– The Abyss…

He collapsed onto his knees, raising a cloud of fine, lingering dust.

– …hears…

The momentum of movement and the weakened gravity pushed him forward, but he managed to keep himself from falling. Heavy breathing inside the fogged helmet became completely ragged.

– The Abyss… sees…

The man moved his whitened eyes around himself and tried to blink away the growing frost from his eyelashes. The whistle of air escaping through the cracks in the glass became even stronger.

“There was no other way this could have ended… I knew what I was getting into.”

The cosmonaut smirked and slowly lowered his stiff arms into the noticeably shrunken dark gloves. By touch, he found the valves of the once snow-white spacesuit — two lower red ones and two upper ones, one blue with metal — and turned them shut one by one. The glass cracked harder, but the hiss of the leak weakened.

– Yes, good…

“Just a little more, like in the instructions..” He smiled and squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

The cosmonaut felt for the oxygen supply hoses and pulled them out with force. The four ends slipped out of his hands, thrashed like snakes, and streams of rapidly freezing gas burst from them.

But from the rapidly slowing movement, the man realized that the oxygen tank was almost empty anyway.

“So everything is right…”

One last step remained…

The man with an ice-covered beard and darkened abrasions on his face inhaled the remaining air and held his breath. Fingers in dark gloves slowly pulled back the edge of the woven covering and found the helmet clasps. The cosmonaut stopped for a moment; on his frozen and almost completely numb face, a shadow of resignation appeared.

– We are all parts of one whole… - he whispered silently into the void and exhaled the last remnants of frozen air from his partially punctured lungs.

He unfastened the clasps with weakening hands…

“I am coming to you, my dear.”

…and sharply lifted the helmet.