“I don’t know if I can go through with this, Maggie.”

“This whole operation was your idea.”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.”

“You told me that you, and I quote, just need some help overcoming my fear of space flight, preferably without any brain-wavy stuff.”

“… Did you have to say that in my own voice?”

It was easily among the top five creepy things she’d done since Joe met her, and that was a fiercely competitive list.

“My intention was to illustrate that we would not be here if not for this favor you asked of me.”

“No, but see, I didn’t say anything about going on an intergalactic cruise!”

“Interstellar,” she corrected him.

“Not the point!”

The man immediately reeled his voice back in, having unintentionally raised it in a public space. Thankfully he and Maggie hadn’t stepped into one of the spaceport’s countless queues just yet, otherwise his outburst would’ve gotten him a lot more and much meaner looks. However, he couldn’t help but make a scene. The mere thought of spending three straight months floating through space without ever touching down on solid ground gave him chills. He was certain he’d spend the whole cruise in various states of freaking out. How was that supposed to help with his astrohodophobia? If anything, it would probably make it worse.

Maggie needed only see the look on his face to determine what was really bothering him about this endeavor.

“Remember three days ago, when we were discussing possible treatments for your condition?” she inquired.

“Yeah?”

“Remember which option we settled on?”

“Sure. Uh,” he paused, thinking hard back to that talk, “cognitive behavioral therapy, right?”

There were some other alternatives, most notably pharmaceutical ones, but Joe wanted to avoid anything that would directly mess with his brain chemistry. He wouldn’t be with Maggie if not for the ‘mysterious ways his mind worked,’ as his mum liked to say, and he didn’t like the idea of doing anything that might mess that up. Not that he was afraid the girl would leave him, but it didn’t feel right changing the parts she liked about him. It was also why he specifically requested that Maggie not simply rip his phobia out of his noggin, and the girl wanted to respect his wishes.

“Exactly,” she nodded. “This cruise is part of that.”

“Oh… What part?”

“Desensitisation, otherwise known as exposure therapy. In short, you must face your fears in order to overcome them.”

“Ugh…”

There was more to the process than that, certain steps and escalations that had to be taken for the treatment to be effective. However, this crude and basic explanation was enough for Joe to accept it, even if it did sound painfully cliche. In retrospect, he probably should’ve expected that overcoming his phobia wasn’t going to be easy… or pleasant.

“Alright, then,” he gathered his courage. “Let’s get to it.”

“Excellent,” the girl smiled broadly.

“You’re awfully excited about this, aren’t you?” Joe sensed something else behind that grin.

“I must admit, as interesting and curious as humanity is, I have been wanting to observe some stellar sights as of late. I am therefore personally looking forward to this cruise.”

“Of course, you are. Well, who knows? Maybe I’ll have some fun with it, too.”

“Your optimism is unnecessary, but appreciated.”

With the matter settled, the couple once more indulged in the ancient british tradition of queueing as they patiently waited for their turn to board a shuttle. This time around the spacecraft wasn’t anywhere near as fancy as the Silver Tempest they rode on their way to the lawyers’ planet. Their current ride was the flying equivalent of a pre-space-era double decker bus, and practically looked like it too. Was even painted bright red. The interior was just as spacious as the exterior suggested, which was to say not at all. At the very least there was plenty of room for luggage in the cargo compartment. So much so, in fact, that it almost seemed like those briefcases and crates were the actual passengers while the people were the baggage.

Thankfully Joe and Maggie wouldn’t have to endure the cramped ride for long. Their destination wasn’t some interstellar freighter that was parked halfway to the moon, but a luxury cruiser that drifted in orbit. Slightly over fifteen minutes later, the ship in question came into view of the shuttle-bus’s external cameras. Joe normally wouldn’t tune into such video feeds. It wasn’t so much the sight of the near-infinite void of space that bothered him, but the blaring reminder that the only thing between him and that were a few sheets of metal and plastic. The less he looked at such things, the safer he felt. However, Maggie demanded that he man up and not avert his eyes from the screen. So, he didn’t, trying his best to not let his anxiety get the better of him. He did an alright job of it, though that was mostly because the images on the display were dominated by the cruise ship the couple would be boarding any minute now.

The Queen Mary was a yacht-class craft with a length of about four hundred meters, a height of one-fifty, and a width of two hundred if one were to include its horizontal wings. A ship this size would be considered a corvette if it was a military vessel, but this was definitely a civilian cruiser. Its hull had a sleek and aesthetically pleasing shape that tapered towards the top, with a flat underside that had a massive steel fin poking out of it. The fact that it had a clearly discernible top and bottom set it aside from the more pragmatic and ambiguous designs of warships. Not to mention that it had actual windows. A fair number of them, to boot. The side Joe was looking at had somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty of them spread out unevenly between seven or eight decks, including an observation dome at the top. The last hint that this ship was built for comfort was that its engines were situated in wings rather than built into the hull. Though less structurally sound, doing so drastically reduced the vibrations passengers experienced while the ship was in motion.