Dirty Snowballs

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Leon Gratz was nearly finished with his second EVA day-shift when it began to snow.

He was working on the port instrument pod forward, and had just inserted a replacement power pack when the first flakes whirled in front of his faceplate and stuck there.

He wiped the plate with a thickly-gloved hand, but it didn’t help much.

Snow swirled about him in a sudden flurry, blowing in from his right, the direction of the infant star spewing out its first plasma wind into the dense molecular cloud the Orion had been probing.

Leon looked towards the star, his vision blurred, and saw something bright and huge hurtling towards him. “Zeke, I got a problem out here,” he gurgled into his throat mike.

“We see it, Leon. Better get back in here quick!” Behind Zeke’s voice was the shrill shout of the emergency claxon.

“On my way,” Leon replied.

He pulled on his tether to the midship access hatch, and began handover-handing his way back, pausing to claw snow from his faceplate, amazed at the sight of it flowing on his glove like liquid, then freezing into ice and sticking his fingers together. The buildup on the hull was moving too, flowing like some plastic tiling around pods and extensors towards the dark side of the ship. The flurry intensified, and he was blind again, pulling hard on the tether and panting for breath. Hyperventilating? He willed calm, but the suffocating feeling wouldn’t go away, and his arms felt numb. “I’m not getting air!” he yelled.

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