that solar array that got dinged last month.’ He pointed to one of the solar panels, scarred by a gaping hole. One of the inescapable perils of space is the constant rain of meteorites and manmade debris. Even a tiny fragment can be a devastating missile when it’s hurtling at thousands of miles per hour.
As they drew closer and the station filled the window, Emma felt such overwhelming awe and pride that tears suddenly flashed in her eyes. Home, she thought. I’m coming home.
The air-lock hatch swung open, and a wide brown face grinned at them from the other end of the vestibule connecting Atlantis with ISS. ‘They brought oranges!’ Luther Ames called out to his station mates. ‘I can smell ‘em!’
‘NASA home delivery service,’ deadpanned Commander Vance. ‘Your groceries have arrived.’ Bearing a nylon sack of fresh fruit, Vance floated through Atlantis’s air lock into the space station.
It had been a perfect docking. With both spacecrafts traveling at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour above the earth, Vance had approached ISS at the delicate rate of two inches per second, lining up Atlantis’s docking module to the ISS port for a good, tight lock.
Now the hatches were open and Atlantis’s crew floated one by one into the space station to be greeted with handshakes and hugs, and the welcoming smiles of people who have not seen new faces in over a month. The node was too small to hold thirteen people, and the crews quickly spilled into the adjoining modules.
Emma was the fifth to cross into the station. She popped out of the vestibule and inhaled a mélange of scents, the slightly sour and meaty odors of humans confined too long in a closed space. Luther Ames, an old friend from astronaut training, was the first to greet her.
‘Dr Watson, I presume!’ he boomed out, pulling her into a hug. ‘Welcome aboard. The more ladies, the merrier.’
‘Hey, you know I’m no lady.’
He winked. ‘We’ll keep that between us.’ Luther had always been larger than life, a man whose good cheer could fill a room. Everyone liked Luther because Luther liked everyone. Emma was glad to have him aboard.
Especially when she turned to look at her other station mates. She shook hands first with Michael Griggs, the ISS commander, and found his greeting polite but almost military. Diana Estes, the Englishwoman sent up by the European Space Agency, was not much warmer. She smiled, but her eyes were a strange glacial blue. Cool and distant.
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