work. It was quiet out here. He could play his music and listen to his books. He could eat as many of his favourite pies as he liked with nobody to judge him for it; not up here, anyway. He looked out into the black abyss, in the general direction of where he’d been so often hassled about his eating habits. Only the general direction, of course. All he could see was a scattering of tiny pin points, with his own pin point being somewhere in the centre of it all.
At that moment there was a mighty flash and his earpiece went dead.
In that one dreadful moment he realised what must have happened. He went back to staring at his spanner. What was the point? What was the point of it now? What did any of it matter? He swivelled his helmet back and watched the glow become dimmer by the second, until there was nothing to see but the same blackness with little white dots, presumably with one of them now missing. Looking again at his spanner he thought he might just uncurl his fingers and let it float away. What was the point? Just let it float away into space. What was the point of any of it?
He suddenly got a grip on himself. His full senses came flooding back. With a great blast of awareness, he realised what he was doing. What he was out here doing was turning this nut. He was retightening the main seal on the ship’s refrigeration unit. He was stopping the leak. He was maintaining the reliability of his food supply, not least of which was enough pies to keep him fed for another three months.
He looked back down at the large hexagonal nut with new purpose. He tightened his grip.
It was hard enough holding onto it through the glove, let alone placing it over the nut…