Work Text:
Space takes no dominion of itself. There is a blooded poet's sense of frontier, of wilderness, of cold, untamed order in the rings of stellar grip and spin, but this does not linger in the regions of true cosmos. Here, even time is a null thing, the starlight centuries removed from present tense, the stars all still. Any pattern of stray matter belongs to the first moment of the universe. You can see it in the way the mass levels change on the readouts. You can see God's hand in the great wind.
The comet is a chunk of ice the size of a gymnasium, its carbon and ammonia frosts soaked in enough solar radiation to cook and sicken all the animals on the outskirt farms of your hometown. You have not calculated the number in this way, only dreamed it, the asphalt streets hot and empty, even the dirt roads warm in the glow, as the meek creatures lie down one by one. You wake from these dreams slowly. You check the engine sequences, write backup code for the ignition and sub-ignition cues. You stare at the trail of dust.
You rename the comet. Nothing sticks.
There is a pocket of synthesized etha__ that you have been harvesting on edge five, and today you will direct the gravity clamps that stitch you to the nucleus to idle you down to the eddy of charged gas. The computers have been ready for two weeks. You wait at the lip of the observance pod for the first line of bolts to disengage. There is just enough gravity to feel it happen. You have to imagine the second release, the short drop, the squeeze of your knuckles on the metal safety bar.
The harvest will last you out another month, but you are still two years on the map from Jupiter, where you will break from the comet and deliver your hold of telescope mirrors to the ISJ4 Orbit facility. They are building a sailcraft there that will dominate the planets, make your kind of comet-hopping obsolete. You try out female names, try to feel tender and sad about it. You won't name it Amelia. You cannot name it "Claire".
The etha__ is bottled blind. You check the machines' feeds and scrape a curl of ice from a frozen pock, saving the mass counts for later. In your quarters, you chew on a sponge soaked with a food pellet and a little chocolate and try to sleep. Music helps, and you drift off to some 2030's love song. The lyrics are too sweet. You'd prayed for this opportunity, to give your years to some frozen racer just like this one, to trace a circle on the sky.
When you dream, you are naked on the surface of the rock, the solar wind a whipping howl, your skin flayed white in the rush. You bend down and try to carve your name in the solid ice, but---you see? It is already written there. The gas does not peel it away, nor the dust erode it. It has been your own name, Jimmy, and the fire your own, and the light your body, mine.