"I had to make a wee sacrifice to the great nothing."
When an astronaut is compromised during a routine mission, she must make a life-or-limb decision to survive. Based on the short story of the same name by Claudine Griggs.
Elly Condron voices Alex.
Tropes:
- The Alleged Car: Apparently all of Alex's equipment is this, because it's constantly malfunctioning, from the airlock to her suit.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: Alex is stuck drifting in space with no propulsion and damaged oxygen tanks which will run out before help can arrive.
- Artistic License – Physics: While Newton's Third Law does allow for Alex's tactic of throwing objects to propel herself in the opposite direction, it breaks down in two ways. First, overhand throws would have sent her into a spin, since the motion wasn't aligned with her center of mass. Second, the mass of her sleeve (and arm) are tiny compared to her body/suit, so short of a prodigiously hard throw she wouldn't be accelerated appreciably.
- Bittersweet Ending: Alex survives the episode at the cost of her hand.
- Black Comedy: The company's penny-pinching nature manages to add a sort of bleak humor to the situation, even as it actively contributes to the danger Alex is in (starting with sending her out alone rather than sending someone along who could help if she had a problem). From the hatch of her ship getting stuck when she tries to open it to her watch helpfully reminding her that she is currently using unauthorized overtime while she tries to save herself while adrift in space. You half-expect that she's going to get billed for the damaged suit too.
- Dramatic Space Drifting: The astronaut adrift in space version.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Alex realizes that she could invoke an Improvised Microgravity Maneuvering.
- Exact Time to Failure: Since Alex's air supply is going out at a steady rate, she knows to the second when it will run out and she will suffocate. Her suit even keeps displaying various warnings, eventually showing a clock during the last two minutes on her HUD.
- Failsafe Failure: Conveniently, the damage also impacts the suit's backup mobility feature.
- Heads-Up Display: Showing Alex that she only has 14 minutes of oxygen left.
- Improvised Microgravity Maneuvering: Involving a severed limb!
- Life-or-Limb Decision: Alex exposes her own arm to vacuum so she'll be able to remove her lower sleeve and throw it to create momentum. When that doesn't quite work out, she rips off her frozen arm to do it again.
- Minimalist Cast: Only two characters, one of which is The Voice.
- No Antagonist: Alex drifting in space is simply caused by a stray nail smashing into her oxygen tank and breaking her grip on the satellite.
- No OSHA Compliance: Though it's implied that the company she was working for was cheap and is implied to not have given her enough equipment, Alex going on a space walk without a tether practically breaks the first rule of space walking.
- Percussive Maintenance: The No OSHA Compliance of her spacesuit is demonstrated when Alex has to thump things to get them working.
- Sickening "Crunch!": When Alex has to snap the bones in her frozen arm so she can tear it off.
- Sound In Space: Averted when Alex gives an unheard scream inside her spacesuit. We do hear some sounds though, albeit muffled.
- Space Is Cold: After exposing her arm to vacuum, it freezes solid enough to snap off in less than a minute. note
- Shout-Out:
- The name of the satellite Alex is working on? LV-426. She also works for an unnamed Company indifferent to the safety of its workers and demonstrates that in space no-one can hear you scream. And the way the nail first enters the scene, it's framed and colored such that you could easily mistake it for a Xenomorph tail.
- There's also a note on a switch warning her not to use it as per Apollo 13.
- Time Skip: After Alex starts drifting away, the action skips to the final three minutes of her air supply, omitting the remaining 7 minutes.
- Used Future: The cheapskate nature of the company implies this is where things are heading at high speed and while the equipment isn't completely worn out yet, it's made explicitly clear it's not state-of-the-art either and has its issues.
- Wrench Wench: Alex is the space version of the trope, earning for her living as an orbital maintenance technician.
