The Rings of Saturn

© G.A. Martin

People, who barely escape death, sometimes say that your life flashes before your eyes during a single second, condensing many years and events and memories into a moment. However, when the death is spread out longer, the experience can be quite different. When a person knows that they are going to die, when a soul has given up all hope, when a doomed individual is given ample time to contemplate and think about their own demise, the experience of death is no longer seen in points of visual pictures, but it is felt in emotions, in peaks of joy and sadness, and in waves of ecstasy and depression. The dying person may spend an entire minute thinking about transforming into nothingness, and think that their life was wasted and meaningless. Another minute, however, the fading individual may believe that they will live forever, or they may accept death as a beautiful and wonderful experience, remembering all the good times of their life, and thanking God for every second. Major Alton Thomas, as he drifted in space, knew the feelings well.

“Major,” said the voice over the communication link. “I'm afraid I have some very bad news, sir.”

“Please call me Alton . I want to hear my name.”

“Yes, Alton . You wanted me to give it to you straight. The manual calls for me to lie to you,” the voice stuttered.

“I know the manual well. I wrote it. I'm ordering you to tell me the truth.”

“Sir. Alton . The batteries in the retrieval capsule are dead, and we don't have time to charge them.”

Major Thomas stopped listening to the man on the communicator. He looked at the rings of Saturn and thought how beautiful they looked. He had seen them many times in videos and pictures, but never with his naked eyes. As a child, the second largest planet had been his favorite, and he had a poster of Saturn in his room. Even as a teenager, when other boys had posters of muscle cars and bikini girls, he had kept the picture. There was just something about the rings that always fascinated him. Saturn was the reason he became an astronaut.

“Sir, I mean Alton . It's just all those darn budget cuts. When you need a piece of equipment to do something, it just isn't there,” the man on the intercom said in frustration.

“Isn't it beautiful?” said the Major.

“Beautiful, sir?”

“The rings. I didn't notice how beautiful they were, when we first arrived. We were just all so busy.”

“Alton . We are doing everything we can. We are working on a solution to this. We're not going to let you down, sir.”

“Is that the manual speaking?” said the Major.

It had happened so fast. The line snapped and Major Thomas had tumbled away. He had tumbled so far and fast that he almost thought he could reach one of the rings. The rings were so shiny and bright, and they reminded him of a rainbow. As a boy, he had tried to touch a rainbow. He ran toward its end as fast as he could, but it began to disappear before him, and the faster he ran, the more it faded. When he reached where he thought it started, it was no longer there, disappearing just like a colorful chalk picture on a playground blacktop, a picture slowly washed away by a gentle rain. He made several attempts to touch a rainbow, but always failed, always seeming to come so close. One day, when he was eight, he found out in school that they were nothing but optical illusions, and he gave up on touching them. But even though he gave up on rainbows, he never gave up on Saturn; he never gave up on touching its rings.

“Alton , you said not to lie to you, so I'm not. We spoke to Mission Control, and they have some of the smartest people in the world working on this.”

“You're a terrible liar,” said the Major. “You're forgetting. I'm one of the smartest people in the world.”

“Sorry, sir,” said the voice on the radio. “They ordered me to say it.” There was a long pause, and the voice added, “ Alton , they said it will be quick. They promised it would be. They said you won't suffer.”

Alton looked back at the ship as it turned into nothing more than a dot and then disappeared completely. He remembered seeing the earth disappear six months earlier, and thought how much it had been both the same and different. As the earth had disappeared, Alton had felt nothing but excitement, feeling the first stage of a great adventure. However, as the ship had disappeared, he had felt nothing but depression, nothing but hopelessness. In both cases, it felt as if he were leaving his home.

"Tell my wife and daughter that I love them," said Alton into the communicator. He said it again and then again, but he heard nothing. He was no longer in any contact with the ship. He looked back at Saturn and said," it looks like it's just me and you."

Alton thought about how his wife and daughter would feel, when told of his death; he thought about how sad they would be. Neither had wanted him to go on the trip, a trip that would be dangerous and take him away for almost a year. The mission would now take him away forever, and the thought made him want to cry. His daughter had started the first grade the week before the launch; he promised her he would return before she started the second. He had also given his daughter a telescope, so she could gaze at Saturn, and see the rings. "If you look really hard, you can see me," he had told her. Saturn was her favorite too.

Alton wanted the emotional pain to stop, and he contemplated opening his helmet, which would have instantly killed him, but he was not the kind of man to take the easy way. As his remaining time elapsed both quickly and slowly, he tried not to think too much, but it was an impossibility, and the feelings of loss continued. He felt as if it were everyone he loved dying and not him; he felt as if the world had exploded and only he remained. As he floated helplessly in the loneliness of space, Alton felt as if he had traded everyone who he loved for the stupid mission; he felt like he had traded the earth for Saturn.

"Damn you, Saturn. Damn you," he screamed." "I wish I never knew you."

The oxygen began to run low in Alton 's suit, and his head began to feel dizzy. He calculated that he had about three minutes to live, maybe four if he did not panic and if he breathed slowly. Time began to slow and every second became precious, as precious as the last few days of a child's summer vacation. Alton pictured his wife and daughter looking through the telescope, so he turned his body toward where the earth should be and he waved his hand to say goodbye.

"I will always be here," said Alton . "When you miss me, just look toward Saturn, and I will always be here. Just look for the rings."

His body slowly turned toward Saturn, and as his head began to feel faint, he felt as if he were drifting toward the rings. Unlike the rainbows that he knew as a child, as he grew near, the rings were becoming more real. They became even more striking, even more beautiful, with a new color appearing. Alton had never seen the color before in his life; he didn't even know the color was possible, and the color made him feel anything was possible. With a renewed euphoria of optimism, Alton willed his body forward, and he stretched out his arm, stretching it out more than he ever had, and even with his hand inside a glove, he could feel the rings.

"I can touch it. I can feel it. I can feel its beauty," said Alton as he held the rings in his hand. "I knew I could touch it. I knew it was real," he said as the oxygen ran even lower. His body continued to drift toward Saturn, and he no longer felt alone, no longer felt hopeless. As he held the rings tight and felt their power, he felt more alive than ever, and as the energy within the suit ran low, Alton closed his eyes, and he began to fall asleep without any pain, without any despair, thinking about his wonderful life and precious family, as his mind faded blank and his body froze solid.

It would be another twenty-five years before another manned mission would reach Saturn, arriving and entering the gigantic planet on the anniversary of Major Alton Thomas' death. The six crewmembers were given the task of studying the magnificent rings, and for five members of the crew, it was a chance to advance their careers, to help satisfy their need for adventure and to feed their sense of wonder, but for one crewmember, the mission meant much more; for Captain Anna Thomas, it meant everything.

"I can't believe we're so close," said Captain Thomas. "Ever since I was a child, I have been looking through my telescope at it," she said while looking at the rings, as a scanner dissected them with beams of light.

"The computer confirms it," said the mission commander. "It's your father. It's his body floating on the outer edge of the rings."

"Whenever I missed him, sir, I just looked through my telescope, and I would pretend that I could see him. I always knew where he was."

"Captain, we can retrieve his body. We can return his body to earth."

"No, I think we should leave him where he is. I believe it's what he would want."

"But, Anna. We can return your father home."

"Saturn's his home," said Anna. "It's where he belongs."

As technology continued to advance on earth, curious people were able to look through telescopes that could see all the way to distance stars and systems, showing the beauty and wonder of the universe, allowing people to see such magnificent and majestic scenes as red moving clouds, and blue and purple oceans, and planets and object that could inspire poets beyond words and lovers of beauty beyond imagination. The telescopes were able to show human eyes beyond any point of possible travel, to points and places of impossibility, to places only possible in the mind. Anna, however, never looked through the new telescopes; she already had the one her father had given her. People would always ask her the same question, when they saw her antiquated tool. Why don't you buy a new one? The new ones can see so far; they would say.

"My telescope sees far enough," Anna would always answer. "My telescope can see the rings of Saturn."