He was struck by the land’s flatness, the way it barely seemed to protrude above the ocean’s skin. In fact Florida was indeed a karst topography, a bed of limestone laid down in a shallow, ancient sea, and the lakes were just hollowed-out sinkholes in the limestone. Little separation between land and sea.
But his view was never stable. The spacecraft turned, slowly, so that its big, wing-like solar panels caught the sunlight. If Henry craned his head he could see the panels, jutting out like an airplane’s wings from the hull of the ship, the solar cells gleaming gold, as the Soyuz turned like a flower to the light.
They flew into darkness: what Geena called the shadow, the dark half of the orbit. Reflections from the cabin lights on the windows made it hard to see out at such moments, but still Henry could make out continents outlined by cities, chains of them like streetlights along the coasts, and penetrating the interiors along the great river valleys. The strings of human-made light, the orange and yellow-white spider-web challenging the night, were oddly inspiring.
Over the Pacific’s wrinkled hide he saw a dim glow: it was the light of the Moon.
And then they flew towards the sunlight once more. It was quite sudden: a blue arc, perfectly spherical, suddenly outlined the hidden Earth, and then the first sliver of sun poked above the horizon. The shadows of clouds fled across the ocean towards him, and then the clouds turned to the colour of molten copper. The lightening ocean was grey as steel, burnished and textured. The horizon brightened, through orange to white, and the colours of life leaked back into the world.
He had the feeling he could spend his life up here and not tire of this.
But then, over North America, he saw a high, swirling stream of smoke. It seemed to flatten out at some high atmospheric layer, then plumed out towards the horizon. It was from the ruins of Washington State: steam and smoke and volcanic ash, disfiguring the face of Earth itself.
Eventually Geena told him he was free to leave his seat and get out of his spacesuit.
Helmet, gloves, zippers: he had to wriggle to get his arms and body out of the upper section, and then shove hard at the tight leggings to free himself. But as soon as he did, there he was floating in the air, dressed in his white T-shirt and longjohns, in a freedom he’d never imagined.
The closed-over walls of the cabin seemed roomy. With a push of a fingertip he made himself float up to the control panels fixed to the roof, and with a gentle shove he could spin in the air, so he was looking down on the couch, and the spacesuit which lay there like a beached whale. He tried making himself twist further, but he found that if he moved his head too quickly nausea washed over him.
Geena, moving with the slippery grace of a dolphin, opened up the hatch to the orbital module and beckoned him. Henry used his hands to pull himself after Geena through the tunnel, but — unlike Geena — he caught his knee on a control box, his foot on the lip of the hatchway. Two bruises already, and he hadn’t even gotten to Station yet. Anyhow, legs didn’t seem too much use up here, save as obstacles to movement; already his hands and arms, which would have to do most of the work in zero G, ached vaguely.
In the upper orbital module, he felt disoriented. The little box-room, its walls lined with equipment, seemed much bigger than on the ground. Not only that: it looked different, its layout subtly altered, as if some unknown engineer had replaced the compartment he’d clambered through on the ground with this distorted twin.
Geena was working the equipment. “Lunch time,” she said.
Henry shrugged. “I’m not hungry. I’m not even thirsty.”
“Bullshit,” Geena said precisely. “I’m dehydrated from the launch, and so are you. You have to learn to live up here.” She had pressurized the water tank, and now she pressed open the valve.
A sphere of water emerged — a little thumb-sized liquid planet, shimmering and wobbling, complex waves crossing its surface, the cabin’s floodlights returning a mesh of highlights. It swam towards Henry; he watched, fascinated. There were bubbles of air, trapped inside the blob of water, like so many tiny jelly-fish, showing no desire to rise to the surface. When they touched they merged, little silvery meniscuses gleaming.
He opened his lips and let the blob just sail in; the surface broke against his back teeth, and his mouth was flooded with crisp cool water. Half of it went down his air pipe, and he coughed, expelling a haze of tiny droplets.
Geena laughed.
Henry went back to the water valve and practised, until he could suck a ball of water into his lips without wasting a drop.
Geena dug out a plastic bag of grain. She shook it before Henry. “Buckwheat porridge,” she said. She squirted hot water into it, kneaded it, then pulled it open. He dug his spoon into it, but when he pulled out a spoonful, the porridge sprayed out of the bag and began floating around the cabin.
“Not enough water,” said Geena. “Time to feed the fish.”
She began pushing herself around the cabin, gulping mouthfuls of the porridge out of the air. Henry followed suit. It was fun to chase down the little crumbs, but the porridge was very dry.
After that, there was an awkward moment. How do you ask your ex-wife how to go to the bathroom?
Geena was predictably brisk. She opened up a panel in the wall, revealing a small, conventional-looking privy. There was no partition, no place to get privacy.
Henry said, “I’ll wait.”
“Like hell,” Geena said. “You have to learn how to do this. Come here.” She turned a switch; a fan started up with a clatter.
And so Henry found himself floating around with his dick in his hand, forcing himself to pee into a suction pump, while his ex-wife looked on, murmuring encouragement.
A cute stream of golden globules swam into the bowl and were whisked away, like something out of a Disney cartoon.
Geena said, “And later, the solid wastes—”
“Much later, Geena. Much, much later.”
For twelve hours the Soyuz, in a lower orbit, chased the Station around the curve of Earth. Geena worked through the rendezvous manoeuvres with care and skill. She was patient but tense, Henry saw; he sensed there wasn’t much time to spare.
Two hundred and fifty miles out, Geena switched on a system she called Mera, a long-range scanner. The docking was to be pretty much automated, it seemed. At twenty miles another short-range system called Igla turned itself on, and the Station showed up as a blob in a little TV screen.
The Station was the greatest construction ever assembled by humans off the planet. But it looked trivial, like a party favour, suspended over the blue curve of Earth.
The Soyuz worked its way smoothly through its final series of burns. Each thrust was a smooth, sharp push in the back, a rumble of the big engine behind. The smaller attitude thrusters sounded like hollow punches, like someone hitting a barrel with a sledgehammer.
And now the Soyuz turned again, and the Station swam back into Henry’s view, close enough now to make out detail.
It was a rough L-shape. Its spine was a string of modules, blocky cylinders joined nose to nose. Out from the final module sprouted an open spar — Henry could see Earth clouds through its structure — and there were delicate, purplish solar panels fixed like wings to the spar, and to the other modules.
It looked, Henry thought, more Soviet-era Russian than American.
Geena leaned towards him. “The tourist guide,” she said. “That spine of modules is the heart of the Station. There’s the Service Module, and the FGB. Both Russian-built, similar to Mir core modules.” They looked like two fat Soyuz craft, joined nose to nose. “Next we have the Resource Node, which links the Russian and American halves of the Station, and then the US-built Laboratory Module…” The last was unmistakeable, with its giant “USA” and stars-and-stripes. A black-painted Soyuz was stuck nose-first to one port, like a suckling pig to a teat.