Darkness pierced the infinite light. Every micron in view was packed with stars, yet the overwhelming sense of impending darkness remained. It lingered in the periphery, always darting away when one turned their eyes to catch it. A dark void appeared to separate the stars, but upon closer inspection, any single point of darkness always revealed a new hidden star or distant galaxy.

“Looks totally different from out here, doesn’t it?” The voice came from Odie’s left over the directional radio in his helmet. Nell lay there beside him. He couldn’t see her due to the limited view of his helmet, but he could feel a slight difference in his left shoulder seal pressure caused by her arm pressing against his.

“The holoscreens really remove all the depth and texture you get out here,” she continued, “and polarized glass isn’t much better.”

Odie turned his eyes to a digital dial on a screen inside his faceplate. The eye tracker in his mask picked up the motion and the dial began to turn. The focus in his magnifier pushed out, causing a new patch of darkness to light up with stars.

“Look there,” he said pointing at the cluster, “between AB90A and LS30C.”

He heard a faint tapping over the radio as Nell wrote something in her notebook. “Yeah, those definitely weren’t distinguishable last month,” she said, “first time seeing them without a telescope.”

One of her hands reached up into his view, pointing towards the group of stars. “Look at that cloud on the right side.”

Odie tried to focus on what she was looking at. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“It’s very faint. Maybe in a few months we’ll be close enough for me to paint it.”

An orange light blinked to life in Odie’s helmet, followed by a beeping sound. The results from his equipment check scrolled across a reader to the right of his visor.

“Is everything working?” Nell asked.

“Yeah, the new panel is running smoothly. That’s…” Odie’s eyes darted across the report. “Forty-eight kilowatt-hours of energy generation per day. Seven tons of increased heating capacity. Heating efficiency is up 0.01%. Millions of dollars are saved. I’m a hero.”

Odie sat up on his elbow and turned his torso to face Nell. The bottom of his face shield cut off his vision, so he adjusted his posture until his helmet was at an angle which allowed him a full view of his wife. She looked like she was stuffed inside a giant marshmallow; her face was barely visible behind the eight by twelve window in her helmet.

“We really gotta order a suit that fits you,” Odie said, smiling at the sight of her forehead being the only part of her face poking up behind her visor.

“I’m fine!” She insisted, wiggling her arms in the air like a turtle flipped on its back.

“Then I guess you’ll be alright if I head back now?” Odie asked, “You can get up on your own, right?”

“Go ahead,” Nell replied, “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Alright, I need to go print out this report,” Odie said as he pushed himself up to his feet. There was about twenty pounds of added resistance due to the suit’s mag-grav which held it to the hull of the ship. Once he was up, Odie activated a switch in his helmet using his eye tracker. His tool case, which had been sitting beside him on the hull, snapped shut and detached itself from the ship. The container used magnetic pulses to rotate itself and latch onto the back of his suit.

“Bye!” He said cheerfully as he waved to Nell, “see you inside.”

He began to walk away. There was a rustling sound over the radio, then a few grunts, and then a defeated sigh.

“Can you help me?” He heard faintly.

Odie turned around. Nell hadn’t moved an inch from where she had been lying. He chuckled and held out a hand for her.

“And to think you would have left me here if I hadn’t said anything,” she said and gripped his hand. Odie pulled as she rolled over onto her knees, then he put his hands under her armpits and lifted to help alleviate the weight as she stood to her feet.

“I’m so sorry,” he said playfully, “I had already forgotten you were here. Probably would have been days before anyone would have found you. Maybe if another panel went out you’d have a chance.”

The top of her helmet came up to just under Odie’s chin. He looked down and saw her face sunken down into the helmet, barely poking up through the neck seal. The suit was made for someone who was between five-five and six feet. Nell was five feet tall. She looked like a balloon animal.

“You’re just helping me out of self-preservation,” she said with feigned irritation, “you’d be totally hopeless without me.”

“Well, maybe you’re right… or maybe I just like you. Hopefully next time they’ll have a fun sized suit available,” he said, grinning.

“Yeah, I am fun, aren’t I?” Nell said. Her notepad, which had drifted a distance away as she had been getting up, shut itself, floated back, and attached to her hip.

Odie offered his hand to her. “Do you wanna walk, or would you be up to try flying again?” he asked.

Eight… Nine… Ten…

The hull of the ship rushed past at about fifteen feet per second. Odie timed his acceleration. He had done this jump a thousand times over the past five years. Nell hovered a few feet in front of him, both her hands gripped tightly in his.

Twenty…

Odie shut off his EMU boosters. They were moving at thirty feet per seconds relative to the ship- the fastest he would attempt with Nell. He was flying backwards, but he had already lined up their trajectory with the airlock. In twenty seconds he would begin decelerating. Twenty more seconds after that and they would be within a hundred feet of the airlock.

Nell had the same look in her eyes as when he had previously tried doing this jump with her, but this time she didn’t say anything. She just clenched her jaw and focused on the wrinkles which had begun forming on the sides of Odie’s eyes.

Nell looked down for a split second. She saw the ship. The speed. Her breathing intensified. Scenarios raced through her head, one after another.

She saw them slamming into the hull of the ship.

Shattered bones. Seal failure. Depressurization. Death.

They passed under one of the ship’s gravity rings. It was a few hundred feet above their heads, but what if they deflected off one of the connecting corridors?

Booster failure. Launched off course. Lost in space. Death.

It took a few seconds for her to hear Odie’s voice over the radio.

“Nellie! Nellie look at me!” he said to her. She didn’t know how long he had been talking.

“Breath, Nellie,” he said softly, seeing he had her attention. “Just look at me,” he repeated, “it’s just us. It’s like we’re not moving at all.”

Nell closed her eyes. The ship vanished. The emptiness of space was replaced by the banging of her heart in her ears and the pulsing blue light she could see through her eyelids. She felt pressure on her hands from her gloves. She imagined what it really felt like to hold her husband’s hands - not the loveless cold pressure of a space suit.

“Nell, look at me,” she heard Odie say.

She opened her eyes and met his. She could see the ship moving past them to the side, but she just focused on inspecting the look on his face. He was calm. He was smiling slightly, and those wrinkles to the sides of his eyes had deepened. His green eyes sparkled in the light of his face mask monitors.

Nell exhaled and breathed in sharply. She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath for almost a minute.

“We’re not moving at all, Nell,” Odie said, “we’re just gonna let the ship slip past us for a minute, and then we’ll catch back up to her and land in the airlock. She’s not gonna hit us. I made sure that we’re far enough away. It’s just me and you right now, and we’re gonna be just fine.”

While he was talking, Odie fired off his boosters a few times to adjust their rotation. He turned them so that Nell faced away from the ship’s hull.

Nell breathed out again. The stars glimmered in the background, perfectly still.