Space is too damn cold. Thought Alex, wrapping a second blanket around herself as she stared out at the uninspiring celestial backdrop. The mug of coffee doing little to warm her aching fingers, neither were the fingerless gloves.
“It’s too damn cold!” She shouted down to Mike, the ship’s pilot, in his chair below her observation balcony.
“Nothing I can do about it! Short of flying us into a star or something.”
“Sound’s good. Do that.”
“Now you mention it, it is a bit nippy up here. Go talk to James, see if he can get the heating a little more bearable.”
“That wouldn’t be an order would it, Mike? Sounded like an order to me.” Alex hugged the blanket tighter around herself and idly looked over her navigation charts, trying to find somewhere warm they could detour past.
“Not at all, sir.” smirked Mike. “I’d go myself but… y’know… pilot. Got pilot stuff to do.”
“Fine. I’ll go. But if we crash I’m blaming you!” She slumped moodily off the bridge, muttering under her breath and holding the blankets around her like a cape.
The door to the engine room ground open, bathing Alex in a wave of hot air and a blast of Thin Lizzy.
“James!” She yelled over the music, “Do you think you could spare us a bit of this heat for up front?”
After a couple of seconds with no response, Alex ventured further into the engine room, dropping the blankets in the corridor outside.
Looking around she could see no sign of James, not even on the filthy old mattress he used as a bed claiming he couldn’t sleep away from his precious engines. Then Alex noticed another noise, just audible under the deafening music, a mechanical hammering coming from beneath one of the offline engines. Only one engine was needed to keep the ship running, the other two used for clearing gravity and running away.
She wandered over for a closer look and noticed a pair of heavy duty work boots sticking out from the bottom of the engine. she gave one a friendly kick. It jerked away and there was a clang from underneath. James slid out rubbing his forehead and turned off the music with a small remote from his pocket. He removed the pair of ear defenders and hung them around his neck. He didn’t look pleased.
“What was that for? You scared the life out of me!”
“It’s not like you could hear me- Why are you wearing ear defenders?”
“This thing’s loud!” He held up the hydraulic spanner he’d been using.
“What about the music?”
“I turned it up ‘cause I couldn’t hear it with the defenders-“
“Forget it. Where was I?.. Oh yeah, heat-” Alex was suddenly interrupted by a squawk from the ship’s intercom. Mike’s voice then rang out through the engine room.
“Uh, Captain?”
Annoyed, Alex stomped over to the intercom set into the wall near the engineer’s workbench.
“Did you crash? Didn’t hear a bang.”
“Funny. Uh, it ain’t that… It’s… You’d better come see… Both of you.”
She sighed, “On our way.”
“Jesus! It’s bloody freezing up here!” exclaimed James, stepping onto the bridge.
“Yeah, you’re gonna have to fix that as when Mike’s done showing us his new rash or whatever.” said Alex, heading to the ladder that led down from the observation balcony to the lower half of the bridge. “I swear, if you two are gonna keep crossing things off that list of your’s every time we pull in to port, I’m gonna have to hire a doctor.”
“Ha. Ha.” came the response from the pilot’s chair. “Look out there.” Mike said, gesturing out of the large. domed window.
“What am I looking at?” Asked James, squinting out at the blackness.
“Yeah, all I can see is stars.” said Alex.
“Keep looking… You’ll see it. Dead ahead.”
After a couple of seconds, Alex noticed something far out toward the stars.
“Wait! I think I see it!” She dashed back up the ladder to her nav station.
“Well I still don’t-” began James, then he saw it too. “What the hell is that…”
“How far away is it, Mike?” Alex called down from above.
“About twelve miles.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! That would make it nearly a mile long!”
“What is it?” demanded James.
As she spoke the words, Alex barely believed them herself.
“It’s a whale.”
