Survivors
Missing Moment to “Black Sun”
Helena glanced at Sandra Benes as they sat beside one another in the Survival Eagle. They were headed away from Alpha, trying to escape the overwhelming and over powering gravitational forces of the Black Sun. Alpha was headed straight for it and although Victor’s force field plan sounded good, John Koenig had secretly admitted to her about the only thing it could be sure of doing was boosting morale. The force field could no more hold off the forces inside the Black Sun than a peanut could resist being pulverized by an Eagle landing on it. That had done nothing to make her leaving Alpha easier, and while she would not admit it to anyone but herself, the only reason she was on the ship instead of back on Alpha where she wanted to be was because John had admitted that where she died made a difference to him. Had he not said that, Helena expected she would have given her place to someone else, despite John’s orders and the computer’s ‘final’ choice.
Once again Helena glanced at Sandra. They were to be the survivors, the six of them were to find some planet to settle and keep the human race going. Except Helena knew it wouldn’t work. If they even escaped the pull of the Black Sun and found a planet, the six of them could not provide enough genetic diversity to produce a viable species. Theologically Adam and Eve made a great story, biologically, genetically, the race could never have survived. They needed what Adam and Eve had – divine intervention - if this was going to work.
Sandra looked in Helena’s direction and gave her a weak smile. Helena returned it, her smile laced with compassion as well. The two of them were more than simply survivors of the cataclysm that had yet to occur, they were survivors of the haphazard selection of space. They had both lost loved ones to the random forces of space exploration. She’d had nearly five years to get used to the fact the forces of nature had stepped in, exacting its price for Man’s curiosity, and claiming the life of her husband, Lee. Sandra was a more recent survivor, her fiancée Michael having been claimed by the gravitational forces of the Black Sun before anyone had been certain of what it was. This was not the time for counseling, but Helena hoped, if by some miracle they actually survived this desperate attempt to ensure the continuation of the species, that she would at least be able to provide Sandra some words of comfort, some advice that would help her work through her sense of grief and loss. Helena knew that Sandra, like herself, would do what was required of her to survive - whether it was for six weeks in an Eagle or uncounted time on a planet, but that would not negate the need to mourn, to try to understand and accept the random vagaries of deep space, to keep going when all you really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and shield yourself from the realities with which life continued to bombard you. Not giving in to the urge was a part of surviving.
Once more Helena glanced at Sandra. It didn’t matter if they never found a planet to colonize or if they expired within the confines of the Eagle while it drifted through deep space, a large metal coffin for six more victims of the random vagaries of space. It didn’t matter if by some miracle they did find a planet and succeeded in keeping the human race alive. None of it mattered. They were survivors.
Background image from "Slug Scan"