He stepped away, joining the other Belter, who was visibly crying.
Istomin again resisted the urge to step forward. There was nothing he could say that would top the Belter’s eulogy.
At the perfect moment, Quinn stepped forward. “We will now close the casket and send the dearly departed on his journey.”
Istomin watched solemnly as the casket lid was slowly lowered over Vladimir’s body, the hissing sound as the casket was pneumatically sealed shut. With the quiet whine of electric motors, the casket slid slowly toward the left end of the room. There, two small plasti-steel doors swung silently open, the casket sliding gracefully through the opening. The doors quietly closed then, the casket now lodged in the airlock on the outer skin of the satellite.
The group of mourners watched as a video feed appeared on a monitor screen on the far wall. There they could see the view outside the space station, the casket now flung by centrifugal force outward towards the stars. With a puff of gas from an air tank strapped to the bottom of the casket, the velocity increased significantly. Istomin knew that here, this far from the Sun, the casket probably had more than sufficient escape velocity and that, in a couple thousand years or so, it would leave the confines of the Solar System entirely, bound for the infinite cold and darkness of interstellar space.
“Goodbye, Vladdy,” he heard Irina say softly.
Table of Contents
Index
The Sleeping Prince(ss)
The Trials of Isaac Edmundson
Gnomish Night Railroad Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Cry Havoc April 20, 1899
November 7, 1899
November 14, 1899
November 18, 1899
November 22, 1899
December 29, 1899
Mepa One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Epilogue
Heroes: A Raconteur House Anthology Page 28