Page 68 of Stars

“Nyet. It stayed onIndependenceovernight. But they’re transferring the corpse on board today. Phillipa and Rafael want to run some tests. After that, we’ll keep him in the Japanese lab until we bring him home onFreedom.”

Sergey nodded. “I want to know who he was and what happened to him. If there’s justice that can be had…” He sighed. “You are doing your EVA today? Boarding the satellite?”

“Yes. Sarah’s ready to disarm the nuclear warhead.” After Jim’s EVA, NASA sent Sarah detailed specs on the Russian nuke from the CIA files. She’d spent hours studying the diagrams, tracing components on the technical blueprints until she could identify each part blindfolded.

“And you? You’re ready?”

Sasha nodded.

Sergey arched both his eyebrows.

“I’m as ready as I will ever be.”

“I will be at Roscosmos for this,” Sergey said softly. “We will be connected with NASA for the entire EVA. So I will be there, Sashunya. With you.”

“You’re always with me.” Sasha fished Sergey’s ring out from beneath his T-shirt and kissed it.

A watery smile spread over Sergey’s face. He kissed his fingers and pressed them to the screen.

“I love you.”

Sasha cut the call and dressed quickly, pulling on the blue utility pants with Velcro panels, wool socks, and NASA T-shirt that made up the ISS uniform. He brushed his teeth and shaved, bobbing in zero g. Everything was different, from the dry toothpaste he had to swallow to the special shave gel that stuck to his skin so it wouldn't float away. He shaved quickly, then cleaned the razor and his face with a wet wipe. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to smooth down the strands that haloed his face. First morning in space, check.

He floated toUnity, hearing the rest of the crew before he arrived. Phillipa and Mark had heated up a half dozen breakfast meals, from dehydrated quiche to hockey-puck pancakes injected with syrup. Orange-juice bags floated over the table, and the astronauts took turns squeezing lines into their open mouths. They laughed, easy banter floating like the food they launched at each other, shooting dehydrated banana slices and pieces of sausage across the room for each other to eat out of the air.

“How was your first night in space, Sasha?” Phillipa asked. “How did you sleep?”

“Very well.” He’d fallen asleep almost as soon as his eyes had closed, thirty-six hours of exhaustion and running at full speed catching up with him, on top of the week’s worth of prep for the mission. “I don’t remember falling asleep.”

“It’s usually one or the other. You sleep like a baby or you can’t sleep at all,” Phillipa said. “My first time up here, I think I swam the entire stack a dozen times before I could get my body to stop buzzing. I was so wired.”

Rafael nodded. “Me too. I was in the cupola for hours, just watching Earth rotate and rotate.”

“I’m with you, Sasha,” Joey said. “When it’s lights out, I’m out. There’s no sleeping in on Sunday here, so I grab every second I can get.”

After they ate, Houston ordered them to run maintenance checks and perform the daily station-keeping activities while Sasha, Mark, and Sarah began their prebreathe for the EVA. As they hunkered in the airlock, Mark ran through the EVA again, step by step, minute by minute.

Then it was time to don their EMU suits. Sasha didn’t have one sized and fitted exactly for him yet, so he was borrowing one from another astronaut of similar height and weight. He and Mark took turns swimming up into the suits’ bulky outer torsos and then pulled their suit pants up. Once Sasha was done, Mark helped Sarah dress. All three strapped on their Snoopy communication caps and locked their helmets into place.

“Radio check, one, two.”

Sarah and Sasha gave Mark a thumbs up.

“Once we’re on board, plug your oxygen hoses intoFreedom’s supply,” Mark said. His voice was tinny over the radio. “It’s going to be a forty-seven-minute orbital maneuver to catch up to the Soviet satellite. When we arrive, we don’t have a moment to spare. We start the EVA as soon as we’re in place.” To save time, they’d finished all their EVA prep on the ISS. “Are you both ready?”

Sarah and Sasha nodded.

“Then let’s roll,” Mark said. “Alpha, we are transitioning toFreedomand preparing for undocking.”

“Roger,Freedom,” Phillipa called. “Good luck.”

* * *

Phillipa and Joeywatched from theUnitymodule as Phillipa commanded the station’s operations through her laptop and communicated with Mark via the space-to-space radio. “RPOP program loaded,Freedom.” The ISS and her two docked Orion capsules were on the central display monitor insideUnity.

“Roger, RPOP initialized,” Sasha answered. RPOP was Rendezvous and Proximity Operations, the computer program with the millions of preconfigured microcalculations that were required to separate two massive machines moving at 17,500 miles per hour with only millimeters of give.

“Looking good,Freedom. Sasha, you taking this one out?”