Both of you?
Boyle says as long as I’m using fuel, Sheila should come along and give them a checkup. Here’s our launch window.
Yoshi showed him a tablet.
OK, I’ll upload a flight plan.
Spasibo.
Douitashimashite.
Same time window as Sergei. Leaving Boyle and Pace and his pilot alone on the hab.
Sergei watched the hab dwindle against the ocean, positioned between Patagonia and the Antarctic Peninsula. He could see Pace’s vehicle, docked at Port One, surprisingly big, as big as the hab itself.
One kilometer out, he yawed and started the transfer burn. Thrust was about half a G. It felt good. How he would welcome gravity when he went down! And fresh air and blue skies. After four and a half minutes, he ended the burn as Kestrel passed over the Sahara.
He’d be over Petersburg in fifteen minutes, this time in daylight. Summer was coming to the Northern Hemisphere. He’d relish the long days, the white nights, of Helsinki in July. Izumi and he had been together for almost two years, though he’d been in space most of that time. She was a few years older than him, had been married once, to a Finn. She worked in IT for a comprehensive school. She was also a singer, classical and cabaret. They’d met in Petersburg at a concert. Shostakovich string quartets.
He didn’t know where it was going, the two of them, or where he was going, solo or not. He had a sometimes-piercing dread that one day soon she was going to lose patience with him.
Hell, he was losing patience with himself. His smell in the spacesuit was rank. Water was too precious up here to use for washing, especially clothes. When they grew too foul, they were thrown out. He changed his socks and shorts about once a week, his shirt about once a month. They were past due. So was he. The self was too much with him.
He was now over Vladivostok. He’d gained almost 4,000 kilometers in altitude and the Earth was palpably smaller. South across the Sea of Japan was Kyoto, Izumi’s birthplace. She’d taken him there once, for a week. They visited Ryoanji temple one morning, arriving very early, before it opened, to avoid the tourists. It had rained in the night but the day was sunny, the road vacant. They hurried past an old woman on their way. Black birds stared at them from the roof of the locked gate. The old woman caught them up, and she looked to them in concern: What time is it? She was the gatekeeper, worried she was late.
Over the South Pacific, in darkness now, he burned to shift his orbital plane into Vanguard’s. Ten more minutes of welcome gravity, its force steadily increasing from half a G to over a G as the ship burned fuel and lost mass. When it ceased, he checked his bearings. He was now in Vanguard’s orbit.
But nothing was out there. Lots of nothing. More nothing, and more nothing. Then S-band radar bounced back from something about two kilometers ahead of him. He burned briefly into a lower orbit to phase up on it. At 100 meters’ separation, he burned back up to stationkeeping. There: a point of light drifting against the stars. After long, fussy minutes of edging up, he had it, closed the arm on it, and brought it into the bay. Mission time: 3 hours, 39 minutes.
It wasn’t tarnished or pitted, but the metal bore a slight patina, weathered by solar radiation and micrometeor abrasion. He cupped it in his gloved hand. It was that small. He felt a mild revulsion at the thought of handing this storied thing over to Pace.
But he secured it, then loaded the imposter into the bay and launched it. He checked his position against the hab’s, and ran both coordinates through the flight computer. He’d have to stay for 42 minutes until ship and hab were aligned.
While he waited he played the second Shostakovich string quartet through his suit’s phones. It was what he’d been hearing when he first saw Izumi, two rows in front of him in the shadows of the concert hall. That elegant profile. He’d studied the shape of her left ear as she moved her head so slightly.
This quartet had been his father’s favorite. Sergei could see him seated at the north-facing window with his cello between his knees, practicing in the pale light, occasionally stopping to mark the score.
The final chords resounded, an angry but halfway resigned lament against the shortness of life, its futile complications, the thwarting of joy.
Sergei checked the flight computer. It was time. He watched the countdown, then burned for two minutes as thrust climbed steadily to over two Gs. His heart labored.
Another hour passed in silence as the ship followed its new trajectory to the lower hab orbit. The curvature of the Earth’s limb slowly flattened, and the Moon, half-full, rose above it.
It stared at him and its glory pierced him. The intricate Sun-Moon-Earth system was best felt from here.
Something hit.
Blyad!
The vehicle jolted. Or maybe it was him who jolted. He thought he’d heard the hit—a faint crack, something you might hear underwater.
For a moment the world was pure falling. A crowded emptiness. Millions of specks streaked through this vastness of orbit. Thoughts in a void of unmeaning. Subatomics in a space of forces. In that maelstrom, once in a great while, two specks collide: a neutron lodges in a nucleus, and changes its nature.
In the center of the window was a pock: an irregular, finely terraced crater about five centimeters across. Sunlight raked it into fine relief. The particle, whatever it was, had vaporized on impact. A little larger or a little faster and it would have continued straight through his visor.
He smelled the sharpness of fresh sweat over his stale miasma. At least he hadn’t shit himself.
The rest of the way back his eyes were on the radar. Not that he would see anything coming before it hit him. It was just magical thinking.
But as he approached the hab he did see something. Four bogeys, faint echoes, inconsistent returns, in parallel orbits.
Kiyoshi stopped by.
I heard. You okay?
Ah, yeah. You know.
Kiyoshi did know. He’d almost run out of oxygen on an EVA. How are they on the other hab?
Kiyoshi frowned. Their water filter was fine. Sheila ran her tests. They’re all good.
Sergei shrugged.
Two pointless EVAs in one day. You could have been killed.
I’m fine. Arigatou gozaimasu.
Beregi sebya.
He thought that would be it. It wasn’t.
Sergei, my friend. May I come in?
In one hand Pace held two of the tear-shaped glasses. In the other was a bottle: Talisker 18 Year.
It wasn’t worth getting upset over, but it annoyed him. Pace didn’t need to parade his research.
I want to thank you. I heard you almost got centerpunched out there.
Sergei watched the glasses float while Pace scooped whiskey into them. Now he was almost angry. As far as he was concerned, it was over. What more did Pace want? He meant to keep his mouth shut, but he saw that sunlit pock in the glass again, heard that distant crack, felt himself jolt. He wanted to make Pace jolt.
You launched something while I was gone. You and Boyle. Four objects.
Pace looked at him with interest. Why yes. Yes we did. It was awesome.
Why send me away?
Pace regarded him carefully through the lenses of his headsup. What was he reading there? Sergei’s pulse, BP, skin temperature—what else was he tracking? Pace was like a windup toy that never ran down. It was tiring. Sergei didn’t want to be sitting here drinking with him.
Well, I truly did want my Vanguard. But I also wanted my objects off the registry. If you were onboard, you would be the one to record them.