The High Five

The Heart of a Captain

When Tayen banded Jake, he answered almost instantly. He was tilted up in bed holding his phlex like a book. His long, sandy hair was going ten directions in the micro-gravity. He had a nervous habit of running a hand through it, sculpting it into spikes. Judging by the number of spikes, he had been doing a lot of thinking.

Tayen was uncertain how to start. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, for not having a pulse," Jake said.

It was a running joke. When Tayen had tried to take Jake's pulse during medic training, she thought the monitor was broken and resorted to checking both his wrists and then his throat. Still no pulse. He played along, acting concerned, until he finally broke into laughter and revealed that he had an artificial no-pump heart.

Jake's artificial heart wasn't even the most unique thing about him. Conceived and brought to term on a space station, his birth had been big news in its time. He was hailed as "The First True Spaceman." It was a mixed blessing. Although normal-looking on the outside, he suffered from a constellation of internal issues from weak bones, anemia, an underdeveloped immune system, enlarged spleen, feeble kidneys, asthma, and a malformed heart. Since he was too fragile to transport to Earth, surgeons and specialists were sent to space, honing their skills in micro-gravity. It was good practice for the surge of space tourism and space maladies that would soon follow.

Jake's life was a series of firsts. At age nine, he became the first person to undergo a heart replacement in space: a no-pump model that would adapt as he grew. He was the first person to spend ten then twenty consecutive years in orbit, and the first space-born to complete high school followed by college and a PhD. The first citizen of the first space nation which he founded. Heliocentaur. Population: 1. It had its own constitution, which he wrote, of course.

So when Jake decided he wanted to be the first extraterrestrial to pilot a spaceship, it was as good as settled. But it wasn't enough to break just one record. The mission had to be epic. After considering various crew proposals, he finally hit on an underprivileged group that had yet to break the sky barrier: people with disabilities.

With the focus on the crew, Jake was able to hide the full extent of his own problems. During the first ten months of Earthside training, he took part remotely as a personatron: a holo-head on a robot body. With someone else it might have come off as creepy, but with his spiky hair, wide-angle gaze, and intense positivity, Jake was not just likeable but magnetic. It was like having a team coach, personal therapist, and eccentric friend all rolled into one. Aside from Chig, her best friend in high school, Tayen had never felt so comfortable with someone—even if he was a personatron. If his expression froze occasionally, they assumed it was a glitch in the technology. When he went offline for long stretches, they figured he had more important things to attend to. As the lone Heliocentauran, he must be very busy.

It was only when they arrived at Paranor Station for the final six weeks of training that they grasped the severity of his physical condition. Even in the station's micro-gravity, going the length of a corridor left him pale and gasping for air. Sometimes in mid-conversation, his eyes would go out of focus and he would grit his teeth for a moment before composing himself. The personatron interface must have been programmed to edit out moments like these. His condition continued to worsen until, on the second day into drift aboard the ship, he had to be evacuated. Diagnosis: constriction in the major veins leading to his heart. Over time, the constant, unidirectional blood flow had caused the valves to harden.

Jake listened attentively, sculpting out new hair spikes, as Tayen recounted the latest events aboard the ship. He burst out laughing when she reached the part about Vivian's cold shower. Vivian had been rinsing off lather when Jess abruptly cut off the hot water. The unheated water was so cold it hit Vivian like an electric shock. She pulled the emergency cord out of reflex, shrieking at the top of her lungs.