Page 60 of Stars
Unitywas noticeably older and bulkier than the sleek labs he’d just floated through.Unitywas the powerhouse of the station, providing life support, air filtration, oxygen generation, air conditioning and heating, and, afterZvezdaandZaryapowered down in the 2020s, power processing and main computer controls, along with redundancies, for the rest of the station. One entire bulkhead was covered in mesh and stuffed with sacks of water, the station’s emergency supply.
“All together, the ISS has one thousand cubic meters of liveable space,” Mark said, hovering inUnity. “It’s just spread out in all these different modules.” He pointed to a thick airlock, something that looked like it belonged in an ancient sci-fi movie. Insulated power couplings wove fromUnitythrough the hull, connecting to power couplings on the other side of the airlock. “This is the pressurized mating adapter. It’s the very first one, and it connectsUnitytoZarya.”
The station had been built and assembled in stages, each part and piece able to be uncoupled and moved. Each module had at least four airlocks, most fitted with pressurized mating adaptors—human Habitrails—that connected the modules together. One airlock inUnitywas a storage closet with a piece of netting holding back bags and old parts and broken wires tied in knots next to busted laptops. Others were doors to space, nothing but vacuum on the other side. Empty EMU suits hung beside each airlock, unmoving and cast in shadow. Like ghosts had crawled inside from deep space.
“Watch yourself,” Mark said, ducking into theZaryamodule. “It can be a tight fit, so squeeze through.”
They slithered like snakes, Mark shoving his duffel before him and Sasha dragging his behind him as they swam beneath the bundles of wires and miles of electronics that stretched between the two modules.Zaryawas a tube, long and cluttered, suits and tools and gear strapped everywhere, with just enough space to move through. “Zarya’s been turned into a cargo block for the most part,” Mark said. “But up ahead, here’sZvezda.”
Finally they floated into an olive-tinted module with all the ancient rounded edges and hard toggles and switches that reminded Sasha of home. It looked like it belonged in a museum, and it was perfectly, undeniably Russian. Sasha smiled.
Everything was functional and utilitarian and ugly as hell.Zvezdawas cluttered, jam-packed with more components on the walls and ceiling and floor than he’d seen in all the rest of the station combined. Her age showed in more than the design. Power was only now flowing continuously again, and she had that sour, stale, submarine-like, unwashed-humans-in-too-cramped-a-space smell. Dents and dings marred the panels, along with graffiti and notes tacked up by former cosmonauts.
Two phone-booth-sized crew quarters hugged the aft corners, separated by the treadmill. Behind the treadmill, an airlock was partially open. He pointed to the open airlock, his eyebrows raised.
“That’s the old Soyuz. It’s the escape craft for the ISS, but it doubles as a stowage closet. Toilet is over there.”
Mark took the crew quarters on the port side, slapping his velcroed name tag onto the top of the quilted doorframe. “Set your gear down. We’ll head back toUnityin five.”
Sasha mounted his own name tag over his crew quarters.
Astronaut Sasha Andreyev
Captain, Russian Air Force
NASA
I made it, Sergey. Because of you.
His crew quarters, like everyone else's, were tiny and attached toZvezda’shull. A vertical sleep sack was fixed to one wall for him to strap himself in. Opposite that, a small personal netbook was velcroed to a swivel stand. Along the back wall, there was a layer of Velcro patches and elastic loops to tuck personal items into. A mirror, a towel velcroed to the wall, an electrical strip, and a single lightbulb completed the tour. If he pushed out his elbows, he could touch both walls.
Sasha unpacked—two pairs of NASA shorts, two NASA shirts, his cell phone and charger—and tucked everything into the elastic nets that were his drawers. He unrolled and velcroed his hygiene kit to the wall. Everything had to be tucked into place, unable to escape in zero g.
Last, he pulled a photo from the inner pocket of his flight suit. It was rumpled, the edges frayed, the corners creased. But it had flown with him on every flight he’d taken at NASA, everything from his T-38 training runs to his simulator flights. And now, his first launch.
Sasha tucked the photo of him and Sergey under an elastic loop at the corner of his mirror. He and Sergey were side by side with their heads tilted together as they sat by the river at Sergey’s dacha. Yuri had taken the snapshot and had mailed it to him in Houston a week after he’d first arrived.
He plugged in his phone and let it charge, shaking his head when he saw “ISS WIFI” pop up on his screen. A sticky note on his mirror gave him the password. He chuckled.
His netbook was mounted so he could float comfortably and work. He booted it up and logged in, NASA’s logo staring at him from the center of the screen. Icons for the internet, email, and Skype stared back at him.
It was quieter in his tiny quilted block. The hum and rattle and buzz of the station was more of a muted white noise, like the sound of his ceiling fan back home.
What time was it? The ISS operated on Zulu time, and over the week before the launch, they’d shifted their bodies to adjust. He checked his watch. Eleven hundred hours Zulu.
Moscow was only three hours ahead of Zulu time. What was Sergey doing at fourteen hundred?
He grabbed his phone and plugged in the password, waiting and waiting for the connection.
“Sasha!” Mark called. “Let’s get back up toUnity. I want to see what Jim finds on that Soviet bird.”
“Yes, one second.” Finally, connection. Sasha turned on the camera, smiled, and snapped a picture of himself: floating, his face a little swollen due to the fluid shift of zero g, his cheeks ruddy and flushed beneath his exhausted eyes.
Hello from space, he typed, attaching the picture to a text before sending it to Sergey’s phone.I love you.
He shoved the phone back in its mesh pouch and swam out of his quarters. Together, he and Mark followed Phillipa’s voice back throughZaryaand intoUnity, where Rafael, Sarah, and Joey had gathered with Phillipa to watch the video feed from Jim’s EVA.
Jim had donned his EMU suit and SAFER jet pack suspiciously fast. In the early days of spaceflight, astronauts had to spend the night before an EVA sleeping in an airlock set to a lower atmospheric pressure to adjust their bodies to the demands of the space suit. Back then, if the astronauts didn’t prebreathe pure oxygen, when they went out on their space walks they’d crumple up with a case of the bends, the same as if they had been scuba diving and surfaced too quickly. Nitrogen bubbles in someone’s blood in outer space was a recipe for death.
