Story excerpt: Catcher

Bilal stared into the emptiness of space beyond the forward windows. There was something mesmerising. An urge to reach out and touch it; to step into its blackness, an enveloping caress that would smother the life from him.

Traveling between the planets no one told you about the emptiness. The media always depicted looming closeups of Jupiter or the moons. Giant hemispherical orbs filled the screen, threatening to suck you in with their attraction; more sensational than gravitational. Other newscasts had images of spaceports. Shuttles taking off, landing, loaders shifting craft whose escape velocity matched his own desire to always leave.

He looked down at the navigation screen. The trajectory showed the Halcyon to be seven weeks out from Zarnecki station on Europa. Fourteen weeks seemed to have gone by in an instant since departing Mars. He tried to focus, where had that time gone? The more he thought about it the fuzzier it became, as if he was trying to string together a narrative from pieces of mirror; each reflecting a different moment in time.

He remembered pre-launch, the launch and meeting the passenger. No passengers…there were two, definitely two. And his co-pilot. A minor fault with the gravity engine that threatened to derail the trip. Marsport had remedied that quickly because of the passenger. The passenger was important.