question: Why could the narrator not hear any screams? answer: The air has been sucked out of the shuttle, so sound cannot travel paragraph: Hotel California Fact: Sound is a vibration. Sound travels as a mechanical wave through a medium, and in space, there is no medium. So when my shuttle malfunctioned and the airlocks didn't keep the air in, I heard nothing. After the first whoosh of the air being sucked away, there was lightning, but no thunder. Eyes bulging in panic, but no screams. Quiet and peaceful, right? Such a relief to never again hear my crewmate Jesse natter about his girl back on Earth and that all-expenses-paid vacation-for-two she won last time he was on leave. I swore, if I ever had to see a photo of him in a skimpy bathing suit again, giving the camera a cheesy thumbs-up from a lounge chair on one of those white sandy beaches, I'd kiss a monkey. Metaphorically, of course. Fact: If, before all the air is sucked out of the ship, a person is so lucky to have stuffed him or herself into a space suit, that person has less than twenty-four hours to live. This is more than the person would have sans space suit. Me, I found a space suit, but it was statistically unlikely that I, and whomever else has followed suit (pun intended), would manage to repair our ship before the less-than-twenty-four hours are up; yes, studies have been done. So, twenty-four hours. Give or take. About the time I was composing my last words in my head, trying not to think too much about what suffocating felt like, that's when I heard a bell. 