by Chris Jones
“Good to know,” O’Keefe said, signing off.
The five temporary crewmates were in the middle of another round of hugs when the ground radioed back in: “That concludes the event. Congratulations to Expedition Six on a good flight, and we’ll see you home shortly.”
“Thanks Houston,” Bowersox said. “It’s tough to give up command of a wonderful ship like this. But it always comes, and you have to be ready for it.”
Bowersox still wasn’t. If he had learned anything in his time in space, it was how much living in that environment—the loneliness of it, the enchantment, the weightlessness, the views, the friendships built, and the memories made—had made him softer, more feeling. Highs were higher than they were on the ground, and now, as he had learned three months ago, he knew that the lows were lower, too. Just as he was about to fly again, about to do what he had dreamed of doing since he was a child in his father’s front seat, his pilot’s cool left him. And he had to admit finally, at least to himself, to the feeling that he had been afraid to give a name to, especially knowing that so many people were waiting so anxiously for him on the ground: in his heart of hearts, he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to hide away in the quiet, sleeping against a wall of water, and waking up every morning to look through his window and see without fail sunrise or sunset, one always on the heels of the other.
But the choice was not his. Already he was reverting, returning to that lesser state he had known before he had rocketed to this beautiful place. Like an inmate shoved back into his cell after yard, he was practically pushed through the hatch and into Soyuz. Along with Budarin and Pettit, he folded himself inside a vehicle with a volume only a little larger than the interior size of a Dodge Neon. They might have liked for it to feel at least like a tank.
Expedition Six took one last look through the still-open hatch, back into station and at the two men who had taken their places. In that moment, the five of them were at the starts of their own incredible journeys, but three of them had a radically different destination coming into view. It was a hard farewell, and everybody’s voices had gone quiet for it. They spoke to one another as though they had just finished throwing dirt on the casket.
“Bye, guys,” Malenchenko said.
“Have a great trip,” Lu said, snapping one last portrait when the hatch began to swing shut.
“Luck and success to you,” Budarin said just before it closed tight, perhaps unsure who needed the blessing more.
· · ·
Expedition Six pulled on their spacesuits inside the Soyuz TMA-1’s orbital module before floating down into the descent capsule and closing yet another hatch behind them. (Budarin, now in command, had the honor of severing last ties.) Bowersox, who would act as Budarin’s copilot, took the left-hand seat. Pettit dropped into the one on the right. Budarin finally took the driver’s seat in the center. Lying on their backs with their knees pulled up toward their chests, and with their legs already beginning to cramp, Expedition Six went through their preflight checklists, a series of procedures designed to make sure that their bubble wasn’t going to burst the instant it began floating free. After they had finished, Budarin needed only to nod at Bowersox, who nodded back before the pair pressed the buttons and threw the switches that kicked off their return to earth. It was almost shocking to Bowersox how such a simple operation could have so much weight in it.
Exactly 160 days, 21 hours, and 50 minutes since they had last felt gravity’s pull, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit heard the pins and latches that tied them to station unhinge, and they could feel the gentle spring ejection system that began to push the two vessels far enough apart to make it hard to remember that they had ever been one.
Unlike Expedition Five, who had watched their old haunt disappear through the shuttle’s big windows, Expedition Six saw only the hatch that they had passed through grow smaller on the two monitors that had flickered to life in front of them. It was as though they had to say their last goodbyes through a filter.
“We are seeing separation,” said the Russian ground at TsUP—Mission Control in Moscow. “Good luck guys, and a soft landing to you.”
“Safe journeys, guys,” Ed Lu said, watching their leaving, his hands pressed against glass. “Have a safe landing. We’ll see you in six months.”
“Good luck returning home,” said the ground.
As with their launch, Expedition Six’s first omens weren’t everything they might have hoped for. It was crowded inside the capsule—Pettit actually had cargo stowed on his lap—and one of their cooling fans didn’t work. They began feeling the first waves of claustrophobia. And they had hours to go, a goodbye stretched to the point of breaking.
On the monitors, Pettit watched the station’s hatch continue to shrink. He marveled and smiled at how only minutes before, he had passed through it as easily as walking through a door, and now it was slammed shut to him and out of reach. The sudden gulf spurred him into thinking about the orders of home—house, street, neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, hemisphere, planet—and how the farther he had traveled, the farther he could be from his front door and still feel as though he had returned. When he went to the corner store, he wasn’t home again until he was back on his couch. When he had jetted off to a foreign country, he had felt as though he was home as soon as someone stamped his passport. Now, he thought, he was well on his way to digging his two feet into solid ground, and in that instant, he would have made it all the way home, even though his front door would remain half a world away.
By the end of his dreaming, station had almost disappeared. It had looked at times as though it was pulling away from them, rather than the other way around, and in that moment, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit felt a little of what their wives had felt when they had first gone away. For the first time, they felt as though they were the ones who were being left, and if they were being honest with themselves, it hurt worse than leaving. From the seat he had taken high behind technicians at TsUP—in the sort of balcony that old movie theaters had, with a grand view of the giant screens at the front of the room—O’Keefe had seen just enough to whistle out his first happy gust. He had been trying to keep his nerves in check when he had made small talk with Expedition Six and asked about how they wanted their steaks. But now, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit, having innocently come to represent the future of the American space program, were safe after undocking, and they were getting safer all the time.
O’Keefe’s Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, was seated next to him. “Everything is going smoothly,” he said, and O’Keefe nodded, a whisper more of the tension that had stiffened his spine easing out of him. He looked across at Bill Readdy and Paul Pastorek, once again by his side, and he smiled at each of them, but mostly O’Keefe smiled to himself. Expedition Seven’s safe passage had been half of the gamble. Now, the other half—the half that had kept him awake for so many nights—looked as though it might pay off, too. Relief washed over him. Suddenly, he was exhausted.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. He had a little less than four hours before Expedition Six was scheduled to touch down on the Kazakh steppes. Watched pots and all that, O’Keefe decided to head back to his hotel and catch a short nap. He put his head on his pillow, and with the speed of a man who at last has nothing to worry about, he fell asleep, snoring softly.
· · ·
Expedition Six made one and a half passes around earth in their tiny raft, waiting for the go-ahead to spark the de-orbit burn rockets that would slow their velocity only a little, but more than enough to drop them into earth’s atmosphere. They filled the time taking salt tablets and drinking bags of water, trying to stave off the sickness that would follow their return to gravity. Pettit and Bowersox hoped aloud that their bladders would hold up. Following Russian custom, they had eschewed the diapers they would have normally worn.
In between swigs, Bowersox and Budarin, speaking to each other mostly in Russian, tried to get a happy rhythm g
oing in this new, old machine. They were having some trouble.
“We need to disconnect—” Bowersox began before Budarin put up his hand to interrupt him.
“Yeah, yeah, we will.”
And then, while Bowersox read off various gauges, glancing every so often at his checklist to make sure the readings were what they should have been, Budarin—the expert—asked him about the order of things.
“Do we enter Format 45 now?” Budarin asked.
“Yes,” Bowersox answered after consulting his book of instructions, as though they were about to build a piece of Ikea furniture, not about to rocket through space.
“Okay, we’re entering that.”
The seeming confusion prompted a different, harsher voice to cut in from Russian ground control. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you all right?” The concern was justified. A delay of just a few seconds in firing the rockets could see Expedition Six land in the middle of the ocean rather than on the Kazakh steppes.
“Yes, we are sure. We are fine,” Budarin said, and right on time, the rockets lit up, pressing the men back into their seats. They recounted for the technicians on the ground their decreasing speed, measured in meters per second: first they read out the length of time that had passed since they had ignited the rockets, and next they relayed their loss of velocity.
“… 17 seconds, 18 meters per second,” Bowersox said.
“… 53 seconds, 23 meters,” Budarin continued. “It’s all according to schedule.”
“Yes,” Bowersox said, running his finger down a long list. “These numbers are exactly right.”
“… 1:05, 29 meters … 1:17, 35 meters … 1:25, 38 meters … 90 seconds … all parameters are normal … 2 minutes, 55 meters … fuel is okay … everything’s okay.”
Russian ground control urged him to keep reporting the time and change in velocity. “Give the impulse,” they said. “Don’t worry about the fuel.”
“… 3:15, 90 meters … 3:20, 91 meters … 3:30, 96 meters … 3:35, 99 meters … 3:40, 101 meters … 3:47, 104 meters … 3:50, 105 meters … 3:55, 107 meters … 4 minutes, 110 meters … 4:05, 112 meters … 4:10, 115 meters …”
And with every passing count, Soyuz TMA-1 inched closer to falling out of orbit.
Bowersox continued reading from his instruction manual. It was concerned only with the technical aspects of flight, not the emotional repercussions of it. It said nothing about what they should be feeling. “It’s written here—” Bowersox said, lifting the page toward Budarin so that he could see.
“Yes, we will do that,” Budarin said.
Bowersox continued running his finger along the pages. “On page 95, it says we need to wait until—”
“That is already open.”
“Display off,” Bowersox said, reaching out in front of him to flick another switch. “I’m turning to page 96.”
“How is the pressure?” the ground asked, knowing that with the turn of only another page or two, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit would no longer be astronauts.
“The pressure is good,” Budarin replied.
“The engine is working very smoothly,” Bowersox announced above the last noise of the firing rockets. He sounded a little surprised.
· · ·
From their vantage point on the ground, the technicians at TsUP dug in for what looked like another routine return for Soyuz. Lines of expected data ran across their monitors. Everything was normal. Everything was clockwork. Everything was quiet, as it was in the dark city that slept around them, most of Moscow having turned in along with Sean O’Keefe. But spring was creeping up on them, and the nights were shorter now, and soon dawn would break. The day was forecast to start with clouds and rain, but even bad weather couldn’t dampen the good feeling that summer was finally on its way. After all, the rain would only help with the melt. The back of another long winter had been broken. There would be fewer mice shivering in corners, huddling against the cold, for the cats to catch.
· · ·
After the burn, the astronaut trio settled a little more deeply into their seats, having pushed through the first real force that had been applied to their bodies since their liftoff in the shuttle. It was exhilarating, but it was also a shock to their systems, like jumping into a cold ocean after having spent a long afternoon lying on the beach.
“Everything okay over there, Don?” Bowersox asked in English.
“Yeah,” Pettit said, trying to find the right words to describe the sensation. “That was a nice kick in the pants, you know?”
“It feels like an afterburner lighting, doesn’t it?” Bowersox said, recalling their times in jets, a feeling that for him, at least, was like a green flag, a signal that he was about to enjoy some action.
“Yes, that’s a good description of it,” Pettit said. “It feels like an afterburner …”
Pettit was suddenly distracted by the luggage sitting on his lap. He wanted to do something with it before things really started getting heavy. “So it looks like we have about five minutes,” he said, referring to the countdown until razdolina—the forceful separation of the orbital and propulsion modules. Soon, there would only be their little bell.
“I have a whole bunch of stuff which I’ll shove up underneath a cosmonaut panel—”
“What do you have?” Bowersox asked.
“I’ve got neshtatny,” Pettit said, using the Russian word for a few of the books he held, detailing what to do in an emergency.
“Oh, you’ve got your neshtatny and Nikolai’s neshtatny,” Bowersox said, looking across at his weighed-down friend.
“Yeah, and I’ve got a reference book,” Pettit said, holding up a thick Soyuz manual.
“Do you want to give them to me?” Bowersox asked.
“I’ll find a place for them,” Pettit said, a little proudly. He knew that he was the third member of a three-man crew, the closest thing to ballast among the breathing things on board. But he didn’t want to be a burden, and he didn’t want to be carried.
Just then, it started to look as though all three of them would have to be more independent than they might have thought. While Bowersox and Pettit were talking, Budarin was running into some problems with the radio. It was cutting in and out, and whenever it happened to be in, it was next to useless. Budarin and the ground filled the clear patches by asking each other again and again whether they were getting through.
“Can you hear us?”
“Yes, can you hear us?”
“Yes, can you …”
At last, the communication lines opened wide enough for Russian ground control to ask how the trip was going.
“Everything is good,” Budarin replied. “Everything is calm.”
In English, Bowersox and Pettit began thinking through the rest of their return: what happened when, what happened next. After the orbital and propulsion modules were jettisoned, what was left of their ship would rock back and forth all the while it dropped toward earth, quickly at first, but slowed by friction. A drogue parachute would open. A much larger parachute would open after sixteen pyrotechnic bolts exploded, and their capsule would float down more gingerly. The heat shield at the bottom of their capsule and the outer pane of their windows would strip away. Their seats would cock into a more upright position. A second before impact, just a meter from earth’s hard surface, six small rockets would fire to soften their landing. And finally, a thump. The rescue teams waiting for them would spring into action, opening the capsule’s hatch, lifting Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit free of their cradles, and ferrying them onto a military helicopter. It would fly them to a plane idling on a runway at Astana, Kazakhstan, which would, in turn, fly them to Star City, where their wives would be waiting for them.
No matter how often they ran through the stages of their flight, the last one always involved hugs.
“Ken?” Budarin said, interrupting.
“Da?”
“We’ve done half our task,” Budarin said in Russian. “Now we
’re really going to have some fun.”
Budarin spoke the last word in English. In a telling linguistic void, there was no Russian equivalent, and both Budarin’s sentiment and his expression of it made Bowersox laugh.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Budarin said, smiling in return.
The ground cut in. “For six minutes, you’ll have a communications break from us, but it doesn’t mean you should be silent.”
“You’ll hear us moving around,” Budarin said, “trying to squeeze into our seats. Our legs are cramping.” Looking across at his crewmates, he said, “Make sure your visors are closed.”
Until then, they could have kept their helmet visors open, hoping to stave off their feelings of being buried alive. The time for them to close up tight had come.
Bowersox, however, was occupied by other things. After he had switched off that display, it had occurred to him how easy it might have been for him to hit the wrong button—all of these small plastic squares lined up like bricks, tight against the next, and each of them looking, more or less, exactly like the others.
“You know, there’s a good chance you might hit the wrong button,” he said to Budarin.
“There’s a chance,” Budarin said. “I know what you mean. But don’t worry. Everything’s okay.” He squinted at the instrument panel. “Check your visors, guys.”
They did.
“Visors are closed,” Budarin told the ground. “Separation program is on. Separation in fifty seconds … in thirty seconds … in five … four … three … two … one!”
For Pettit, the next second was the longest of the flight. If the explosive bolts that held the orbital and propulsion modules in place didn’t work, Expedition Six were done for. Their heat shield would remain covered, useless, and the added drag would prevent them from dropping ass-first. Instead, they would helicopter into oblivion, their hull punctured, invaded by fire, and burned, like Columbia, from the inside out.
At last, there was the telltale sound of detonation, like machine-gun fire.