The space station shuddered, and in the ensuing quake, she caught a disorienting glimpse of the node walls tilting away, of Griggs’s Thinkpad spinning in midair and Diana’s terrified face, slick with sweat.

The lights flickered and went out. In the darkness, a red warning light flashed on and off, on and off.

A siren shrieked.

Shuttle flight director Randy Carpenter was watching death on the front screen.

At the instant of the orbiter’s impact, he felt the blow as surely as if a fist had been rammed into his own sternum, and he actually lifted his hand and pressed it to his chest.

For a few seconds, the Flight Control Room went absolutely silent.

Stunned faces stared at the front wall. On the center was the world map with the shuttle trajectory trace. To the right the frozen RPOP display, Discovery and ISS represented by wireframe diagrams. The orbiter was now melded like a crumpled toy the silhouette of ISS. Carpenter felt his lungs suddenly expand, realized that, in his horror, he had forgotten to breathe.

The FCR erupted in chaos.

“Flight, we have no voice downlink,” he heard Capcom say.

“Discovery is not responding.”

“Flight, we’re still getting data stream from TCS—”

“Flight, no drop in orbiter cabin pressure. No indication of oxygen leak—”

“What about ISS?” Carpenter snapped. “Do we have downlink from them?” SVO’s trying to hail them. The station pressure is dropping—”

“How low?”

“It’s down to seven hundred ten … six hundred ninety. Shit, they’re decompressing fast!”

Breach in the station’s hull! thought Carpenter.

But that wasn’t his problem to fix, it belonged to Special Vehicle Operations, the hall.

The propulsion systems engineer suddenly broke into the comm loop.

“Flight, I’m reading RCS ignition, F2U, F3U, and F1U. Someone’s working the orbiter controls.” Carpenter’s head snapped to attention. The RPOP display was still locked and frozen, with no new images appearing. But Propulsion’s report told him that Discovery’s steering rockets had fired. It had to be more than just a random discharge, the crew trying to move the orbiter away from ISS. But until they had radio downlink, they could not confirm the orbiter crew’s status. They could not confirm they were alive.

It was the most terrible scenario of all, the one he feared most.

A dead crew on an orbiting shuttle. Though Houston could control most of the orbiter’s maneuvers by ground command, they could not bring it home without crew help. A functioning human being was necessary to flip the arming switches for the OMS deorbit burn.

It took a human hand to deploy the air-data probes and to lower the landing gear for touchdown. Without someone at the controls to perform these functions, Discovery would remain in orbit, a ghost ship circling silently around the earth until its orbit decayed from now, and it fell to earth in a streak of fire. It was this that passed through Carpenter’s head as the seconds ticked by, as panic slowly gathered force around him in the FCR. He could not afford to think about the space station, whose crew even now might be in the agonal throes of a decompressive death. His focus had to remain on Discovery. On his crew, whose survival seemed less and less likely with every second of silence that passed.

Then, suddenly, they heard the voice. Faint, halting.

“Control, this is Discovery. Houston. Houston…”

“It’s Hewitt!” said Capcom. “Go ahead, Discovery!”

“ … major anomaly … could not avoid collision. damage to orbiter appears minimal…”

“Discovery, we need visual on ISS.”

“Can’t deploy Ku antenna—closed circuit gone—”

“Do you know the extent of their damage?”

“Impact tore off their solar truss. I think we punched a hole in their hull…” Carpenter felt sick. They still had heard no word from the ISS crew. No confirmation they had survived.

“What is your crew’s status?” asked Capcom.

“Kittredge is barely responding. Hit his head on the aft control panel. And the crew on middeck—I don’t know about them—”

“What’s your status, Hewitt?”

“Trying to … oh, God, my head…” There was a soft sob.

Then she said, “It’s alive.”

“Did not copy.”

“The stuff floating around—the spill from the body bag. It’s moving all around me. It’s inside me. I can see it moving under my skin, and it’s alive.” A chill crawled all the way up Carpenter’s spine.

Hallucinations.

A head injury. They were losing her, losing their only hope of getting the orbiter down intact.

“Flight, we’re approaching burn target,” warned FDO. “We can’t afford to miss it.”

“Tell her to go for deorbit,” Carpenter ordered.

“Discovery,” said Capcom. “Go to APU prestart.” There was no response.

“Discovery?” repeated Capcom. “You’re going to miss your burn target!” As the seconds stretched to minutes, Carpenter’s muscles tensed, and his nerves felt like live wires. He gave a sigh of when Hewitt finally responded.

“Middeck crew’s in landing position. They’re both unconscious. I’ve strapped them in. But I can’t get Kittredge into his LES—”

“Screw his reentry suit!” said Carpenter. “Let’s not miss that target. Just get the bird down!”

“Discovery, we advise you proceed directly to APU prestart. Just strap him into the starboard seat, and you get on with deorbit.” They heard a ragged sigh of pain. Then Hewitt said, “My head—having trouble focusing…”

“We roger that, Hewitt.” Capcom’s voice became gentler.

Almost soothing. “Look, Jill. We know you’re the one in the commander’s seat now. We know you’re hurting. But we can guide in on autoland, all the way to wheel stop. If you just stay with us.”

She let out a tortured sob. “APU prestart complete,” she whispered. “Loading OPS 3-0-2. Tell me when, Houston.”

“Go for deorbit burn,” said Carpenter.

Capcom relayed the decision. “Go for deorbit burn, Discovery.” And he added softly, “Now, let’s get you home.”

In the hellish darkness, Emma braced herself for the shock of decompression. She knew exactly what to expect. How she would die. There would be the roar of air rushing out of the hull. The sudden popping of her eardrums. The rapid crescendo of pain as her lungs expanded and her alveoli exploded. As the air pressure drops toward vacuum, the boiling temperature of liquid also drops, it becomes the same as the freezing temperature. One instant, the blood is boiling. In the next, it freezes solid in the veins.

The red warning lights, the siren, confirmed her worst fears. It was a Class 1 emergency. They had a breached hull, and their air was leaking into space.

She felt her ears pop. Evacuate now!

She and Diana dove into the hab, flying through gloom lit only by the bright red flashes of the warning panels. The siren was so loud everyone had to yell to hear each other. In her panic, Emma bounced into Luther, who grabbed her before she could ricochet off in a new direction.

“Nicolai’s already in the CRV. You and Diana next!” he shouted.

“Wait. Where’s Griggs?” said Diana.

“Just get in!” Emma turned. In the psychedelic flash of red warning lights, she saw no one else in the hab. Griggs had not followed them. A strange, fine mist seemed to hang in the gloom, but there was no hurricane whoosh of air sucking them toward the breach.

And no pain, she suddenly realized. She’d felt her ears pop, but there was no chest pain, no symptoms of explosive decompression.

We can save this station. We have time to isolate the leak.

She did a quick swimmer’s turn, kicked off the wall, and went flying back toward the node.

“Hey! What the fuck, Watson?” yelled Luther.

“Don’t give up the ship!” She was moving so fast she slammed against the edge of the hatchway, bashing her elbow. Here was the pain now, not from decompression but from her own stupid clumsiness. Her arm was throbbing as she kicked off again, into the node.