Oh, Jack, she thought. I wish you were here. I wish you could see this.
Then she waved. And she knew, without the slightest doubt, that somewhere in the darkness below, Jack was waving back.
July 29
Personal E-mail to, Dr. Emma Watson
From, Jack McCallum
Like a diamond in the sky. That’s what you look like from down here. Last night I stayed up to watch you pass over. Gave you a big wave.
This morning on CNN, you were being touted as Ms. Right Stuff. “Girl astronaut blasts off, doesn’t chip a nail,” or something equally hokey. They interviewed Woody Ellis and Leroy Cornell, and both of them were beaming like proud daddies. Congratulations.
You’re America’s sweetheart .
Vance and crew made a picture-perfect landing.
Bloodsucking reporters were all over poor Elill when he arrived in Houston. I caught a glimpse of him on TV—he looks like he’s aged twenty years. Services for Debbie are this afternoon. I’ll be there.
Tomorrow, I’ll be sailing on the Gulf.
Em, I got the divorce papers today, and I’ll be honest with you. It doesn’t feel good. Then, I guess it’s not supposed to, is it?
Anyway, they’re ready for us to sign. Maybe now that it’s finally over, we can get back to being friends again.
The way we used to be.
P.S. Humphrey’s a little shit. You owe me a new couch.
Personal E-mail to, Jack McCallum
From, Emma Watson
America’s sweetheart? Puh-leeze. This has turned into a high-wire act, with everyone on earth watching and waiting for me to screw up. And when I do, I’ll be the shoulda-sent-a-man Exhibit # 1. I hate that.
On the other hand, I do love it up here. How I wish you could see this view! When I look down at the earth and see how incredibly beautiful she is, I want to shake some sense into everyone living down there. If only they could see how small and fragile and very alone the earth is, surrounded by all this cold black space. They’d take much better care of her. Oh, here she goes again, getting teary-eyed about the home planet.
Shoulda sent a man. I’m happy to report the nausea’s gone. I can zip around from mod to mod with scarcely a twinge. I still get a little woozy when I catch an unexpected glimpse of earth through a window. It screws up my sense of up and down, and it takes me a few seconds to reorient. I’m trying to keep up the exercise, but two hours every day is a big chunk of time, especially when I’ve got so much to do.
Dozens of experiments to monitor, a zillion E-mails from Payload Operations, every scientist demanding top priority for their pet projects. Eventually, I’ll get up to speed.
But this morning I was so tired, I slept right through Houston’s wakeup music. Luther says they blasted us with Wagner’s Valkyrie! As for the divorce being final, it doesn’t feel good for me, either. But, Jack, at least we had seven good years.
That’s more than a lot of couples can say. I know you must be anxious to finish this business. I promise I’ll sign the papers as soon as I get home.
Don’t stop waving.
P.S. Humphrey never attacked my furniture. What did you do to upset him?
Emma turned off her laptop computer and folded it shut.
Answering personal E-mail was the last task of the day. She had looked forward to hearing from home, but Jack’s mention of the divorce had stung her. So he’s ready to move on, she thought.
He’s ready to “be friends” again.
As she zipped herself into her sleep restraint bag, she was angry at him, at how easily he’d accepted the end of their marriage. in their divorce, when their arguments were still raging, she’d strangely reassured by every noisy disagreement. But now the conflicts had ended, and Jack had reached the stage of calm acceptance. No pain, no regrets.
And here I am, still missing you. And I hate myself for it.
Kenichi hesitated to wake her. He lingered outside her sleep privacy curtain, wondering if he should call out again. It was a small matter, and he hated to disturb her. She had looked so tired at supper, had actually dozed off still clutching her fork. Without the constant pull of gravity, the body does not crumple when you fall unconscious, and there is no warning jerk of the head to jolt you awake.. Tired astronauts had been known to fall asleep in the midst of repairs, while still holding a tool in their hand.
He decided not to wake her and returned, alone, to the U.S. lab.
Kenichi had never needed more than five hours of rest a night, and while the others slept, he would often wander the labyrinth of the space station, checking on his various experiments. Inspecting, exploring. It seemed that only when the human crew slept did the station assert its own gleaming personality. It became an autonomous being that hummed and clicked, its computers directing a thousand different functions, electronic commands zinging through its nervous system of wires and circuits.
As Kenichi drifted through the maze of tunnels, he thought of all the human hands that had worked to fashion just a single square inch of this structure. The electronics and metal workers, the molders of plastic. The glassmakers. Because of their labor, a farmer’s son who had grown up in a mountain village of Japan now floated two hundred twenty miles above the earth.
Kenichi had been aboard the station for a month, and the wonder of it all had not left him.
He knew his stay here was limited. He knew the toll now being exacted on his body, the steady seepage of calcium from his bones, the wasting of his muscles, the declining vigor of arteries and heart, now freed from the challenge of pumping against gravity. Every moment aboard ISS was precious, and he did not want to waste a minute of it. So, during the hours scheduled for sleep, he wfloated around the station, lingering at windows, visited the animals in the lab.
That was how he had discovered the dead mouse.
It had been floating with legs frozen and extended, pink mouth gaping open. Another one of the males. It was the fourth mouse to die in sixteen days.
He confirmed that the habitat was functioning properly, that the temperature set points had not been violated and the airflow rate was maintained at the standard twelve changes per hour. Why were they dying?
Could it be contamination of the water or food?
Several months ago, the station had lost a dozen rats when toxic chemicals had seeped into the animal habitat’s water supply.
The mouse floated in a corner of the enclosure. The other males were bunched at the far end, as though repulsed by the corpse of their cage mate. They seemed frantic to get away from it, paws clinging to the cage screen. On the other side of the wire divider, the females, too, were bunched together. All except one. She was twitching, spiraling slowly in midair, her claws thrashing in seizurelike movements. Another one is sick.
Even as he watched, the female gave what looked like a last tortured gasp and suddenly went limp. The other females bunched even tighter, a panicked mass of writhing white fur. He had to remove the corpses, before the contagion—if it was a contagion—spread to the other mice.
He interfaced the habitat to the life-sciences glove box, snapped on latex gloves, and inserted his hands through the rubber dams. Reaching first into the male side of the enclosure, he removed the corpse and bagged it in plastic. Then he opened the females’ enclosure and reached in for the second dead mouse. As he removed it, a flash of white fur shot out past his hand.
One of the mice had escaped into the glove box.
He snatched her in midair. And almost immediately released her when he felt the sharp nip of pain. She had bitten right through the glove.