After the Bite (14 page)

The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds. It was all so senseless, so unnecessary. But it looked beautiful. Mick and Alex were going home.

****

We weren
’t worried about the power being out. The station could sustain us for nearly two months with no power, and it came back on a few hours later anyway. What we were worried about was what had happened to those two. Alex had been sick, and Mick had been sick, too, only mentally. Depression, confusion, and fear had caught up with him. We were all wondering how long it would be before it caught up with us.

Four more days passed when I was woken up by a huge bump.

When I got to the console, Sacha was already there.

“What
’s going on?” I asked.

“We hit a satellite,” he
said.

“Any damage?”

“No. Not to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“It didn’t hit the station. It hit the shuttle.”

We could see the shuttle from the Russian side of the station. The whole front was smashed in, the windows completely obliterated.

“It looks like we’ll have to find another ride,” Sacha said. I stared for a while longer.

“We
’ll regain contact soon. NASA will send someone for us. They’re probably scrambling a mission right now.”

“Let us hope so,” Sacha said. He left the room.

I decided to visit Yamanaka. He was in his lab, staring at a small Bonsai tree, his favorite.

“Did you hear about the shuttle?” I
said.

“Yeah,” he replied. He was shutting off the lights above the plants.

“What are you doing?”

“We need to save power,” he
said. All sense of humor was gone from him. For the first time I had ever heard, he was completely and totally serious.

“They don
’t need much,” I said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

“It
’s not fine,” Yamanaka said. “We don’t have the power, we don’t have the water. We need it for us.”

I helped him clear out the lab. We left it in the darkness. He took his favorite
Bonsai with him, leaving the rest of the plants behind.

I went to Unity to check up on Tom. It was his turn to be on the treadmill
, but it was empty when I got there.

I found him in his sleeping rack.

“It’s your turn to exercise,” I said.

“What
’s the point?”

His words hit me with a percussive force.

“You’re a doctor, you know damn well what the point is.”

“If I
’m going to be stuck up here, I don’t want to spend every waking moment of my life on a treadmill.”

“We won
’t be stuck forever,” I said. “In the meantime, you need to exercise, or—”

“Or I
’ll suffer from muscle atrophy. My bones will deteriorate within me. I know exactly what will happen, and I’m choosing to do this.”

“Tom, you
’re not thinking clearly—”

“I know what I
’m thinking!” Tom said. “I’m not crazy, I’m not going to snap and take the express lane back to Earth, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

We were silent for a while.

“I’ll get on the treadmill later,” Tom finally said.

“Thank you
. I’m sorry.”

“No, you
’re right. We can’t fall apart now. Not up here.”

I went back to the control panel. We had gotten into the habit of taking turns just sitting
by it, waiting for contact with Earth to come back. Yamanaka was in there.

“You know,
” he said, “this long with no contact at all, and I’d even take some stupid reporter asking about sex in space for the thousandth time.”

“I take it we still have no radio?”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Yamanaka said. “Want to take her for a while?”

“Sure,” I said. “I have nothing better to do.”

A few hours at the radio, a few hours of silence. A few hours of being alone. I could see Earth, I could see home. But I couldn’t get there. It was tearing me apart.

I thought of my Halley. I tried not to think of her too often, afraid of what it might do to me. I missed her terribly.

I ended up falling asleep at the console. Sacha woke me when it was his turn to listen in. I went and found Loxley in his lab. He was writing things down, hard at work, as usual. Being stranded in space was no excuse for him to stop working. I admired him.

“Good news,” he said as I entered, not even looking up to see me. “I found the cure for cancer.”

“I knew you had it in you,” I said. I was joking. I thought he was, but his tone made it impossible to tell. “One less thing for us to worry about, up here.”

“How long has it been?
I haven’t kept track.”

“About a week,” I
said. The sun was setting outside, for the fifth time that day.

“How long will
you
keep track?” Loxley asked.

“As long as it takes
.”

I went back to my sleeping rack and picked up my book.
The Martian Chronicles
. Mick had been right; I enjoyed it.

A few more days of silence passed us by. Tom wasn
’t exercising as much as he should have been, and nobody was eating as much as they usually did. We all still did some work, but mostly we waited.

I was on the treadmill when it happened. The station suddenly came back to life. It was like a gigantic beast waking from a long slumber. All of the system functions came back online, and the whole station spun around, position
ing itself toward the sun. I nearly slipped off of the treadmill, but the harness kept me in place. For a split second I even got disoriented. It was actually very welcome, it was a small taste of being home.

I rushed to the control console, and everyone was already there, cheering and celebrating, sharing hugs, smiling, laughing.

“Trent’s here, let’s call home!” Tom said. Sacha smiled at me, then turned to the console.

“Mission Control, this is Sacha Borislav of the International Space Station. We have had no communication for
… many days.” He laughed. “Do you come in, Houston?”

The click of static came through, and then there was silence. Slowly, one by one, the smiles faded. The room grew silent.

“Houston, do you copy?”

Sacha tried for a while after, even as the silence poured in, even as the other astronauts gave up hope and left the room, one by one, hour after hour. The whole while, that big blue orb hung there in the sky through the window, laughing at us.

“Do you think,” Loxley said, “that whatever happened to Alex might’ve happened down there?”

Nobody said anything
, but we all thought it, now.

“So
… what?” Sacha asked. “Some crisis happens, and nobody thinks to check on us? To even
try
to find out if we’re alive?”

“Typical,” Loxley said. “People will flock for the chance to ask us how to shit in space, but a global crisis occurs and nobody even cares to find out how we
’re doing. Do they even know what we’re doing up here?”

“
I
don’t even know what we’re doing up here, now,” Sacha said. He stood up and made his way to the door.

“So what now?” I asked.

“There is nothing, now,” Sacha said. “It appears as though we’ll be up here indefinitely.”

“No more going home,” Loxley said after Sacha left. “Guess I
’ll get back to work.”

He left me alone at the console. I stared at the earth for a while longer. My mind raced, searching for a solution, for some other way to get home. There had to be
something. Some way to get home, some way to see my wife again, outside of a lone picture hanging up in my rack.

A few more days gave us nothing but another problem. There was a malfunction in one of our solar panels. It wouldn
’t turn, couldn’t position itself toward the sun. We discussed it in Unity as we ate breakfast.

“My guess is that some junk is jamming it,” Sacha said.

“We can fix that with a spacewalk,” I replied.

“I
’ll do it,” he said. “We have radio now, so it’ll be a walk in the park.”

I looked at Tom. He wasn
’t eating much, and he winced whenever he moved a certain way.

“Tom, have you been keeping up on the treadmill?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I just slept wrong.”

“In space?” Yamanaka
said.

“It
’s an expression,” Tom replied.

We finished breakfast, and then got ready to send Sacha out.

Sacha suited up and then went outside, anchored to one of the station’s arms. He got to the solar panel. We worked after a sunset, to keep the sun off of him.

“Okay,” he said through the radio. I couldn
’t see him through the window. “I’m at the solar panel. It looks like something is jamming the panel’s hinge.”

“Can you get it out?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well, hurry up
. There could be more shit out there.”

Normally, Mission Control would be giving us a head
s-up on our flight path, tracking the other satellites and things in the area. Needless to say, we didn’t have that luxury.

“I think I
’m going to need something,” Sacha said. “A big drill, maybe.”

“Okay, we
’ll pull you back in, then,” I said.

“No, wait!” Sacha said. “I think I have it.”

“Hey, what’s that?” Yamanaka asked, pointing out the window. There was a satellite approaching us.

“Sacha, we can see a satellite heading our way. You think you
’ll be okay?”

“I can
’t see any satellite.”

“Well, it
’s there. Want us to pull you in, just in case?”

“No, I almost
—there!” The solar panel was unstuck, and positioned itself with the others.

“Okay, hang on tight,” I said. “I
’m going to try to turn the station and see if we can’t clear that satellite.”

“I
’m holding on, go ahead.”

I looked at the satellite. I couldn
’t tell if it would hit us or not; I’d have to eyeball it.

“Just rotate her a bit to the left,” Loxley said.

“I agree,” I said. The station turned, very gracefully.

“Guys!” Sacha s
aid. “There’s another satellite out here, you just moved toward it! Rotate it back!”

“Shit!” I tried to turn the station.

The satellite nudged the station, and it spun. The station automatically calibrated its position, and the thrusters fired, stopping the rotation, but the other satellite hit right after.

The arm snapped backward with a violent motion, and Sacha lost his grip. We could see him now as the arm lurched forward from the motion. The anchor reached
its fulcrum and snapped, hurtling Sacha away from the station.

“Shit! Ahhhh!” Sacha screamed, the volume distorting the sound through the radio into a loud, crackly blur.

“Sacha!” Eva said. Sacha’s screams continued.

“Is there anything we can do?” Loxley asked. Sacha was slowly fading out of view as he floated away from us, away from the earth, out into space.

“No,” I said. He’d eventually come down to the earth, but we’d have no way of catching up with him. We could still hear the screams. “No, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Help! Help me!” Sacha screamed. He knew we couldn
’t.

“Sacha, can you hear me?” Eva said into the microphone.

“Eva, is that you?”

“Yeah,” Eva said, near tears. “It
’s me.”

“Eva
… I’m not coming home, am I?”

Eva began to cry.

“No, Sacha. I’m afraid not.”

We could hear Sacha panting. I don
’t think anyone wasn’t crying.

“Turn it off! God damn it, turn the radio off!” Yamanaka said. He couldn
’t take it any longer, and I could sympathize. But I refused.

“No. We
’re not leaving him alone.”

“My friends,” Sacha said, his voice becoming more and more difficult to discern through the static as he faded away, “it was the greatest honor of my life, working with you.”

“Sacha,” I said. “Close your eyes.”

“Yeah,” Sacha
said.

“Think of Russia. Think of your home. What
’s it like?”

“It
’s a small home. A cottage, almost. Just outside Moscow. And when there’s no snow, the field is full of flowers. The most beautiful site imaginable.”