Solstice

'Thanks, Professor. You can have a job at the Cape any day.'

Ruffin looked at the light. It was red, no mistakes there. Mary Gallagher was already reaching into her tool kit, waiting to be told. He took a deep breath and, without thinking, scanned the black horizon for the Shuttle. It was a long way off now, a kilometre at least, looking like a kid's model in white plastic. They still had plenty of air left. Plenty of time too. All that was needed was to bring the satellite off-line, then call up Dave Sampson, get him to bring the ship back up, manoeuvre around once more, pick them up, and head off home.

Home. Such a small, insignificant word for a concept so huge it could occupy your entire life.

'Bill?' Mary asked. They were in the shade cast by the clover leaf, and the satellite shielded her from the bright reflecting surface of the earth just then. He could imagine her smart, sparky eyes staring at him through the visor, behind the deep reflected image of the glowing living globe that sat there now.

'Nothing,' Ruffin replied, and wished his mouth didn't feel so dry. 'Let's get on with it.'

The two of them removed the clasps of their lines from the struts, worked their way down the aluminium arms of the panel structure, and reattached the cords, this time to the exterior of the satellite itself. Ruffin stared at the red light, shining like a little beacon. Sundog looked dead. 'This thing is down now, Irwin. Why can't we just leave it at that? If she's got no power, she's no threat.'

'The power won't stay off,' Schulz replied. 'At some stage Michael's wings are going to move out of alignment, and then she wakes up, Charley's back in business. The only way we can be sure that thing's dead for good is for you to get behind the panel and key in a final shutdown sequence. But you get a good window from the shade trick. As long as the power's down from there, we're okay to open her up.'

Ruffin looked at the giant sunshade. It cast an enormous shadow right over the entire solar panel clover leaf and part of the satellite too. It was rigid in space, kept in place by the tiny, immutable forces of momentum that were shared by these strange mechanisms performing an odd little distanced dance, an unconscionable height above the surface of the earth.

'I get it,' he sighed, and thought: 'It would be too easy just to throw a shade over the thing and go home.' He looked at Arcadia and asked, 'You can see us okay from there, Dave?'

The radio crackled. 'Not too well. I'm some way off now and the angle's bad. But don't you worry. Once you take this thing down I'll be around and scooping you up in no time.'

'That sounds good.' Ruffin jerked on the cord of the floatcam, which was still static behind them, back with the solar structure. 'You're going to take us through this, Irwin, step by step. I know we practised in training but I like all the eyes I can get.'

'Sure,' the voice from the ground said. The cylindrical camera came up to Ruffin. He steadied it with one hand, then pointed the lens at the body of the satellite. It was, as luck would have it, cast in darkness by the huge parasol they had erected. Ruffin had half expected this: Murphy's Law applied in space too. He and Gallagher took out two powerful flashlights, attached them to an external antenna, turned them on, and illuminated the entire area.

'You got that?'

Somewhere on earth, Ruffin knew, they would be looking at the matte-black exterior of this thing, seeing much the same view he did now. There was an access panel on the outer skin of the satellite. It had a smart card slot on the side, and enough warning signs by it to put off any curious intruder who didn't hold the key. The panel was positioned, sensibly, close to the base of the unit, so anyone trying to work on Sundog could see the status light at the same time.

'They can't reprogram the access code,' Schulz's voice said. 'If that worries you.'

'Hadn't even occurred to me until that moment,' Ruffin said, then took one final look at Mary to make sure she was on top of this, pulled the card out of the tool kit, and pushed it into the slot. Nothing happened.

'We live to fight another day,' he muttered, and waited. The line was silent. 'Anyone there?'

'Damn,' Schulz whispered. 'The door panel is on a hydraulic mechanism. It should have popped open when you inserted the card.'

Ruffin looked at the thing. It was about three feet wide and two feet deep, a flat, plain lump of metal, with what looked like rubber hermetic seals around the edge.

'Suggestions?' he asked.

'It's stuck,' Schulz said immediately. 'If it had rejected the card we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. There's a small explosive device built to guard against unauthorized access, and that will work even on power down.'

'Thanks again for the welcome information,' Ruffin said calmly. He looked more closely at the panel. Something was visibly amiss. He pulled the floatcam farther in. 'Take a close look at the seal. It looks warped down one side to me. Does that mean anything?'

The line went quiet, then Schulz replied, 'I agree. It looks as if the material is compromised in some way. It's pressurized from the inside. I guess if it's loose maybe the servo doesn't have enough power to break the seal.'

'So all we need do is rupture this manually, and then the panel will depressurize? We should be able to pry it off if need be?'

That long silence again.

'We need decisions here,' Ruffin said, and noted the anxiety in his own voice.

'I just want to be sure. I was looking at the actual plan of that section. And you're right. There's no reason why you can't pry the panel off completely now. The backup system has accepted the ID card. It's going to stay quiet.'

'That's nice.' Ruffin looked at Mary. 'You got something like a screwdriver in there? This is going to be like prying off the lid of a jar of jam, I guess.' She pulled out a long, flat-handled lever and handed it to him.

'Just get underneath the seal, loosen it, use as much force as you need,' Schulz said. 'The pressure should do the rest.'

'I'm with you there.' Ruffin thrust the blade gingerly into the crevice around the near edge of the panel. 'I'm getting right-'

It happened in an instant. He felt the lever go loose in his hand, then the panel door shot up violently toward him, collided with the front of his suit with an impact he could feel through the thick material and the pressurized interior. The force was astonishing. It sent him bucking backward, rolling head over heels out toward the panels, out toward the blackness of space. He could hear people screaming in his headset. His mind was a blur. Then the safety line attached to the satellite cut in, jerked him to a painful stop, and the pictures gradually stopped spinning in his head.

Someone, a familiar voice from NASA, was yelling in his ear, 'Check suit integrity, Bill. Goddamn check it!'

Ruffin took a deep breath, closed his eyes, found himself thinking once again of home, that beautiful beach, gulls squawking lazily overhead, then looked at the gauges on his sleeve panel. 'Looks good here. You people getting any readings down there that suggest otherwise?'

A pause, then the NASA voice said, 'No. Guess we were lucky.'

'Yeah.' He pulled gently on the line and floated back down to the satellite. Gallagher watched him all the way, and he guessed her eyes were wide open and worried behind the glass.

'Hey.' He reached over, touched her with his big glove, a ridiculous gesture and he knew it. 'There was nothing you could do. It's okay.'

'Sorry,' Schulz said over the line. 'I guess there must have been more pressure inside that thing than I appreciated.'

'No problem. Like the man said, we're all making this up as we go along.' The panel door was gone now, long gone, floating off somewhere into the void. The opening revealed precious little: another covering panel, this time held by tamperproof