Chris was cold.
He was cold by choice, though, so it wasn’t something that bothered
him. The thick layer of plasteel between
himself and open space wasn’t thick enough to keep out
the airless chill of the spaces between the boiling stars. It was the most dangerous place on the ship,
the most vulnerable place. If the
shields went down, a piece of space debris the size of a pea could kill him
where he sat just as easily as an armed torpedo – only a lot more slowly. He didn’t care. It was his favorite place on the ship, and he
wouldn’t trade it for anything. Sitting
here, face to face with infinity, he was just Chris; not Captain Larabee, not a
widower still aching over the callous vagaries of death, not the reserved
friend of a phobic engineer and a navigator who should be commanding his own
ship. Just Chris, by
himself and at once frighteningly insignificant and breathtakingly limitless.
Sitting in the observation bubble was very nearly a religious
experience for him; space was the height of his life’s experiences just as the accidental
deaths of his wife and son had been the depth. Chris had always been ‘space struck’, but once he’d left Earth’s
protective boundaries for the first time that precious ball of rock and water
could never again be a home to him. How
could a man go back to being planet-bound after touching the stars? He knew men did, but they were as much aliens
to him as his first officer was – more, even, because at least he and the
Vulcan spoke the same language, the language of those who walk among the stars. A tongue that could not be taught but only absorbed
by the experience of that first burst of weightlessness as gravity grudgingly
gave up its hold, in the first taste of frozen fear when touched by the killing
reality of the surrounding vacuum, in the first awe-inspiring sight of a
newborn star or an ancient tumbling comet.It set them forever apart from those who would never, could never know
the wonder and terror of the endless ocean of space.
He lifted one hand and touched the bubble with his fingertips,
his need for connection fulfilled by the mere act of reaching out, and achieved
not some calm, lofty state of inner peace but a single moment of pure,
incandescent joy.
And Chris wasn’t cold any more.
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Who has known heights and depths shall not again
Know peace – not as the calm heart knows
Low, ivied walls; a garden close;
And though he tread the humble ways of men
He shall not speak the common tongue again.
Who has known heights shall bear forever more
An incommunicable thing
That hurts his heart, as if a wing
Beat at the portal, challenging;
And yes- lured by the gleam his vision wore –
Who once has trodden stars seeks peace no more.
Who Has Known Heights
-Mary Brent Whiteside
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The End
