Containment Protocol

You have to return safely. It is our only concern.

"I'm sick," he said, followed by a cough that spattered tiny droplets of spittle across the inside of his faceplate.

You are not 'sick', you are in symbiosis with us.

"That's what 'sick' means in this context. You know what I'm saying. Don't act like… You've got to understand: I can't go back like this, I can't. I can't take you back."

There is no other option. If you do not execute the re-entry burn, you will miss the atmosphere, you will be flung into a widely elliptical orbit. You will starve and die and we will die with you.

They were right. He entered numbers into the flight computer, armed the retrorockets, set the timer.

Your numbers are incorrect.

"They aren't," he coughed again, a racking cough carrying a moan, full of desperate exhaustion. "I have a Doctorate."

The Command Module will enter the atmosphere at too steep an angle, and burn up. We will die before we reach the ground.

"That's the idea." Earth was a looming mural in the window. "They might try to recover the body if we end up in orbit. Can't take the chance."

No comments:

Post a Comment