Outside
stellerspace trellis
The smooth greased-metal sound of sealbolts whirring into place as the inner airlock door clenched itself into a solid seal between the cabin and what was about to be hard vacuum, the metal thud barely audible in his helmet assuring the deer that depressurization was a guarantee. Trellis grabbed the cuff around his suit glove and wiggled it just to be sure it was snug and locked into place.
[Inner seal confirmed. Pressure equalization in progress.]
"Nervous" was maybe close to the right word. After all, hard vacuum is pretty much the end of it, really. You can tell yourself this is routine, I've done this a hundred times all you want, but nothing is stopping metal fatigue or a loose suit seal from resetting your expectations.
The heads-up display in his suit helmet lit up, orange and yellow and subtle, meters showing available power, available respimix, vital signs, a compass, a clock sparking to life. "Everything a growing spacer needs to feel secure," his trainer had told him.
He took a deep breath. A gauge on the wall counted down the time to cycle. The breath was reflexive – the suit was perfectly capable of generating the necessary breathable atmosphere to ensure he was comfortable – but it never stopped Trellis from doing it every single time.
In that moment, as the timer ticked down, the deer reached for the maglock toggle on the suit's thigh. The button gave without a second thought, and the suit's HUD confirmed the disengagement with a pop-up notification. Trellis applied the gentlest little push angling off the deck plate and began to rise, his gloved hands brushing against the top of the airlock.
He was floating.
[Magboot disengage not recommended]
He keyed the ACK button on his wristpad. He knew. Out there if you lost your maglock you lost your life, but here in the airlock you were plenty safe. Usually. It wouldn't do any harm to float a little, he thought.
[Pressure equalized. Outer door seal disengaged.]
The timer exhausted itself, the yellow triangle light winking out, turning to a green circle. The outer airlock door clunked apart, the metallic whirring of the sealbolts unbinding themselves and retracting as the door slid open to reveal the vacuum of space.
Thumbing the toggle again to remagnetize himself, Trellis stepped out onto the catwalk and began making his way to the tidally locked front of the seed vault station.
"I love the color," he would say to the other caretakers when they'd ask what his spacewalks were for. They didn't know he'd been in contact with the Lyricians at Phobos Lab to help rebuild some of the agridomes there, smuggling seed packets in their returned supply canisters. They didn't know it was to stare in pride and longing at the emerald splotches on the Martian surface like Orion's Glade or Holyoke Weld.
He gripped the railing and stared at the red planet, watching the stars whirl and tuck themselves behind the freshly-formed (in geoengineering terms, of course) atmosphere. The station would be passing Syromyatnikov Plateau soon, the bringer of war's largest boreal reserve, and their fruit forests were coming into season.
Trellis tightened his grip on the railing and sighed, reveling in its verdant reaches.