Subject: *Shall Not Perish* The Color of Culture 1
The Society of Space Breathers
"Really, the odds were against it. How often would you expect to
come out of jump right in the path of a rogue missile?
Fortunately, the Navy ship that had fired it (it was a test
firing) had disarmed the warhead - it just punctured the
Engineering chamber, and knocked out all power to all systems.
Fortunately, there was a battery-powered radio with a good chunk
of range; we were able to get a squawk out on it, and the Navy
ship came into the area at max.
"That's when we found out that (a) somehow all the spacesuit
locker doors were jammed shut, and (b) there was no airlock that
the Navy ship could successfully attach a "hose" to. The one
functional airlock (because it could be manually operated -
except the air pumps) could handle _one_ spacesuit at a time.
Period. We weren't getting out of this one so easy.
"Fortunately, the Navy ship was close by, and we had "Slipstick"
Smith, who could calculate in his head like you wouldn't believe.
What? Oh, why was he called "Slipstick"? Well, he had a habit
of fiddling with some old toy of some sort that he had, when he
calculated stuff for us in his head - said he could do math on
it, but that's not possible; it was just a wooden board with a
couple of sliding pieces on it. I looked at it once; it had a
bunch of numbers on it, but they were just painted on. No
buttons, no readout, no nothing. Tell me how you do math on
that, bright boy.
"Anyway, Slipstick figures out that (a) a man can hold his breath
long enough to jump from our ship to theirs, and (b) we won't
lose enough air total to hurt by passing through the airlock
without pumping it down first. Especially since we're not gonna
stay on the ship longer than we have to, anyway.
"That's when Doc chimes in. She says that we'll explode if we
try to hold in a breath while making the jump, and Slipstick is
just plain looney. Slipstick turns to her and asks how long a
person can survive after exhaling before he _has_ to inhale
again. Turns out that we had plenty of time to do it that way,
too.
"Well, you can guess the rest. As a precaution, Doc told us each
to hyperventilate before blowing the air in the lock, and don't
worry about trying not to breathe - it won't matter once the air
is gone. But jump as fast and straight as you can... We all
made it; didn't lose a soul. The Navy was surprised that we'd
risk it, but when we told 'em that the air was leaking out, and
we had to do something, they allowed as how maybe it would work.
But they'd put a guy on a tether out there just in case. Didn't
need him, but..."
That is how the Society of Space Breathers got its start. It
was not any kind of formal organization initially, just a group
of people with a shared experience that was well out of the
ordinary. The organization was formalized at a dinner hosted by
(then) Duke (of Regina) Norris Aella Aledon, later the Archduke
of the Domain of Deneb, and the First Regent. Anecdotal evidence
says that it was a "roast" of some high Naval officers, and a
"play" was put on by a few of the Duke's retainers, spoofing on
how the Navy likes to give out awards, and one of the awards was
for "Heroic Sacrifice of Respiratory Rations". (Un?)Fortunately,
the Duke knew about the rescue, and liked the idea. Not long
afterward, he sent the first "Space Breather" ribbons to the
survivors of the disaster, and empowered any ship's commanding
officer, in any service or none, to give the "award" for any
rescue where the qualifications were met.
The qualifications established are:
1) The recipients have made an unaided transfer from one ship to
another, 2) as the recipient of emergency assistance to a
disabled vessel, 3) without benefit of any protective clothing,
breathing apparatus, portable airlock, rescue ball, life pod, et
cetera, 4) outside the limits of atmosphere.
The award itself consists of a strip of ribbon (really
holorecord tape), in "space black", with the name of the rescued
ship and the date of rescue imprinted on it in gold or silver.
It is worn hanging from a lapel pin or military ribbon pin, whose
design is at the wearer's discretion. Most wearers pick one of a
limited set of pins which have developed into symbols of
breathing space. Military and paramilitary recipients generally
wear the ribbon descending from a standard ribbon pin with no
ribbon depiction. Droyne recipients favor a pin with a replica
of the "Void" coyn. Aslan wear an intricate monogrammatic
representation of the Trokh inscriptions for "Breath" and "Space"
intertwined (note that it is in the "male" script, even when the
recipient is female). Vargr and Non-(para)military recipients
wear a variety of pins, but the most common motifs seem to be
either a pin with no "face" attached at all, or a four-pointed
star, although on worlds with Droyne population, the Void coyn
design is also popular.
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Jeff Zeitlin [email removed]
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~ QMPro 1.52 ~ I used to have a handle on life, then it broke.