Am I already dead? Is this just an illusion? He wasn’t sure any longer… but there was the breathing. He had to be alive. He had to hang on.
He shifted his gaze toward the stars and smiled, not at the peaceful, crystalline cosmos visible through the front windowpanes, but at his own life. At the scenes that continued to flash vividly past him. They were gone as fast as they came, but he remembered them all. Every single one of them contributed to the way he felt; like a small leaf on a large tree, every person, every feeling, every encounter had added something to his life.
Kessler felt a hard object against his left leg but could not see what it was. He had closed his eyes and could not open them anymore. He tried once more but failed. It was hopeless. Then all began to fade away. His mind became too cloudy, too irrational. He could not control his thoughts any longer. He fought violently but it was no use. He had lost the battle and decided to surrender gracefully.
“I found the second one,” reported Valentina Tereshkova as she snagged Kessler’s leg and pulled him toward her.
“Is he alive?”
“Can’t tell for sure. There are some readings on the front of the suit but I don’t know what some of them mean. The oxygen level appears to be extremely low, though.”
“Bring him in.”
“Yes.” Tereshkova clipped a woven line to the side of Kessler’s suit and dragged him down to the mid-deck compartment where Strakelov was examining the readings on the small panel on the side of Jones’s rescue ball.
“This one appears to be in good shape, at least as far as I can tell. Let’s put them both inside the air lock.”
Wearing their Orlon-DMA suits, Strakelov and Tereshkova placed Jones and Kessler inside the air lock and closed the hatch. The American vessel was well built, Strakelov reflected. It had a huge air-lock section to suit up in and a large hatch for EVA activity, larger than the one on Kvant-2. Strakelov depressurized the air lock and then opened the exterior hatch leading to the payload bay.
He went out first and briefly glanced up toward the Mir complex floating a hundred feet above, between them and the Earth’s surface. He shifted his gaze back toward Tereshkova and held up his right hand. “Wait, Valentina.”
Strakelov gently pushed himself toward the Ikar bicycle and backed himself against it. After securing the suit on the backpack system with the side straps, Strakelov powered up the system. Two locator lights came on, a red one over his left shoulder and a green one over his right. The idea behind the color scheme was to be able to identify which direction a spacewalker was heading. Green on the left and red on the right meant the cosmonaut was approaching the observer. The opposite scheme meant the cosmonaut was moving away from the observer. The idea was copied from the red and green lights on the wingtips of aircraft.
He used the hand controls to thrust himself back toward the open air-lock hatch. The four primary rear thrusters of the 440-pound cosmonaut-mobility unit puffed compressed air in one direction and gently pushed him in the other. The Ikar backpack system had a total of thirty-two compressed-air thrusters, sixteen primary and as many backups. In the event of one thruster system failing, the cosmonaut could safely maneuver the unit back to the space station by switching to auxiliary control.
Strakelov slowly came to a halt as he got within five feet of the hatch. Tereshkova passed him a long woven line, already attached to both Kessler’s suit and Jones’s rescue ball. He clipped his end to a stress point on the side of the Ikar and turned himself around using the four thrusters on each side of the backpack system.
“Ready, Valentina?”
Tereshkova finished pushing both astronauts though the hatch and then floated toward her Ikar. She backed herself into her backpack system and clipped the other end of the woven line to her suit. “Ready, Nikolai Aleksandrovich.”
Strakelov lightly applied thrusters to put tension on the line. He felt a small tug. Swiftly, he pointed himself up toward Kvant-2 and fired the thrusters for three seconds. That was enough to get his caravan heading in the right direction. The short trip took less than a minute.
When Strakelov estimated they were thirty feet from Kvant-2’s opened hatch, he spoke in his voice-activated headset.
“Fire reverse thrusters.”
Tereshkova, who was at the other end of the caravan, fired a two-second burst on all four primary forward-facing thrusters. Strakelov felt the rear tug as they slowed down. From there on it was a true team effort, with Strakelov firing his thrusters from one end and Tereshkova from the other to keep tension on the line as they slowly maneuvered their way to Kvant-2. Strakelov got within a foot of the outside wall and clipped his end of the line to the handle next to the hatch. He then piloted the Ikar to the external docking station, where he easily backed into the electromagnetic locking mechanism. The system engaged, securing the Ikar to the side wall.
Strakelov unstrapped himself and carefully crawled on the side wall back toward the forward hatch. Tereshkova did the same from the other end. Between the two of them they pulled both astronauts inside the air-lock/workshop module and closed the hatch. Strakelov pressurized the chamber, and quickly removed his suit and helped Tereshkova with hers.
They removed the helmet from Kessler’s suit and unzipped Jones’s rescue ball. They checked for vital signs. They were weak.
“Baikonur Control. Mir here.”
“Hello, Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Status?”
“Both astronauts are alive. The mission was a success.”
“Congratulations, Nikolai and Valentina! We shall relay the information to our American colleagues.”
“We will take the astronauts to the medical bay. We will update you on their situation as soon as we can.”
“Acknowledged, Nikolai. Good job.”
Strakelov shifted his gaze toward Tereshkova, who had already unlocked the metal ring connecting the upper and lower torso section of Kessler’s space suit. He smiled. Their suits were very much like the American’s. He leaned over and pulled Jones out of the rescue ball.
In full camouflage gear, Cameron quietly sat next to Marie while staring at the red light above the StarLifter’s paratrooper door. Pruett had not come along this time. His stomach was in havoc. Cameron understood.
“You okay?” she asked while holding his hand.
“Well, the last time I did this was over fifteen years ago in Vietnam. I hope it all comes back… it better come back, and fast. I have the feeling that things are gonna get nasty down there.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Cameron briefly closed his eyes. “I don’t have a choice. I have to do it. It’s the only way, not just for Mambo, but also for myself.”
She pressed her side against his, resting her head on his left shoulder. “I know.”
The door leading to the cabin swung open. A large soldier, also dressed in camouflage fatigues, approached them.
“One minute, sir!” The soldier unlocked the paratrooper door. The light over the door turned yellow.