Jaeckle cycled the airlock. The pumps clattered for a few minutes, then Lorraine could no longer hear them. The hatch slid back to reveal utter darkness. Jaeckle stepped to the rim of the hatch, his suit looking gray and bulky in the dim lights of the airlock. He turned and extended a gloved hand to Lorraine. The glove was ridged with the metal “bones” of its force amplifier and knobbed with their tiny servomotors, like mechanical knuckles.
She took his hand and stepped out into black emptiness.
The station was on the night side of the Earth, but flying quickly toward another dawn. Lorraine had gone EVA only twice, and always on the day side. The scene—or lack of a scene—stretching below her was scary, chilling. She had gazed down upon the night side of the Earth from the observation blister. It was deep black with occasional flashes of lightning and the dim web-like patterns created by lights from larger cities. But viewing night from the protective bubble of the blister was nothing like experiencing it outside the station.
She was floating in emptiness, surrounded by the blackest black she ever had seen. Were it not for the sound of her own breathing within the bubble helmet, she would have been very close to total sensory deprivation.
“We’ll wait until we’re back in the light.” Jaeckle’s voice in her earphones startled her. “If we miss the observatory in the dark, the next stop is the moon.” He chuckled at his little joke. Lorraine shivered.
Dawn was coming up quickly. Jaeckle and Lorraine backed themselves into manned maneuvering units mounted along the outer skin of the connecting tunnel. Lorraine felt the connector latches click into place on her space suit as she gripped the controls set into the MMU’s armrests. Then, without needing instructions from Jaeckle, she pressed the control stud that unlocked the MMU from its mount. The astronauts called the MMUs “flying armchairs.” But they were chairs with no seat and no legs.
The dawn broke swiftly, a breathtaking spectacle of colors rimming the Earth’s curved horizon. Lorraine could not help but gasp with delighted awe as she watched the world below her come into the light, deep blue oceans and radiant swirls of white clouds, sparkling and fresh and gloriously beautiful.
With Jaeckle in the lead they jetted off, looping out a safe distance around the module raft and directing themselves toward the observatory at the zenith of the station’s skeleton. Jaeckle chattered in her ear, using his lecturer’s skill to highlight some of the more interesting stars and constellations.
Lorraine oohed and aahed, even though she could not see much of the stars through her tinted helmet visor. But flying an MMU was pure excitement. It was like a magic broomstick, a flying carpet from fabled Baghdad. The realization that she—Lorraine Renoir, the little girl from Quebec City who had dreamed of becoming an aerospace physician—was accompanying the great Kurt Jaeckle to the observatory only added to the thrill.
They parked the MMUs at the attachment points near the observatory’s airlock and pulled themselves inside. As they waited for the airlock to repressurize, Jaeckle explained the scientific reason for the visit.
“The project administers an astronomical study of deep space. There’s a pod of instruments here aimed directly at Polaris, the North Star. Due to effects such as thermal expansion, the pod occasionally becomes misaligned. So we inspect it periodically and, if necessary, realign it manually.”
A green light on the control panel indicated that the air pressure in the airlock had reached a safe level. Jaeckle twisted his helmet off and took a deep breath of air. Suddenly he started to shake, and for a horrifying second Lorraine thought he had been stricken by a seizure. Then she understood: he was trying to struggle out of his suit.
“Things are cramped inside,” he said by way of explanation. “You’d better take your suit off, too.”
Lorraine soon saw that he was telling the truth. Although the observatory itself was the approximate size and shape of an old Apollo command module, it was so crammed with instruments that the interior was barely as large as a sleep compartment. It was dimly lit, like a photographer’s darkroom, with most of the light coming from illuminated dials and readouts. Lorraine drifted slowly along one wall, her eyes drinking in the Christmas-tree colors of the instruments.