“He is seated upon the circle of the earth…
he stretches out the heavens as a curtain…”
Isaiah 40:22 KJV

Solace Station
Orbiting Mars
Earth time: 1 July 2051

Mae grabbed the handhold and settled in the seat of the one-man pod. The automatic dome light sensed her motion and switched on. Mae shuffled things from one side to the other as she looked for the cache of memory sticks. She grabbed the purple one and inserted it in the small slot. The menu appeared on the screen, and she selected the files to download.

While she waited for the process to finish, she nosed around the little shuttle. There wasn’t much, and certainly no information related to one Penelope McAuliffe, but Michael was probably floating in circles in the command module. She flipped through his clipboard, the paper filled with stickmen, spaceships, and super novae.

There was a bright flash to her right and a sound like a sparkler.

Mae gasped. Oh no. That couldn’t be good.

The harsh sound of metal grating along metal followed by a hiss brought Mae scrambling from the seat. As she reached for the door, the hatch slammed shut. Her heartbeat thudded in her eardrums at a wild pace. She took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly. Her mind grasped wildly at the pod training they’d both received. She pressed the controls in the open hatch sequence. Nothing.

She pressed a large button in the middle of the control board. A little red light lit up. “Very funny, Michael.”

“What are you talking about?” His tone was hesitant. Not the response she’d hoped for.

Mae chewed on her bottom lip and pushed the panic aside. “A payback prank?”

There was a long silence. Michael’s next words dropped like lead brick in her stomach. “Code 1.28.1986.” The communications indicator flashed three times.

“Solace Station, you’re clear of eavesdroppers,” a woman’s voice announced over the PA systems in the station and the pod. “Please advise.”

“Commander, what’s going on?” Michael’s pitch betrayed a hint of concern.

“Not to alarm you, son, but I think I’ve been locked in your pod.” Mae pulled at her collar, already calculating options. Michael’s helmet was probably too big for her space suit even in a dire emergency, and she wasn’t wearing the thicker environmental suit. She placed her shoulder on the hatch and shoved. It didn’t budge. She ran her fingers across the forced air system. The pod had enough oxygen to get to and from the sensor buoy, but nothing was coming through the system. After that…

“You’re joking,” His voice held a bit of smile. “I really was going to tell you about Penelope.”

That brought a soft smile to her face. “I wish I had thought of it,” Mae said. “But I’m not joking.”

“Mom,” Michael said. “The oxygen tanks haven’t had time to refill.”

Another bit of news Mae hadn’t considered.

A terse voice interrupted. The woman had passed the information up the chain of command. “Solace, advise. Is there a situation?”

Mae sighed. “Houston, there is definitely a situation.” She explained the sequence of events.

The terse voice answered, “Please stand by.”

While she waited for news from mission control, Michael appeared outside of the convex porthole in the hatch. He gave her a thumbs up, and she shrugged, but added a thumbs up. Maybe it would help him feel better.

His voice came over the speaker. “My music player is in there, if you need something to listen to.”

Mae tilted her head and pressed her lips together. She answered, “Is it that hard metal stuff you liked from when you were in college?”

Michael shook his head left to right in the porthole. He said, “Nah, I moved on. There’s some David Bowie, some oldies, and some modern stuff, but mostly easy listening.” His expression turned sheepish. “Stuff Penelope likes.”

Mae clapped her hands with a laugh. “Figures. I need to meet this Penelope. You wouldn’t change your music habits for anybody.” She dropped her chin in her palm. “Any hymns?”

“No, you know I don’t have time for that stuff.”

“You should make time for it,” she said.

His cheeks colored slightly. “I did put that Bible on there like you suggested.”

“Perfect. I told you it would come in handy.” Mae checked around the cabin. “I’ll read a bit while we’re waiting on instructions. Where is it?”

“In the little bin under the seat.” He ducked out of sight, and she could hear a faint rattle in the wall between them. “What are you doing?” She could catch up on Psalms. She was a few chapters behind.

“Checking the wires in the panel.”

Silence stretched as Michael worked, and she scrolled through the music to the folder marked Bible. She double tapped, and it opened to Psalm 32. What others might call a coincidence; she took as a comfort. The Keeper of the Sparrows minded every detail in her life.

A few chapters later, Michael’s voice startled her. “So be honest, Mom.” He grinned at her from the port. The circle framed his face perfectly. “How bad did you want to say, ‘Houston, we have a problem’?”

Mae threw her head back and laughed so hard she pressed her hands to her middle. Maybe she was already feeling the effects of lower oxygen. “Oh, my, could you imagine their faces? I wish I would have thought of it.”

A gruff voice came over the PA system. “Mae?”

Tears welled in Mae’s eyes. “Abel,” she said, hoping no one noticed the quiver.

“I hear there’s a problem,” he said.

Mae glanced at Michael who was staring at her with a strange expression. “Yeah, my son doesn’t want me to meet his girlfriend.”

Abel chuckled, his rough baritone rolled over Mae and some of the tension eased from her shoulders until she was able to respond with a weak chuckle.

There had been only one other man that had been able to pull that off.

Mae’s brow creased. The realization was like a jolt and complicated things terribly. She lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and let her eyelids slide closed. She would not have a meltdown now. She would not worry about tomorrow. God kept her in the palm of his hand, and he would give her peace and strength for whatever came next.

“You okay, Mom?” Michael asked.

Mae answered, “I am.” She opened her eyes. “I’m ready to solve this problem. What do we need to do, Abel?”

***

Michael settled the high-magnification goggles over his eyes. They’d closed the airlock nearby, and he wore his bulky environmental suit. He was thankful that the short hadn’t fried in such a way to electrify anything. That would have made for a bad day. He said, “What’s next?”

Abel said, “You have them on?”

“Mmm-hmm, and the panel’s open.” Michael peered into the panel. He could see the individual lines of his fingerprints.

“If we can diagnose the problem, a solution might be easier. You okay in there, Mae?” Abel asked.

“Getting a bit tired. And cold,” she answered.

Michael grimaced. Without power to the pod, his mom wasn’t getting much heat transfer. He hoped God was listening. This whole mess was his fault. A distracted astronaut…

No, that wasn’t going to happen.

“We’ll hurry things along, then.” Abel’s voice had a smile. To Michael, he said, “Okay. We know the circuit is fried, but we’re trying to figure out why and if it can be repaired. From that panel, you might be able to access the panel on the pod. The two panels butt up against each other by design, and when the pod is properly engaged, the airlock seal covers it, as well.”

Closer examination didn’t reveal much but a dead circuit. They could fix that by trading out the board. That was easy enough. But what had caused the short?

Abel coached Michael through the removal of the panel on the pod. The decompression warnings didn’t go off. The pod was still mostly engaged, but receiving no power from the station. The battery was dead. The interior systems weren’t functioning. Michael eased around in the panel.

He tapped the goggles to increase magnification. An ice crystal sparkled on the corner of the circuit board. When he turned it over, light glittered across the surface like a snowy day. “Gotcha.”

“Yeah?” Abel prodded.

“There’s been a moisture build-up on the circuit boards. Ice crystals have shorted all the connections for the hatch.”
Abel hmmmed. “Check the moisture barrier.”

Michael eased the circuitry aside and tapped the goggles again. With this high a magnification, he could see tiny microscopic perforations in the moisture barrier. There was the culprit. “Yep. Looks like microscopic Swiss cheese.”

“Good. We’ve got a reason. Let me see what we can do.” There was a click as Abel was no doubt dashing off to the schematics.

The pre-flight checks would have exposed that issue before he’d gone out. If he’d done his job. She wouldn’t have been in there if his head had been on his job instead of Penelope.

Penelope. His mom still hadn’t met Penelope.

“Mom,” Michael said.

“Mmmm?” She sounded drowsy. That wasn’t a good sign.

“You’ll like Penelope, and I think you’ll love our story. Without realizing it, you were partially responsible.”

“Oh?” That perked her up like he’d hoped.

“Yeah, she’s a teacher, and she’s super smart.” He paused. “She thinks I look like Denzel Washington.” Her laughter was a balm to his worried heart.

***

Abel spread the schematics across the conference room table. He’d been trying to troubleshoot the malfunction with Michael, but Mae was running out of oxygen. They couldn’t be sure how much or how little was left. That was bad design. He had half a mind to hunt down the team that forgot gauges for the oxygen tanks and give them a tongue lashing, but it would waste the time Mae had left. And after that designer, he’d ream out the moisture barrier designer, whose choices had threatened the woman he loved.

Yeah, he’d figured that fun bit of information out – that he loved Mae – when those pesky interns had told him the trouble after he’d already burned their communications bridge. There was still the trouble of his determined unbelief. She’d never give up her faith. But if he could get her out of this mess, he figured they could work that out.
The mechanism in the pod hatch had triggered the door and then fried. Under high magnification goggles, Michael had figured out the root cause. The vehicle was half engaged and half disengaged from Solace Station. The hatch was sealed, but the process hadn’t finished before the short fried the panel, and the life support systems hadn’t engaged.
Mae would either suffocate or freeze to death. It was a toss-up. He slammed his fists down on the table so hard pencils flew across the room.

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