August 11

Nicolai Rudenko floated in the air lock, watching as Luther wriggled his hips into the lower torso assembly of the EVA suit.

To the diminutive Nicolai, Luther was an exotic giant, with those broad shoulders and legs like pistons. And his skin! While Nicolai had turned pasty during his months aboard ISS, Luther was still a deep and polished brown, a startling contrast to the pale faces that inhabited their otherwise colorless world. Nicolai had already suited up, and now he hovered beside Luther, ready to assist his partner into the EVA suit’s upper torso assembly. They said little to each other, neither man was in the mood for idle chatter.

The two of them had spent a mostly conversationless night sleeping in the air lock, allowing their bodies to adjust to an atmospheric pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch—two thirds that of the space station. The pressure in their suits would be less, at 4.3. The suits could not be inflated any higher, or they would be too stiff and bulky, the joints impossible to flex.

Going directly from a fully pressurized spacecraft into the lower air pressure of an EVA suit was like surfacing too fast from the depths of the ocean. An astronaut could suffer the bends. Nitrogen bubbles formed in the blood, clogging capillaries, cutting off precious oxygen to the brain and spinal cord. The consequences could be devastating, paralysis and stroke. Like deep-sea divers, to give their bodies time to adjust to the changing pressures. The night before a space walk, the EVA crew washed out their lungs with a hundred percent oxygen and shut themselves into the air lock for “the camp-out.” For hours they were trapped together in a small chamber already crammed full of equipment. It was not a place for claustrophobics.

With his arms extended over his head, Luther squirmed into the suit’s hard-shelled upper torso, which was mounted on the air lock wall. It was an exhausting dance, like wriggling into an impossibly small tunnel. At last his head popped out through the hole, and Nicolai helped him close the waist ring, sealing the halves of the suit.

They put on their helmets. As Nicolai looked down to fit his helmet to the torso assembly, he noticed something glistening on the rim of the suit’s neck ring. Just spittle, he thought, and put on the helmet. They donned their gloves. Sealed into their suits, they opened the equipment lock hatch, floated into the adjoining crew lock, and shut the hatch behind them. They were now in an even smaller compartment, barely large enough to contain both the men and their bulky life-support backpacks.

Thirty minutes of “prebreathe” came next. While they inhaled pure oxygen, purging their blood of any last nitrogen, Nicolai floated with his eyes closed, mentally preparing for the space ahead. If they could not get the beta gimbal assembly to unlock, they could not reorient the solar panels toward the sun, they be starved for power. Crippled. What Nicolai and Luther accomplished in the next six hours could well determine the fate of the space station.

Though this responsibility weighed heavily on his tired shoulders, Nicolai was anxious to open the hatch and float out of the lock. To go EVA was like being reborn, the fetus emerging from that small, tight opening, the umbilical restraint dangling as swims out into the vastness of space. Were the situation not so grave, he would be looking forward to it, would be giddily anticipating the freedom of floating in a universe without walls, dazzling blue earth spinning beneath him.

But the images that came to mind, as he waited with his eyes closed for the thirty minutes to pass, were not of spacewalking. What he saw instead were the faces of the dead. He imagined Discovery as she plunged from the sky. He saw the crew, strapped into their seats, bodies shaken like dolls, spines snapping, hearts exploding. Though Mission Control had not told them the details of the catastrophe, the nightmarish visions filled his head, made his heart pound, his mouth turn dry.

“Your thirty minutes are up, guys,” came Emma’s voice over the intercom.

“Time for depress.” Hands clammy with sweat, Nicolai opened his eyes and saw Luther start the depressurization pump. The air was being sucked out, the pressure in the crew lock slowly dropping. If there was a leak in their suits, they would now detect it.

“A-OK?” asked Luther, checking the latches on their umbilical tethers.

“I am ready.” Luther vented the crew lock atmosphere to space. Then he released the handle and pulled open the hatch.

The last air hissed out.

They paused for a moment, clutching the side of the hatch, staring out in awe. Then Nicolai swam out, into the blackness of space.

“They’re coming out now,” said Emma, watching on closed-circuit TV as the two men emerged from the crew lock, umbilical tethers trailing after them. They removed tools from the storage box outside the airlock. Then, pulling themselves from handhold to handhold, they made their way toward the main truss. As they passed by the camera mounted just under the truss, Luther gave a wave.

“You watching the show?” came his voice over the UHF audio system.

“We see you fine on external camera,” said Griggs. “But your EMU cameras aren’t feeding in.”

“Nicolai’s too?”

“Neither one. We’ll try to track down the problem.”

“Okay, well, we’re heading up onto the truss to check out the damage.” The two men moved out of the first camera’s range. For a moment they disappeared from view. Then Griggs said, “There they are,” and pointed to a new screen, where the space-suited were moving toward the second camer’s propelling themselves hand over hand along the top of the truss.

Again they passed out range. They were now in the blind zone of the damaged camera and could no longer be seen.

“Getting close, guys?” asked Emma.

“Almost—almost there,” said Luther, sounding short of breath.

Slow down, she thought. Pace yourselves.

For what seemed like an endless wait, there was only silence from the EVA crew. Emma felt her pulse quicken, her anxiety rising. The station was already crippled and starved for power.

Nothing must go wrong with these repairs. If only Jack was here, she thought. Jack was a talented tinkerer who could rebuild any boat engine or cobble together a shortwave radio from junkyard scraps. In orbit, the most valuable tools are a clever pair of hands.

“Luther?” said Griggs.

There was no answer.

“Nicolai? Luther? Please respond.”

“Shit,” said Luther’s voice.

“What is it? What do you see?” said Griggs.

“I’m looking at the problem right now, and man, it’s a mess. The whole P-6 end of the main truss is twisted around. Discovery must’ve clipped the 2-B array and bent that end right up. Then she swung over and snapped off the S-band antennas.”

“What do you think? Can you fix anything?”

“The S-band’s no problem. We got an ORU for the antennas, and we’ll just replace ‘em. But the port-side solar arrays—forget it. We need a whole new truss on that end.”

“Okay.” Wearily Griggs rubbed his face. “Okay, so we’re definitely down one PVM. I guess we can deal with that. But we must reorient the P-4 arrays, or we’re screwed.” There was a pause as Luther and Nicolai headed back along the main truss. Suddenly they were in camera range, Emma saw them moving slowly past in their bulky suits and enormous backpacks, like deep-sea divers moving through water. They stopped at the P-4 arrays. One of the men floated down the side of the truss and at the mechanism joining the enormous solar wings to the truss backbone.

“The gimbal assembly is bent,” said Nicolai. “It cannot turn.”

“Can you free it up?” asked Griggs.

They heard a rapid exchange of dialogue between Luther and Nicolai. Then Luther said, “How elegant do you want this repair be?”