Waning Hope (Nihilian Effect)

Part 1: Aspiration

"Martin, this is Hope Base."

Martin jumped at the noise from his headset, losing his hold on the wrench. The tool tumbled from his gloved fingers and floated down to the moon's surface to land with a dusty splash.

"How's it going out there?" a voice inquired. After hearing nothing but his own breathing and the hum of the air circulator for the past hour, the new sound resonated within his helmet.

"It's going fine, Eirene," he half grunted in irritation, both at the difficulty with the wrench and at being bothered right then. They were members of a crew performing the first extended stay mission at the Hope Base on the larger moon, Selas; Eirene was the commander and Martin the crew's engineer, but she treated him as if he were little more than a handyman.

"Are you almost finished? I need to contact Mission Control, and Raitrin needs her shows so she can stop getting on my nerves."

"Yes, yes. It'll be up and ready soon." He grimaced at the rigid gloves that made it difficult to grasp anything. They were a necessary annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. "Damn gloves."

"Repeat that, Martin. I didn't copy."

"Nothing. I'll be done shortly, Hope. Martin out." Martin reached over to the display panel on his wrist and disabled the headset, mashing the buttons with a bulky fingertip. Dealing with the gloves was irritating enough without a voice in his ear.

His task would not have been so complicated if magic was permitted during space missions. Casting a simple dome of air around himself would have made the job much easier. But the restriction was understandable; composing magic and then maintaining that composition off-planet was difficult, not to mention the struggle of maintaining an air bubble against the vacuum of space.

Huffing in frustration, he buried the fingers of his glove into the soil and obtained a mass of dust with the wrench. He passed the tool to his other hand, then let the dust slide from his palm. A chill washed over him as he watched the particles descend in a cloudy stream. So similar to the dirt back home, and yet completely foreign. Rigid, gray stones and granules cascading in a slow-motion free-fall. Even after having lived on this base for months, he still found the effects of lesser gravity fascinating.

Martin raised his head to stare at the planet that hovered in the lunar sky. He had wanted to go to space ever since he had seen a Stalus rocket launch when he was eight. The thunderous roar and billowing smoke rushing from the rocket's boosters had filled him with awe, and each launch since sent shivers down his spine. He and every other boy at the time had slept with, dreamed of, and played with rockets. Martin had immediately put in an application to be an astronaut, but children were not allowed to go into space. He was persistent, though. When he received his acceptance letter during his final year of college, he jumped to join the space program, no questions asked. Now, as he gazed across the empty space at that beautiful azure sphere, he knew that he could not have made a better choice.

He returned his focus to the disabled communication satellite dish in front of him and used the wrench to remove a secondary panel. With the damaged parts replaced, all that was left to do was to replenish the power supply by installing a fresh pyruta core. The dish was equipped with solar panels, but any external equipment still required a power source for shadowed hours.

Removing the circuit card from its slot, he examined the current pyruta core that it contained. The core was only about half degraded—little fractures showing in the violet marble's surface—but since he was there, he figured he might as well change it out. The older one would be kept as a spare.

Martin placed the card into his tool box, then picked up a new card containing a fresh core and slid it into the slot. He felt the card click into place, and a light at the top of the slot pulsed a warm yellow. Power was waiting. The dish was ready to be reactivated.