He thrashed left, then right, trying to dislodge it. He banged hard on his helmet. And still he felt it moving, sliding under comm assembly.

He caught dizzying glimpses of earth, then black space, then earth again, as he flailed and twisted around in a frantic dance.

The wetness slithered into his ear.

“Nicolai? Nicolai, please respond!” said Emma, watching him on the TV monitor. He was turning around and around, gloved hands battering frantically at his helmet. “Luther, he looks like he’s having a seizure!” Luther appeared on camera, moving quickly to assist his EVA partner. Nicolai kept thrashing, shaking his head back and forth.

Emma could hear them on UHF, Luther asking frantically, “What is it, what is it?”

“My ear—It is in my ear—”

“Pain? Does your ear hurt? Look at me!”

Nicolai slapped his helmet again. “It’s going deeper!” he screamed. “Get it out! Get it out!”

“What’s wrong with him?” cried Emma.

“I don’t know! Jesus, he’s panicking—”

“He’s getting too close to the tool stanchion. Get him away before he damages his suit!” On the TV monitor, Luther grabbed his partner by the arm.

“Come on, Nicolai! We’re going back in the air lock.” Suddenly Nicolai clutched at his helmet, as though to rip it off.

“No! Don’t!” screamed Luther, clutching at both of his partner’s arms in a desperate attempt to restrain him. The men thrashed together, umbilical tethers winding, tangling around them.

Griggs and Diana had joined Emma at the TV monitor, and the three of them watched in horror as the drama unfolded outside the station.

“Luther, the tool stanchion!” said Griggs. “Watch your suits!” Even as he said it, Nicolai suddenly and violently twisted in Luther’s grasp.

His helmet slammed into the tool stanchion. A stream of what looked like white mist suddenly spurted out of his faceplate.

“Luther!” cried Emma. “Check his helmet! Check his helmet!”

Luther stared at Nicolai’s faceplate. “Shit, he’s got a crack!” yelled. “I can see air leaking out! He’s decompressing!”

“Tap his emergency 2 and get him in now!” Luther reached over and flipped the emergency oxygen supply switch on Nicolai’s suit. The extra airflow might keep the suit inflated long enough for Nicolai to make it back alive. Still struggling to keep his partner under control, Luther began to haul toward the air lock.

“Hurry,” murmured Griggs. “Jesus, hurry.” It took precious minutes for Luther to drag his partner into the crew lock, for the hatch to be closed and the atmosphere repressurized. They didn’t wait for the usual air-lock integrity check, pumped the pressure straight up to one atmosphere.

The hatch swung open, and Emma dove through into the equipment lock.

Luther had already removed Nicolai’s helmet and was frantically trying to pull him out of the upper torso shell. Working together, they wriggled a struggling Nicolai out of the rest of EVA suit. Emma and Griggs dragged him through the station and into the RSM, where there was full power and light. He was screaming all the way, clawing at the left side of his comm-assembly cap.

Both eyes were swollen shut, the lids ballooned out. She touched cheeks and felt crepitus—air trapped in the subcutaneous tissues from the decompression. A line of spittle glistened on his jaw.

“Nicolai, calm down!” said Emma. “You’re all right, do you hear me? You’ll be all right!” He shrieked and yanked off the comm cap. It went flying away.

“Help me get him onto the board!” said Emma.

It took all hands to set up the medical restraint board, strip off Nicolai’s ventilation long johns, and strap him down. They had fully restrained now. Even as Emma checked his heart and lungs and examined his abdomen, he continued to whimper and rock his head from side to side.

“It’s his ear,” said Luther. He had shed his bulky EVA suit and was staring wide-eyed at the tormented Nicolai. “He said there was something in his ear.”

Emma looked closer at Nicolai’s face. At the line of spittle that traced from his chin, up the curve of his left jaw. To his ear.

She turned on the battery-powered otoscope and inserted the earpiece into Nicolai’s canal.

The first thing she saw was blood. A bright drop of it, glistening in the otoscope’s light. Then she focused on the eardrum.

It was perforated. Instead of the gleam of the tympanic membrane, she saw a black and gaping hole. Barotrauma was her first thought. Had the sudden decompression blown out his eardrum?

She checked the other eardrum, but it was intact.

“I’m puzzled,” she turned off the otoscope and looked at Luther.

“What happened out there?”

“I don’t know. We were both taking a breather. Resting up before we brought the tools back in. One minute he’s fine, the minute he’s panicking.”

“I need to look at his helmet.” She left the RSM and headed back to the equipment lock. She swung open the hatch and gazed in, at the two EVA suits, which Luther had remounted on the wall.

“What are you doing, Watson?” said Griggs, who’d followed her.

“I want to see how big the crack was. How fast he was decompressing.” She went to the smaller EVA suit, labeled “Rudenko,” and removed the helmet. Peering inside, she saw a dab of moisture adhering to the cracked faceplate. She took out a cotton swab from one of her patch pockets and touched the tip to the fluid. It was thick and gelatinous.

Blue-green.

A chill slithered up her spine.

Kenichi was in here, she suddenly remembered. The night he died, we found him in this air lock. He has somehow contaminated it.

At once she was backing out in panic, colliding with Griggs in the hatchway. “Out!” she cried. “Get out now!”

“What is it?”

“I think we’ve got a biohazard! Close the hatch! Close it!” They both scrambled out of the air lock, into the node.

Together they slammed the hatch shut and sealed it tight. They exchanged tense glances.

“You think anything leaked out?” Griggs said.

Emma scanned the node, searching for any droplets spinning through the air. At first glance she saw nothing. Then a flash of movement, a telltale sparkle, seemed to dance at the furthest periphery of her vision.

She turned to stare at it. And it was gone.

Jack sat at the surgeon’s console in Special Vehicle Operations, tension growing with every passing minute as he watched the clock on the front screen. The voices coming over his headset were speaking with new urgency, the chatter fast and staccato, as reports flew back and forth between the controllers and ISS flight director Woody Ellis. Similar in layout to the shuttle Flight Room and housed in the same building, the SVO room was a smaller, more specialized version, manned by a team dedicated only to space station operations. Over the last thirty-six hours, since Discovery had collided with ISS, this room had been the scene of relentlessly mounting anxiety, laced with intermittent panic.

With so many people in the room, so many hours of unrelieved stress, the air itself smelled of crisis, the mingled sweat and stale coffee.

Nicolai Rudenko was suffering from decompression injuries and clearly needed to be evacuated. Because there was only one lifeboat—the Crew Return Vehicle—the entire crew was coming home. This would be a controlled evacuation. No shortcuts, no mistakes. No panic. NASA had run through this simulation many times before, but a CRV evac had never actually been done, not with five living, breathing human beings aboard.

Not with someone I love aboard.

Jack was sweating, almost sick with dread.

He kept glancing at the clock, cross-checking it with his watch.

They had waited for ISS’s orbital path to reach the right position before vehicle separation could proceed. The goal was to bring the CRV down in the most direct approach possible to a landing site immediately accessible to medical personnel. The entire crew would need assistance.