by Samuel Best
Jeff Dolan drifted through space thirty miles from the Odyssey. He was in a gently spin, his arms and legs unmoving.
“Let’s pick him up,” Carol said quietly.
They performed the duty with care, taking their time on approach to match Jeff’s velocity. Carol still had an hour before she needed to start the first of the primary burns that would carry her new crew back to Earth.
Once the Odyssey was next to Jeff, traveling at the same speed, she opened the airlock. Using orbital thrusters on the side of the ship, she drifted toward him until the airlock swallowed him up.
A minute later, Carol and Hideo waited silently on the other side of the airlock until it pressurized.
Jeff bumped against the airlock wall and floated back toward the hatch. His face shield was cracked, obscuring his face.
Carol stabilized Jeff’s spin while Hideo swapped out his failed power pack for a new one. The screen of his wristpad flashed red three times, then glowed green. A fan whirred within his oxygen pack.
Hideo frowned as he read data from Jeff’s wristpad. Carol watched him expectantly.
“He was out there too long,” said Hideo. “Sixty hours with no oxygen. It’s impossible that anyone could—”
Jeff’s wristpad let out a single beep.
Carol and Hideo looked down at the screen.
Beep.
“What is that?” asked Carol.
“That,” Hideo replied, “is a heartbeat."
29
JEFF
He awoke in a hospital room, sunlight spilling in through a large window. Dust particles danced in the light. A vase of colorful flowers was on the table next to his bed. He was alone.
Jeff sat up slowly, with great effort. Every muscle in his body felt strained, as if they had been torn and sewn back together. His joints were stiff and swollen. Even the hospital bracelet on his left wrist hurt with only the slightest adjustment. He eased back onto his pillow and looked out the window, not recognizing the city outside.
His gaze drifted to the call button on the wall next to his bed. He let out a slow sigh as he stared at it, too exhausted to lift his arm.
Some time later, the door to his room opened and a doctor came in. She wore a white coat over white scrubs, and bright pink sneakers. She was making notes on her tablet and didn’t look up at Jeff until she was halfway to his bed. Then she stopped in her tracks with her mouth open. After a long moment, she smiled.
“You’re finally awake,” she said.
Jeff swallowed as he prepared to speak, but it felt like he was forcing broken glass down his throat. He nodded.
The doctor set her tablet down on the table next to his bed and listened to his heartbeat with her stethoscope. With a quick nod, she slipped the stethoscope around her neck and began the process of checking his blood pressure.
Jeff looked at his hands while she worked. He slowly balled them into fists, then opened them. He didn’t feel the same as when he’d come back from Titan after his first mission. There had been no pain that time. He had felt like a new man after Titan. Now he felt as if he had been crushed and glued back together.
“I’m Dr. Cynthia Tate,” said the doctor. “I’ve been looking after you since you arrived.” She gave him a moment to respond, and when he didn't, she asked, “Can you speak?”
“Yes,” he managed to whisper in a hoarse croak.
Her smile grew wider and she picked up her tablet to scribble a note.
“How are you feeling?"
“Pain,” he whispered.
“Where?”
He made a gesture to indicate his entire body.
“We can help with that,” she told him. “I know from your x-rays that you have no broken bones. I guess that’s your silver lining.”
“Where…” he said, then stopped and closed his eyes against the pain.
“You’re in Washington, D.C.,” she said gently. “You’ve been in a coma for two weeks.” She watched him closely while she relayed the information. “Do you remember how you got here?”
Jeff tried to sit up, then quickly thought better of it and lay back onto his bed.
“No,” he whispered. “Where’s Kate?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” said the doctor.
“No phone,” he croaked.
“Pardon?”
He nodded toward his bedside table.
“There’s no phone.”
“This is the military ward. Sometimes they request no phones or TV. No one told me why you shouldn’t have one.”
“It’s because he’s supposed to be dead,” said a gruff voice from the doorway.
Colonel Brighton walked into the room, frowning. His uniform had been immaculately pressed. His buttons gleamed and his black shoes reflected the room like mirrors. He removed his hat and tucked it under his arm, then ran a calloused palm over his buzzed hair.
“Getting phone calls from dead people tends to upset people. How is he, Dr. Tate?”
“Alive, but in pain.”
“May I speak with him alone?”
“Of course,” she said. Then she smiled at Jeff. “I’ll get something to make you a little more comfortable."
He nodded his thanks as she left the room.
Brighton paced next to the bed, staring at Jeff as if he couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
“I don’t understand what I’m seeing,” he said finally.
“Water,” Jeff whispered.
“No, that’s not it,” Brighton replied, shaking his head.
“Water, please,” Jeff repeated, pointing weakly at the sink next to the bathroom.
“Oh.”
Brighton found a small paper cup and filled it. Jeff brought it to his lips with a shaking hand, but still managed to get most of it into his mouth. He collapsed back down on the bed with a sigh, holding the empty cup on his stomach.
“Did she tell you how long you were in a coma?” Brighton asked.
Jeff nodded.
“On her way back to Earth in the Odyssey, my daughter picked up Niels Erikson, Hideo Tanaka, and Sandra Jones. They were adrift aboard your ship, the Seeker. They had no power and were almost out of oxygen.” Brighton grunted. “That Erikson is a piece of work. But I have to give him some credit. Despite his eccentricities, he wouldn’t allow Carol to leave until she either found you or confirmed you could not be found.”
“Remind me to thank him later,” Jeff said quietly.
Brighton looked at Jeff seriously.
“Dolan,” he said. “Listen to me. They were adrift for two days before Carol picked them up. It was another twelve hours before they found you.”
Jeff met the Colonel’s gaze and held it for a long time, waiting for him to say it was a joke.
He cleared his scratchy throat and whispered, “That’s impossible.”
“Lot of that going around,” Brighton conceded. “Your body is sore because you were floating in open space for sixty hours…without oxygen.”
Jeff shook his head. “Not possible.”
“You were dark purple when they peeled you out of your spacesuit on board the Odyssey. They thought you were dead until they detected your heartbeat. Three beats per minute, Dolan. So they piled on the insulating blankets and brought you back here.” Brighton shook his head. “We thought it was unbelievable when the tori brought you and Riley back from the dead. But this…this is something else."
Someone entered the room, only this time it wasn’t Dr. Cynthia Tate. It was a tall man in slacks and a button-down shirt. He smiled warmly at Jeff and gently shook his hand.
“This is Dr. Singh,” said Colonel Brighton. “I asked him to come in here and explain the details.”
“Good morning, Mr. Dolan,” said the doctor. “We need to talk about something that might be a little difficult to grasp at first.”
“Like surviving in deep space for more than two days?” Jeff asked.
“As a result of what we need to discuss, yes.”
&nb
sp; “Are you a medical doctor?”
“I am a clinical psychologist.”
“Uh oh.”
Singh smiled again. “A sense of humor is a good thing. I think you will be fine. We are in the ‘managing expectations’ phase of our conversation.”
“By all means, proceed,” Jeff whispered with mock formality.
“It’s a good thing you weren’t awake when they brought you here, Mr. Dolan. I doubt you would have appreciated the, um, thoroughness with which the Colonel’s doctors investigated your situation.”
“That’s not why I’m sore, is it?”
Dr. Singh chuckled. “No. You are sore because you were mostly dead for more than two days. What the doctors found after they ran all their tests on your blood, your tissue…after all the scans…is that your cells regenerate at an impossible speed.”
“You should have been unrecognizable when they found you, Dolan,” said Brighton. “Your soft tissue should have crystallized, including your organs. Not to mention your lack of oxygen. Yet your heart kept beating.”
“The cellular regeneration is something the doctors really focused on,” said Dr. Singh. “Not only because it fascinated them, but because of what it meant for you.”
“What does it mean for me?” Jeff whispered.
“Well,” said Dr. Singh. “If your cells continue to regenerate at this speed, you will never get cancer. You may not even grow older. You’re not going to die, Mr. Dolan. At least not from old age.”
Jeff stared at the empty paper cup in his hand. He ran his thumb over the rim. Singh and Brighton watched him closely.
“Where’s Kate?” he asked.
“She’s here, in D.C.,” Brighton replied.
“Does she know? About what you just told me?”
“She knows about the coma, but not the rest. I wanted to leave that decision to you.”
Jeff absentmindedly bunched the thin hospital blanket in his hands and twisted the fabric, his thoughts far away. “I think she’d catch on in about ten years or so.”
Dr. Singh turned to the Colonel. “Please call me if anything changes.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
After the doctor left, Brighton cleared his throat. “We have a lot more to discuss about what happened while you were near Venus. Kate can fill you in on some of it, and I can provide the missing pieces. I’d also like to know more about your interactions with the alien.”
“What about Riley?” Jeff asked.
Brighton shook his head, no.
“Carol sent this from the Odyssey,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small tablet.
He showed Jeff the image on the screen. It was a blue firework in deep space.
“What is that?”
“The Earth-bound comet just before the Odyssey crew blew it to pieces,” Brighton replied. He slipped the small tablet back into his pocket. “They managed to knock it down from an Extinction Level Event to a meteor shower that hit half the globe. We’ll be scraping up that blue gunk for years.” He shook his head and looked out the window. “Who knows what it will do to the crops? The soil? We could be facing a global famine within four decades.” He sighed wearily. “But that’s for my successor to worry about.”
“You’re finally retiring?”
“I’ll be available as an advisor, if they want me. Get some rest, Dolan,” he added, not unkindly. “Dr. Tate knows how to get in touch with me when you’re ready to go.”
His shoes clacked on the hard floor as he left the room.
Jeff watched dust particles dancing in the sunlight over his bed and thought about floating in space, alone. He thought about his life with Kate. He thought about a distant future without her.
His gaze drifted down to his hands. When he looked up again, Kate was standing in the doorway of the hospital room, smiling, her eyes brimming with tears.
Jeff sat up straighter despite the pain.
“Hey there, handsome,” she said.
“Hey there, beautiful,” he replied.
She sat on the side of his bed, and they hugged for what seemed like eternity.
As Kate cried into his shirt, Jeff told himself the future didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was their time together, and he promised to do everything he could to make the most of it.
FROM THE AUTHOR
And so ends the final book of the Infinite Sky trilogy. I am very grateful you took the time to accompany me on this journey.
This whole adventure started with Mission One. What was originally meant to be a standalone book eventually turned into this trilogy, which eventually spawned the idea for a much larger universe that I’m currently exploring.
My book Another World is the next installment in this far-reaching saga, taking place some 400 years after the events of Infinite Sky. I’m currently working on book two in that series. You can learn more about it here.
Interested in new releases and free sci-fi short stories? You can sign up for my newsletter to get emails about both.
If you have the time, a review for this novel would go a long way in making it visible for other readers to discover.
Lastly: thank you. Thank you for reading this book. If you have a general question or comment about the trilogy (or anything else for that matter), I’d love to hear from you at this email address: [email protected]
Until next time…
-Samuel
LAST CONTACT © 2021 Samuel Best
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