“The Ship has passed through the dustfield. Maintenance crew to your stations. The Ship endures,” the loudspeaker echoes monotonously. A moment passes, then the message once more reverberates through the stale air of the jam-packed shelter module. Another moment, another message, and the crowd begins breaking up; some staying where they are, causing a bit of a traffic jam with the others that are leaving.
Eli is one of those that are leaving. He is a part of the maintenance crew, as his father and grandfather before him had been. He is rather young at only fifteen, but this isn’t an unusual age for his ilk, however: the shafts and ducts that made up the more out of the way locations on the ship were rather small.
The maintenance crew is perhaps one of the most numerous positions on the ship, though one could not be sure after all this time drifting in space: the children of each crewman usually inherited their position as well, and ship personnel records failed after the first few generations. As could be inferred from the name, their duty was to fix whatever damage the ship and the ship’s components accumulated during the ship’s long trek across the stars, traveling to their new home. One of the most essential jobs among the crew was to make sure the many oxygen generators and hydroponics bays onboard the ship still functioned, as well as repairing any damaged modules. It would not do to run out of air or food from a mechanical failure or hull breach, after all.
Speeding up his pace to a brisk walk, Eli peers upon his suited wrist, where a small screen hangs off of it. Displaying off of said screen is Eli’s task. Duct duty. Eli took a moment to take a breath of the stale air inside of his space suit and sigh in an almost immature fashion. Great.
The maintenance ducts were one of the most dangerous locations on the ship. Yet, nonetheless, they were one of the most essential spots in the ship, ferrying oxygen through tubing and electricity through wires. Any damage there tended to leave jagged pieces of metal sticking out of the sides of the duct that easily caught on and tore the cheap space suits the crewmembers wore.
According to Eli’s suit computer, his duct was near the outer layers of the vaguely spherical ship, too. Even when the ship was not passing through a dust cloud, there is still always some debris the ship will merely endure its way through.
The thought of some miniscule speck of stray dust piercing through the hull while he happened to be working reminds Eli of his grandfather. The old man always had a reputation for being one of the most paranoid of the maintenance crew, though he would always snort whenever the topic was brought up, saying that his paranoid tendencies were well justified.
“Eli, my boy,” his grandfather always told him, “the stars are a force of nature no less powerful or dangerous than that of old Earth, or than that of our promised, future home. It’s just a matter of different priorities. On old Earth, my own father told me, -at your age too, might I add- that a man would carry all sorts of things with him wherever he went, simply because of the dangers of nature. A weapon to ward away dangerous predators like wolves, a cloak to stave off the cold of winter. He would rely on his own tools and wits just to survive. It’s no different now. A tool to ward away dangerous faults like hull breaches, a suit to stave off the effects of vacuum. We must similarly rely on our own tools and wits if we wish to survive. We cannot forsake one or the other.”
Eli wasn’t sure what to make of his grandfather’s grand speech. He wasn’t that old at the time, after all, but it sure sounded like it made sense. Soon after his tenth birthday, however, his grandfather passed in his sleep. Eli’s grandfather had worked until the day he died; Eli himself didn’t know this until quite some time after he had died: he had simply imagined that he had retired like all of the other kids in his hab-block’s grandparents. The doctors said that he had died due to stress.
Arrival at the entrance to the maintenance duct he was assigned to breaks Eli out of his reverie. The door, more an airlock, was a small thing, barely taller than Eli. A control panel sits in the center of it, showing various readings of the maintenance shaft it leads towards. Good, thought Eli, it was pressurized in there. That at least meant any hull breaches were already fixed by a prior crewman.
He runs his hand over the control panel, signalling the door to open. A hissing sound rings out, as the air pressure equalizes between the two rooms, or so it seemed to Eli.
Only a second or two after the airlock began opening, Eli was thrown off his feet towards the door by an invisible force that he immediately recognized: air pressure. But that didn’t make any sense to Eli; the door sensor had read that air was indeed present. He lets out a grunt as he slams against the still-opening door, the pull increasing more and more. Soon enough, the airlock opens wide enough for Eli’s frame to slip through, hurtling head over shoulder due to the force. The airlock slams shut soon afterward, cutting off the airflow.
Eli barrels over a couple more times, then slams into a T-intersection at the end of the short duct. He lies there for a moment, letting out a wordless moan proclaiming his pain. Then, Eli looks up at the now closed airlock, examining it from some distance as to what could possibly have gone wrong with the sensors on this end. A brief spark from the control panel is his answer.
Pulling himself together, Eli stands up, looking around. He faintly hears a whistling sound as he gets up. Looking at his wrist-computer, a small model of the spacesuit appears. He lets out a gasp as he sees a red mark stretches across the model’s back: his suit has been breached.
Acting quickly, Eli begins digging through a side-pouch. After some rummaging, he quickly drags out a roll of duct tape. Duct tape is not standard by any means aboard the ship’s maintenance crew, but Eli’s grandfather had -several times over- sworn by the stuff. A bit of frantic stretching later, and a hasty repair is made to the suit. It’s likely, Eli thinks to himself, that this would limit his range of movement by a bit, and it’s by no means fully airtight, but it will allow him to seal the breach, do his job, then quickly get out and go back to his hab-block. Soon, though, Eli thinks to himself, our long journey will come to an end, and we will have a true home for ourselves.