The Half Pair by A. Bertram Chandler (New Worlds, November 1957) sees the male member of a husband and wife prospecting team, halfway between Mars and the Asteroid Belt, complain about a missing cufflink that has been flushed out the garbage disposal into space. When his wife tells him she’ll get him another pair when they land, he is not impressed:
‘We agreed’, he said stiffly, ‘that we weren’t going to let ourselves lapse, get sloppy, the way that some prospecting couples do. You must remember those dreadful people we met on PX173A—the ones who asked us to dinner aboard their ship. He dressed in greasy overalls, she in what looked like a converted flour sack. The drinks straight from the bottle and the food straight from the can…’
‘That’, she told him, ‘was an extreme case.’
‘Admittedly. And my going around with my shirt sleeves rolled up, or flapping, would be the thin end of the wedge.’
He brooded. ‘What I can’t get over is the clottishness of it all. I go through into the bathroom to rinse out my shirt. I leave the cuff links on the ledge over the basin while I put the shirt on the stretcher to dry. Picking up the cuff links, to transfer them to a clean shirt, I drop one into the basin. It goes down the drain. I hurry to the engine-room to get a spanner to open the pipe at the U-bend. I return to find you filling the basin to wash your smalls. I tell you what’s happened—and you promptly pull out the plug, washing the link over and past the bend…’
‘I wanted to see,’ she said.
‘You wanted to see,’ he mimicked. p. 90
This domestic squabbling continues until the man decides to don a spacesuit and go out to retrieve the missing link (he has seen it on the ship radar orbiting nearby). His wife protests as they are not meant to EVA solo, and she can’t go as she has been traumatised by a previous space walk.
Needless to say (spoiler), the man goes out on his own, loses his thruster, and then realises his safety line has become undone. His air supply runs out and he lapses into unconsciousness—but later wakes up in the ship. His wife tells him, in an explanation as to how she overcame her trauma, ‘I do so hate half a pair of anything—and I don’t mean only cuff links!’
This neat last line, and the couple’s verbal sparring throughout, make for a fun if lightweight piece.
*** (Good). 1800 words. Story link.