Athena

On Saturn’s green and marschy land, the Goddess Athena did land.

Adrift from home and hope and fate, she’d had a lot upon her plate.

So, settled in those jade green hills: a common hut with no fancy frills;

A couch out front to lay her head, and spend her days, and serve as bed.…

          Eve woke to the drip of rain.  Green rain.  She rolled over on the rust red cushion she lay upon, trying to get away from the annoyance, however her tarpaulin had bowed in the night under the accumulated weight and she glanced-up just in time to see the whole foetid lot sagging down about to burst.  Like a marsh-cat, she sprang out, grabbing a sturdy feeling stick she kept nearby for fog storms.  Hooking the eyelet of the tarpaulin nearest the threatening overspill, she lifted and pushed and forced back the flood, tipping the unwanted puddle right over the back of her shelter and harmlessly away into the weeds behind.

Mornings on Saturn were never two the same.  Sometimes bright and light, winds whipping like jade gauze across the landscape.  Other days just miserable: lightning had burnt her space podule’s exploremobile two days after landing here and it had taken her three months just to rewire the dashboard.

She wiped-up the dredges of last night’s zoumous with some dried cantaloupe snake, and set about fixing the tarp so there was no risk from a sagging frontage if it rained again tonight.  She couldn’t afford to get the sofa wet.  It was the one bit of comfort on this blasted planet and, though the podule was nearly ready, it would be a day or two more before lift-off, and she needed her sleep.

As she contemplated her tasks for the day ahead, whilst sitting on the dunny, she thought back to that Channel D-47 show she had always wanted to emulate, 4 Non-Blondes: you never saw them sitting on the toilet, or having to lie still and shaking for hours at a time waiting for giant wild dogs, slate-edged teeth as black as shadow, to leave camp after a dawn raid.  They were unapologetically bad space hoons, sleeping with whomever came along, always wisecracking, fighting corruption on the ice moon Celadus.  Fuck justice… fuck shagging!  Eve would just like someone to appreciate even a poor attempt at a wisecrack.  Being stranded was lonely.

The podule lay near the sofa.  Well, her sofa lay near the podule, to be more accurate; she’d set-up camp right next to the crash-landed craft.  Upon entering the hydrogen-rich clouds the speed of descent had curled-back a couple of the heat shielding tiles and allowed the wiring beneath to melt.  It had been the xr34sft-6 module that bore the brunt, which meant that both communications and ignition were affected.  Eve had spent six months building the means to melt the copper out of rocks, and extrusion mechanisms to make new wiring from scratch.  A feat she had never envisioned having to do and which had taken more head scratching than her teachers at school ever caused.  The new wires sat gleaming in their correct alignments, held separate from one another by tin clips, the better to avoid arcing.  She had been working on getting the insulation tiles fixed, but asbestos was dangerous and she had been working it using a pair of eighty centimetre tongs she had carved from a thornwood.  This kept it far from her face, but meant what should have been a day’s work had taken her over a week.

Standing on the top of her makeshift ladder, asbestos padding pressed against the hole in the ship and K-brand epoxy resin setting firmly beneath, she lashed some temporary fronds of grass across the patch to last till it set.  Padding feet rushed towards her, not enough time to…

*              *              *

          ...the ladder was thrust sideways as the beast leapt for her.  She scrambled awkwardly against the falling ladder, landing with a sickening twist that nearly made her lose all breath.  But she hadn’t struggled for so many months just to die at the final moment.  She rolled sideways, pulling a taser from its strapping under the podule’s landing gear where she’d stashed it for exactly times such as this.

The beast, not a type she’d seen before, looked ravenous, dangerous.  Eve knew this would be key to her survival, she just had to keep her mind steady as the beast’s rage and hunger drove it to ever more desperate manoeuvres.

It leapt, dinghying its head off the podule’s carbonide bulwark.  Eve darted out beneath the overhang and thrust her right arm forwards, depressing the trigger and firing the double electric darts straight into the dazed creature’s ball-sack.  The yellowed eyes briefly made confused contact with her own, before a second button was pressed and a scream such as not heard on Saturn before rent the air asunder.

*              *              *

          The air smelt like Christmas meats, roasting on a camp-fire.  The poor bedraggled monster had limped away defeated, but Eve had made use of her little barbecue skewers for a surprisingly filling dinner.  Thankfully, none of her efforts on the podule’s heat shielding had been affected by the attack, though her ladder now lay in splinters and she would have to get up to inspect her work once the morning came.  She checked the tarp for rain-security then, satisfied, turned-in for the night.

          She woke once, a couple of hours before dawn.  The lights of the Milky Way glittered spectacularly from one horizon to another.  She lay, wrapped tight in her blankets, remembering her adventures on this weird planet.  From her incendiary landing all those months earlier, to her explorations of the local geography.  The time she had first encountered flora and fauna that could supplement her space biscuits.  The triumph of extruding copper wiring after weeks of burnt fingers and a failing makeshift electric furnace. As her heavy eyelids shut it all out once more to oblivion she breathed out, ready to head home.

          A short while later, birdsong awoke her.  The clear morning beckoned a smooth lift-off.  In fact, the cloudless sky was perfect.  Her ablutions done in almost ritualistic slow ecstasy, such was the importance of the day, she packed what little she was taking with her – pretty much the same items she had unloaded upon crash-landing previously – and boarded her vessel.

Power: check

Controls: check

Comms: check (though she would hold-off on saying, ‘hi’, till she was approaching Earth)

Ignition: 5…        4…                          3…                                 2…                                                   1…

Boosters ignite

Lift off!

G-Force building rapidly, Eve flung herself back against her headrest. The semi-monocoque skin was holding nicely as the planet’s atmosphere came and went, with rapid cooling happening almost as fast as the exosphere thinned and space once more took the weight from Eve’s shoulders.  A lightness in her stomach like butterflies, though attributed most likely to her internal organs becoming weightless along with the rest of her, as well as the podule. It had happened.  She had done it.

As the navigation computer highlighted the trajectory and necessary adjustments for a path home to Earth, a sudden rush of something impish took over her senses.  New co-ordinates were typed in rapidly to fix on a satellite far closer to her heart. 

In a little over twelve hours, Eve would be disembarking on Celadus.