Location: Low Saturn Orbit, Cassini Relay Perimeter
Coordinates: 00°42′ N, 112°21′ E (approx.)
Timestamp: 04:33:17 UTC | Relative Delay: 83 min
Dear Bea,
They say this ship’s gravity is the same as Earth’s, but it often feels heavier—like it pulls even thought into slow orbits. My words, too, have grown clunky these days; my throat feels raw with disuse, and the air up here is too sharp to soothe. All this to say: I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last transmission.
Not that it’s an excuse, but I simply felt there wasn’t anything to tell you. Being the lone caretaker of a station like this requires a routine, and I had grown far too accustomed to mine: log atmospheric readings, recalibrate the radiation sensors, cross-check thermal output against last week’s data, play Tears for Fears through speakers that rattle like paper.
That monotony held for years. But recently, something disrupted my fragile homeostasis.
Ninety-six days ago, I received a transmission from Central: a new assignment, the first one in several years. And thus, over the past few months, I’ve been observing two of Saturn’s smaller moons, Janus and Epimetheus. Their orbital paths differ by only about fifty kilometers—close enough that by all ordinary mechanics they should collide. Instead, the balance of their mutual gravitational attraction prevents impact. Roughly every four years, as the inner moon gradually overtakes the outer, the two bodies exchange angular momentum; this careful dance will occur tomorrow morning.
Though I’m the one assigned to study them, lately it feels as if they’re the ones studying me. At the risk of sounding loneliness-crazed, the longer I stare out that observation window, the more clearly I hear them—Janus with an ardent whisper, Epimetheus with a lilting rasp. These days, I’ve traded tinny speakers and white noise for these nightly chats and observations.
It began as the usual static, the low murmur of relay hum, but then a rhythm found its way inside. The instruments showed nothing unusual, yet I could swear I heard a voice beneath the distortion.
“We circle the same planet,” he said, “but never see it quite the same way.”
And then, faint and lighter, Epimetheus replied:
“It’s not the planet we circle. I think we are simply chasing each other’s shadows.”
I tried to tell myself it was interference—solar wind, background radiation, the mind sculpting patterns from disorder. But the line between data and confession grows thinner by the day.
It’s strange that I now know these moons’ craters and voices better than I once knew the freckles that pepper your hands. The light that touches them is the same light that once touched us, but up here it feels thinner, stripped of its color. Does the warm June sun still paint brown spots over your chest and ankles?
Recently, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the morning of the launch—the air heavy with coastal fog, your left hand warm on the hood of the car, and your right tangled in my newly chopped hair. The engines were already revving somewhere beyond the horizon; they sent a minuscule quake through the ground that quickened my pulse and tightened my chest.
You looked at me earnestly and said, “Promise me you’ll keep looking back.”
Tomorrow, when Janus and Epimetheus exchange orbits again, I will do my duty of observation. I imagine the instruments will record only a minor adjustment in velocity, a fractional shift in trajectory—nothing more. Yet the more I speak to them, the more I realize I’ve mistaken endurance for peace.
Bea, I’m coming home.
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