The discarded headset is floating to his left, disturbed by his movements, and he wonders if he should put it on and try the radios one last time.

No point in wasting time with that. Whatever I was messing with out there didn’t have anything to do with the antennas.

The storage compartment for the ship’s manuals is just out of reach, and he has to unbuckle again to lean far enough over to open it, worry now rising that he won’t be ready in time.

There!

The checklist is in his hands and he opens it, reading too quickly, having to force himself to slow down and reread it.

God, if I’d seen this before, I could have turned the ship automatically!

Someone down there, Kip thinks, decided that with one astronaut aboard each flight, it made good sense to write the checklist so that a rank amateur could follow it.

And even with a dozen glider flights and basic stick and rudder skills, and a couple of fixed-wing flights in a single-engine Cessna in his head, Kip has never felt so much like an amateur.

He checks the time. Twelve minutes to go. Just time enough to learn how to place the small bullet-shaped icon on the attitude indicator in the arms of the moving “V” that is the flight director, the key to keeping the ship in the proper attitude on the way down.

He keeps looking for the information on how to punch an autopilot button and let the ship fly itself, but it either doesn’t exist, or he can’t find it. He’ll have to manually follow the small, projected dot on the attitude indicator all the way and hope for the best—flipping the tail assembly into the split reentry configuration at the right moment, reconfiguring on time, and keeping the engine pointed in the right downward direction until coming through ninety miles up.

Like drinking from a fire hose,he thinks, realizing that he’s actually thinking of reentry as a real possibility and getting way ahead of himself. After all, if the engine doesn’t fire, the rest of it is academic.

“We have a live picture, General,” the duty controller announces, bringing Chris Risen’s eyes around to the front of the room where the slightly fuzzy image of Intrepidis swimming into view, a telescopic shot from the Russian crew.

“Where are they?” Chris asks, moving alongside the controller, a sharp young female captain.

“Twenty-one miles and closing, sir.”

“So, we’ve got a sudden telemetry reactivation, good pressure, Kip apparently back inside, and the cosmonauts within spitting distance. I’d say his impending demise has been greatly exaggerated.”

The captain glances up at the four-star, wondering if she has permission to chuckle, or the need to give him a charity laugh.

She does neither.

“Bastardized Mark Twain,” Chris explains. “Sorry.”

“He has a chance, sir, provided he doesn’t light off his engine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s coming up to a retrofire point for coming down at Mojave in just six or seven minutes, and if he knows that, and doesn’t know the Russians are coming…”

“And if he’s fixed his engine as effectively as he’s apparently fixed some of the radios…”

“Yes, sir. He might try to deorbit, and he’s not a pilot. I mean, I understand he’s had some glider training toward a license, but that’s it.”

The thought of an untrained, unlicensed pilot trying to guide a spacecraft through a precise series of return maneuvers sends a chill up his spine, and he forms a small prayer that, regardless of Kip’s mechanical prowess, the engine won’t fire.

“ASA is trying frantically to reach him and tell him to just sit tight,” the captain adds.

“But no contact?”

She’s shaking her head. “Nothing yet. The Russian crew is trying to signal him with a low-powered laser. But there’s no response.”

Chris Risen glances at the frozen crawl from Kip Dawson’s laptop.

“And he’s written nothing more.”

“Yes, sir. I noticed that.”

“Which means he’s getting ready to try. Captain, get a line to Baikonaur’s Mission Control and make sure the Soyuzcrew is informed what might happen.”

“Yes, sir. See, that’s what I was getting at, General.”

“Sorry?”

“The Soyuzis behind Intrepid,a bit lower but right along his orbital path. If he retrofires at a slight downward angle, he may be thrusting right down the cosmonauts’ throats.”

“Oh, Jesus! Hurry up!”

Kip sits in the command chair staring at the western edge of the planet, wondering why a bright blue light had been sparking intermittently on the horizon line.

But his mind is consumed by a thought that pulls him away from what he’s seeing.

Here he is, ready to die. But what if he doesn’t?

Maybe, he thinks, the CO ₂is winning at last. He feels clearheaded, yet his longing to return and have another stab at life—his desire to see his kids again and use the insights he’s gained—seems somehow cheapened. It’s as if his impending death has suddenly been deemed privileged and noble, and an escape back to life anything but. It’s like the narrative he’s been writing for some future reader—the angst of one solitary man—is actually somehow a small contribution to humankind.

This is stupid,he thinks.

But there’s a part of him protesting that to live through this is to cheat himself of a legacy, to be just a mere survivor, not an example.

An example of what? An example of foolishness? Crying in my laptop for days before figuring out what to do?

Yet the feeling is all too real. It astounds and depresses him. As if deorbiting would be a cop-out, a cowardly retreat.

Kip snorts out loud at the irony.

But that’s not it, he realizes, his eyes flaring wide as he sits up a bit straighter with a smile on his face.

No, that’s not it at all!

What it is, is his father again. It’s his dad’s template for life imprinted in his brain like an indelible operating program, looking for a way even in the eleventh hour to impose duty and sacrifice and stoic acceptance of responsibility over any breath of self-determination.

He is, he realizes, being drawn back to that myopic world like a sailor lured by Sirens, believing not what fills his eyes and his consciousness, but what fits his parental rule book yet again: That doing something for himself is wrong. That speaking his truth is wrong.

My God, I’m thinking like a Calvinist! Surviving is wrong if there’s a chance I might enjoy the result. The only thing missing is a hair shirt.

How tired and old and sad his father had seemed toward the end, and suddenly he understands why. No wonder visiting him was like tiptoeing to the edge of a black hole.

My father’s manual for enduring life. But this time I’ve caught you red-handed, Dad!He looks around at Bill’s bagged remains as if the bag also contains the part of his father that he’s never put to rest.

His voice booms through the diminutive interior. “No more, Dad! No more. I’m going to give this my best shot, and if somehow I succeed, I’m going to have a go at really living like you never did. Like you should have. And you know what? I’m going to do it, even if I die trying. I’m bidding you good-bye, Dad, wherever you are. I love you, but I’m not listening to you anymore. And it’s… it’s time for you to go… to the light, whatever that is, or wherever. Just… go.

There is a tear in the corner of his eye he didn’t expect and the feeling of a weight lifting from him. Only his imagination, of course, but he could swear something slipped away from this small enclosure, something dark and sad.