Dust.
People tend to think about the big things, when it comes to the perils of space travel. Meteors. Solar flares. Stresses on the air tanks. Sparks in unwanted places.
Few ever ponder that a crew might encounter trouble with their own epithelial cloud.
Five year missions were the maximum, after the trouble had been discovered, of course. People who got dandruff either had to shave (carefully!), vacuum, or pass on the idea of going into space in the first place.
Filters could only do so much, and by the end of that five-year cruise, the entire crew were wearing filter masks to escape the choking miasma.
Kale was on Dust Duty, pretty much permanently. The reward for a job well done was not promotion, in her case. Her reward for a job well done was to keep doing it unto perpetuity.
Or so she thought.
This scavenger crew came back with smiles, a distinct absence of coughs, and a definitive lack of filters stuck to their faces.
No rheumy eyes. No puffy faces. Even Dan Dander had let his hair grow.
“What the shit?” Kale complained. “Did you guys just sit around and fart for five years?”
“Nope,” smiled the captain. “We found us some bau-bubbles.”
“Baubles?”
“No, bau-bubbles.”
“Bubbles?”
“I’ll say it slowly. Bau-bubbles. Little, living bubble-bauble-squid lookin’ things. Some old archive on board called ‘em Fhitts. Onomatopoea,” he shrugged. “I like bau-bubbles better. It’s classier.”
“It won’t catch on,” Kale took a shot at his enthusiasm. “The lizards go with first identification and don’t listen to us.” She stared at one as it drifted through the air on jets of its own making.
It was iridescent, like a soap bubble, but without the swirling caused by the motion of liquid. Making it look almost like a Christmas bauble had escaped its mother tree.
Then Kale saw the tentacles.
“They EAT dust!” Dan Dander whooped. “Aren’t they just beautiful?”
On the upside, once these were in every ship, they didn’t need to worry about dust any more. And she could do anything else other than Dust Duty.
Things were starting to look up.
*
They bred like freaking cockroaches. They sometimes ate the freaking cockroaches, too, which was a minor plus point, but they were everywhere.
Pro: There was no such thing as Dust Duty andy more. Con: There was now Fhitt Scraping Detail.
Little bastards got into the filters and died there.
It was almost a relief, two years later, when a different scavenger crew came in with the Fhitt-eating spiders.
Almost.
Kale had a hard time making up her mind which was worse: hairy, ten-legged spiders in the face, Fhitt Scraping Detail, or Dust Duty.
There had to be a better way.
[Muse food remaining: 5 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
