The 72-Hour Man (Orbital Edition)
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The 72-Hour Man (Orbital Edition)
The silence was the first thing Tom noticed. Not a peaceful silence, but the humming, recycled-air kind. The quiet of a space station when you realise—for the next seventy-two hours—it’s entirely yours.
“They’ve gone,” he announced to the command module. “Shuttle to Europa Outpost. Gone to your mother’s.”
He addressed this last part to Dave, the station cat, who was licking his own back with the vigour of a solar panel scrubbing drone.
The transmission from his wife, Cheryl, was a masterpiece of orbital instruction:
Right. We’re off. Don’t forget: 1. Refill the oxygen scrubber tank. The one with the GREEN nozzle. Not the blue one. The blue one’s for the algae vat and you know what happened last time. 2. Do NOT “have a look” at the leaking coolant pipe. Just put the containment tray under it like a normal person. 3. Dave’s new protein paste is the one marked “sensitive.” Not “senior.” He’s not a pensioner, he’s intolerant. 4. Be good. Love you. Back Sunday orbital evening.
Tom puffed out his cheeks. Seventy-two hours. A king’s ransom of free time in orbit. He eyed the remote control for the holoscreen. It gleamed like Excalibur. He could watch anything. A documentary about asteroid mining. A film with swearing in it. Out loud. Without the kids asking what a “phase cannon” was.
His reign began with a celebratory synth-brew. He filled the kettle, his movements expansive, lordly. He reached for the “Best Dad in the Quadrant” mug, then paused. A wicked grin spread across his face. He reached past it and took Cheryl’s favourite, the one with a cactus that said Nope.
This was living.
Day One: The Golden Hours
The first day was a blur of blissful orbital underachievement. He ate freeze-dried fish fingers for lunch, straight from the packet, using another fish finger as a spatula. He left a single, defiant, crumb-covered ration tray on the control console. He watched three episodes of Galaxy’s Strongest Cargo Haulers back-to-back.
Dave gave him a look of profound disdain and floated upstairs to the sleep pod.
By evening, Tom had achieved zero-gravity nirvana. He’d found a hidden stash of Jaffa Cakes behind Cheryl’s “nutrient wafers” and eaten them while watching a documentary about the Victorian sewer system of New New London. Life was good.
Day Two: The Descent
Saturday morning brought a dangerous sense of invincibility. Tom had ascended to a higher plane of solitude. He started talking to the holoscreen.
“Oh, come on, Clive, you’re never gonna deadlift that crate of custard creams in lunar gravity, you daft sod,” he muttered, spraying Rich Tea crumbs that drifted lazily through the cabin like tiny satellites.
Around noon, he remembered the oxygen scrubber. He filled the tank with the green nozzle (not the blue one, he wasn’t a monster). The system beeped politely. All good.
Then he eyed the coolant pipe. Drip… drip… drip. It was mocking him.
“I’m just having a look,” he told the empty airlock. “Not fixing. Looking. A man can look.”
An hour later, the engineering bay looked like a maintenance bot had exploded. Tom was upside down, wedged under the pipework, surrounded by spanners and zero-g washers drifting like deadly Frisbees. He’d found the issue—a perished seal—and replaced it. The only problem was, he now had three separate hoses and no idea which way the connectors twisted.
Coolant was no longer dripping. It was now spraying in a slow, accusatory arc across the room.
“Right,” he said, emerging with hair plastered to his forehead. “Tactical retreat.”
He found the biggest containment tray he could—the one Cheryl used for hydroponic potato harvests—and slid it under the leak. Drip-SPRITZ. Drip-SPRITZ. It was worse.
Day Three: The Reckoning
Sunday. The day of reckoning. A low-level panic began to set in. He’d just ejected the last of the contraband snack wrappers into the waste chute when he remembered Dave.
The cat’s “sensitive” protein paste. He’d been feeding him the “senior” variety for two days.
He rushed to the galley. Dave was perched smugly on a console, looking… plump.
“You alright, mate?” Tom asked nervously. “Stomach okay?”
Dave responded by projecting a perfect arc of vomit across the docking bay hatch with the efficiency of an airlock purge.
The station was a bombsite. The engineering bay was flooded with coolant, the cat was a biohazard, and he was fairly sure he’d used the good antimatter cloth to mop up the mess. The chronometer ticked towards 1700 hours.
What followed was the most frantic ninety minutes of Tom’s life. He scrubbed. He vented. He sprayed enough “Meadow Fresh” atmosphere purifier to fumigate a moonbase. He wrestled the pipes back into a semblance of order, using so much sealant tape it looked like a mummy’s wrist. The coolant leak was now more of a sulky dribble, but the tray caught it. He’d call that a draw.
He was slumped in the command chair, trying to look like he’d been calmly reading the orbital newsfeed all weekend, when he heard the docking clamps engage.
“We’re back!” Cheryl called, climbing through the hatch. “Oh, don’t get me started on traffic around the asteroid belt—what’s that smell?”
She floated in, followed by the two kids, who immediately began complaining about Gran’s recycled cabbage. Cheryl’s eyes scanned the room like a customs drone. They missed nothing. They landed on the slightly damp floor panels, the cat (who was now licking the bulkhead with suspicious enthusiasm), and the “Nope” mug floating by Tom’s side.
She drifted to the coolant pipe. Tom held his breath. She peered at the seal, then at the potato harvest tray beneath it. She didn’t say a word. She floated over to the hydroponics bay and checked her fuchsia.
“You topped it up,” she said, surprised.
“Two glugs,” Tom croaked. “From the green one.”
Cheryl turned and looked at him. At his desperate, pleading eyes, his damp flight suit, the proud, pathetic set of his jaw. A slow smile spread across her face.
“Right,” she said, reaching for the kettle. “Cuppa. And you can tell me all about your very quiet, very boring weekend.”
She paused, glancing toward the galley.
“And then you can explain why there are fish finger crumbs in the butter dish. And why Dave looks like he’s eaten Christmas dinner every day for a week.”
Tom sank back into the chair. The king was dead. Long live the king.
It was good to be home—200 miles above Earth.
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