[Writing] The Porthole

[Geeny]

The engine stopped burning with a few struggled sputters. The ship groaned, thankful to be released from the force of thrust. Aside from the life support, the only sound in the little room was the nervous breathing of Beck, the first Kerbal to orbit the Mun. He was afraid to look at his instrumentation. A slight mistake had taken him on an unplanned course, and he was not sure if he had enough fuel to push his perigee into the atmosphere. A few rolls of ductape and notebooks filled with frantic calculations and scribbles kept him company as they bounced between the walls. His eyes were fixed on one of the lights above the porthole, reminiscing to his childhood, pushed by fear to delay the inevitable as far as possible.

Of course, he knew he was being silly. It would be best to find his fate out now, and prepare accordingly, but he had time. Approximately six hours, in fact. Assuming the best happens. He blinked, and felt the pain of staring into a bright light. He shifted his view below, and stared at the currently black porthole. His vision slowly returned, and he looked into the sea of stars years away. It dawned on him that he could spend the rest of his life staring at them, or at Kerbin through this little window outside. It felt strange, being so close to a certain end, knowing the irrelavent little chemical reaction that he was could end.

Beck found it curious, how his little pod didn\'t seem to be in a crisis at all. It was a bright as on launch day, and the noise of the life support comforted him in an odd way. There were no alarms, no red lights. The ship didn\'t realize that the safety of the living, organic being it was meant to harbor depended on a few green numbers on a little screen. It didn\'t see that he would slowly starve to death, and be driven mad by the instincts designed to keep him alive.

His eyes started to wander. First over the controls, then the engine heat gauge, the empty fuel gauge, and finally onto the black screen displaying the green numbers which commanded his fate.

Pe: 92,745 m

Beck screamed.

SpaceJunk Corps. Entry: # 15693

Debris Classification: Outdated Payload

Observations: Approximately 200 year old capsule, from before the war and historical purge. Contains decomposed Kerbonaut: nothing more than a skeletal blob, positioned with his hands gripping the sides of a porthole, and face glued to the glass.

Fate: Harvested for water, all paper scanned, computer memory too corrupted for a read. Sent on a trajectory for the National Kerbal Museum of Space Sciences. (Or what is left of KSC, as it was known in this poor fellow\'s day). Payment depends on deployment of parachute, which is in good order.

Comments? Be brutal, please.

[LaydeeDem]

Very dark and eerie. I like it!

[Monkthespy]

._.

[Geeny]

So... any negative comments???

[Vostok]

It\'s quite short. I admire your ease of weaving a brilliant story in so few words.

Keep up the good writing!

[MajorThomas]

I like this story a lot.

I once stranded Jeb this way, but mounted a rescue mission. Perhaps in your story that would have been expected, if it were not for the war and historical purge intervening?

[Tw1]

It's good!

The contrast between the fully written out first part, and the unemotional report like last but.

Criticisms:

Perigee refers to Earth. Perikerb is a better term.

It's a little unclear that he's performing a return burn until after stopping to work it out. See if you can make that clear somehow, without ruining the suspenseful feel.