The Visitor

by Tony Harmsworth

  The Visitor

  by Tony Harmsworth

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  Details can be found at the end of THE VISITOR.

  Part One

  SCAFFY WAGON

  [Note for non-British readers – Tony writes using UK English spelling, punctuation, and grammar.]

  1 Window on The World

  What a ride!

  As if a switch had been thrown, the deafening roar of the rockets ceased and silence descended upon the three of us. We were in freefall. The Soyuz capsule had achieved orbit.

  Moulded to my body, the seat had been made-to-measure to protect me from the forces experienced during blast-off and re-entry. The straps no longer dug into me, and now loosely restrained me, stopping me from floating away. Mind you, the view captivated me more effectively than the restraining belts ever could. I was transfixed by the panorama from the small circular window.

  Intermittent Russian chatter and the crackle of the communication system were now the only sounds. The unpleasant falling sensation confused my inner ears which insisted I was on a roller-coaster careering earthwards. It overwhelmed my senses. Dizziness and nausea were battling for dominance. How could I tolerate freefall for seven whole months? Had I made a dreadful mistake? Too late to regret it now.

  I opened my visor. The claustrophobic nature of the Soyuz capsule didn’t help. I’d never have been selected if constrained spaces seriously bothered me, but the bulkiness of the pressure suits, the helmets, the proximity of the walls, instruments, and my fellow cosmonauts was oppressive and didn’t diminish my queasiness.

  I had to control it. I must.

  The beauty of the view compensated for everything else. Earth’s curvature seen first-hand was awe-inspiring, the vista stunning – the land verdant and fertile, surrounded by sea of the most vibrant and azure blue, all visible through pristine swirls of snow-white clouds. Despite growing nausea, I couldn’t stop smiling. The surrounding jet-black of space threw our unique haven of life into stark relief.

  I felt sick. I pulled a bag from a pouch beside me. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. Control it. Control yourself.

  ‘Вы все в порядке, Ева?’

  I snapped out of my self-pity. Yuri, our bullish, shaven-headed commander in the seat next to mine, had sensed my discomfort and asked if I was okay, ‘Yes. Да.’

  I eased his concern, telling him the view had stunned me into silence. Concentrating on speaking Russian helped relieve the nausea. He laughed, then, in his less than perfect English, said, ‘It is to amaze the first time, Eva. Enjoy.’

  I managed to say, ‘Yes, amazing, Yuri. Mind blowing!’

  The pageant of scenery drifted past my porthole. I cast my mind back to my first plane ride to Tenerife as a ten-year-old girl. That magical moment when we punctured the clouds and the thrill of then seeing them beneath me. But this – this was on a whole new scale. The only known refuge of life in the universe stretched out beneath me. My space mission promised to change me forever. The nausea diminished a little.

  More Russian radio dialogue between Roscosmos and the ship. Russian was an essential part of our training for a Soyuz launch, but I had struggled to achieve fluency. I have no affinity for languages. At thirteen, my fail in French and a disastrous nine per cent in German saw me confined to the science labs. Fondness for mathematics morphed into fascination and university beckoned with the promise of astronomy and space. I was a scientist, not a linguist.

  Yuri Bulgakov switched back to his thickly accented English, ‘Hello, ISS. Soyuz MS-one four seven here. Over.’

  ‘Is that the Sahara?’

  Yuri leaned over to see. ‘Yes, deserted,’ he quipped.

  I couldn’t stop my grin as I watched Africa moving into the wings and the Sahara taking centre stage. Its vast, scorched expanse of cloudless desert was, in turn, displaced by the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. I listened to the communications, but the view seduced me absolutely. I could no more turn my gaze from the porthole than I could slow my racing heart. My queasy stomach made me wish weight might return, but there’d be only spasmodic weight from now until I returned home for Christmas and could share the thrill with Mario.

  The radio sprang into life, ‘That you, Yuri? Mike here. How’re you guys doing?’

  ‘Hi, Mike. Yes, me again. Bringing two beautiful ladies to the ISS in my classic spacecraft!’

  A chuckle emanated from the speakers. ‘That’s what you’re calling that ancient heap of junk, is it?’

  ‘Tried and tested. Tried and tested.’

  The smiling, dough-faced Russian told me it was normal for the Americans to wind them up about the antiquity of the Soyuz crafts. Most astronauts travelling to the ISS now flew the Dragon Crew or Starliner Crew – both commercially operated. NASA’s Orion spacecraft was being exclusively used for the moon project, not for low-Earth orbit work.

  ‘About to change orbit. See you in few hours.’

  ‘How did the girls enjoy blast-off, Yuri?’

  ‘Eva and Zinaida are still glued to windows, of course. We soon have to winkle them out of seats, I think. Get hot dogs ready for us.’

  ‘I just got some.’

  ‘We help you eat them soon.’

  ‘I’ve waited a month for these. You can keep your thieving Cossack hands off them!’

  ‘Just look for my ten per cent. Yanks no understand free trade?’

  ‘Extortion more like.’

  ‘How you say, “sticks and stones…”?’

  ‘Okay, we’ll see.’

  ‘Roger that. Speak soon.’

  ‘He hot dog mad,’ a beaming Yuri said to Zinaida and me. ‘Always hot dogs eating.’

  I laughed. I’d discovered Mike’s predilection for hotdogs a few months previously in Houston.

  ‘I know about his obsession with hotdogs,’ I said. ‘Mike took a few of us out for dinner a while back. I dressed for a gourmet restaurant, but we went to a hot dog stand and stood in the street, drank beer from bottles and ate giant dogs with overflowing relish. Never did get the ketchup stain out of my finest blouse.’

  Zinaida laughed at my story.

  Yuri depressed a couple of buttons, switched back to Russian and told Roscosmos he was in contact with the ISS.

  Roscosmos acknowledged his message as a cloud-streaked Russia passed across my field of view. I tried – and failed – to pinpoint the location of Korolyov Mission Control in the scene below. The broken cloud cover defeated me. Further east, the shroud of night and clearer skies approached.

  The ship lurched! ‘What was that?’ I gripped my armrest resolutely. What had happened? Anxiety now fought with nausea for my attention.

  ‘Just the injection burn,’ said Yuri.

  The third crew member, Zinaida Sobolevskaya, a more rotund version of myself, had fired the rocket to raise our orbit to the next level. I had weight again for a short while. It reminded me to pay closer attention to their Russian chatter. I’d missed the warning.

  At this stage in my mission, which was to eliminate space junk, I was merely a passenger. My time would come. For now, Yuri and Zinaida were commander and pilot, but they surrendered most of their authority to the precision of on-board computers. I was launched in this Soyuz because my mission was part Russian and part European. In fact, roles would soon be reversed – I was to command my own craft and Yuri would be my pilot.

  A succession of thrusts caused more disturbing movements of my internal organs but when they’d ceased, I felt a huge relief, because my nausea settled too, thank goodness. Suddenly, freefall was not so bad a
fter all.

  ‘Feeling better, Eva?’ asked Yuri.

  ‘Yes. Yes. The view’s out of this world.’

  Yuri laughed then checked an instrument and depressed the transmit switch. ‘ISS. We have aligned. On course. It is excellent trajectory. Copy?’

  ‘Looking good, Yuri,’ Mike said.

  Another burn pressed me back into my seat. I’d expected this course correction. A vital, short side burn taking the Soyuz out of the ISS’s plane to prevent a collision if the retro jets failed.

  ‘Side burn complete,’ confirmed Yuri, his piercing blue eyes flashing at me with the excitement of the launch achieving its orbit. As a veteran Soyuz commander, I think he got a thrill from seeing my enjoyment of the view.

  ‘Copy that,’ said Mike.

  I peered anew at the night side of Earth and the amber-tinted necklaces of sparkling jewels illustrating the nocturnal ebb and flow of mankind. The spangled clusters were towns and cities along rivers and highways beneath. Celestial jewellery. In Russian, Zinaida said, ‘Wow, beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, and so clear,’ I agreed.

  ‘KURS locked on,’ said Yuri, confirming a positive lock on the ISS which allowed the approach to be completed automatically.

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘Rotational burn complete.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘Docking probe unlocked. He is extended.’ The final item on his checklist.

  ‘Copy that.’

  Now we faced a long slow approach, taking an hour or so. Gratefully, I accepted the extra time to indulge myself with the view. I poked the barf bag back into its pouch. I wouldn’t be sick now. I began to feel much more myself.

  ‘Eva, Zinny, look at here. You can see ISS,’ Yuri said, pointing at his main screen upon which a tiny bright spot sat at the centre of a pair of dotted cross-wires.

  We both gave it a glance, but light suddenly flooded into the cabin and I was immediately drawn back to the view of the sun breaking over the curvature of the planet. Amazing. Sixteen sunrises each day.

  ‘Good morning, Earth,’ I said.

  ‘Захватывающий (Spectacular),’ said Zinaida.

  The Soyuz approached the gigantic, spidery framework of the International Space Station. My porthole was filled with the structure. Several supply craft were attached to the docking nodes. Yuri pulled out the manual docking controls from his console. If anything were to go wrong with the automatic system, he would take over and dock us as if playing a sophisticated video game. I’d watched him doing this endlessly in simulation. I’d even practiced it myself many times in preparation for some emergency, simulated by Roscosmos, in which I was the only conscious crew member. The ISS now filled Yuri’s viewscreen.

  A series of automatic burns changed our attitude to align the Soyuz with the docking port.

  ‘Thirty metres.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  The minutes passed. Yuri said, ‘Three metres.’

  The docking hatch on the station grew larger until it filled the screen. The whole ship shook and stilled.

  ‘Have contact,’ he said.

  ‘Copy that, Yuri.’

  There was a further push from behind, plus a judder. The docking probe mated with the matching hole in the hatch and the clasps gripped its shaft, acting out a bizarre mechanical copulation.

  We still faced an hour of sealing procedures to ensure all the clamps were properly tightened. Yuri monitored the process from the upper module of the Soyuz. Finally, the hatch joining the Soyuz to the space station was pulled away. My ears popped as the pressure equalised, and Yuri asked, ‘Permission to come aboard, sir!’

  ‘Permission granted,’ Mike Wilson’s American accent sounded much more human now it no longer passed through the communication system.

  Zinaida waved me through before her. Grabbing my small pouch of personal items, I pulled myself into the Soyuz orbital module and Mike’s familiar, ebony-skinned smiling face greeted me on the other side of the constricted access hatchway.

  ‘Welcome to the ISS, Eve,’ Mike offered a hand and pulled on me to help me through into the Russian docking module.

  I followed Mike’s lanky legs as he moved through the space station towards the international modules. I did my best to keep up, while Zinaida brought up the rear.

  I couldn’t believe it. I was here, aboard the ISS at last. It had taken a huge chunk of my life. A couple of years dreaming and hoping, three years hard work and another year of detailed planning and intensive training.

  What the hell? What was happening? My reminiscing was rudely interrupted. We were drowning in the painful decibels of sirens crying out throughout the space station. Alarms and flashing strobe lights surrounded us. Fear was instinctive. Would I die on my first day in space?

  Mike shouted, ‘Quick, follow me!’

  Within a few seconds, we were pulling ourselves rapidly through the cramped passageways of the ISS from the Russian to American sectors.

  My training kicked in as I recognised the sequence of this alarm. It meant we were under attack, and the enemy was invisible. We needed shelter urgently!

  2 International Space Station

  Within a minute, all seven of us floated in the United States Destiny module. Claustrophobia rose again with so many in the one location, all in bizarre positions watching Mike.

  The commander counted us and hit a large green button on the wall. The sirens were silenced, but the threatening flashing continued to remind us the emergency was still in progress.

  Our invisible enemy comprised neutrons mainly but also protons coughed out by various high-energy sources in the galaxy. Geosynchronous satellites gave warnings which were relayed to us from NASA who triggered the alarms. Several ISS modules were now protected, but the safest was Destiny. Its new water-jacket absorbed many particles before they could do damage, but some would inevitably pass through both it and us, potentially damaging our DNA and causing future cancers, cataracts, and other medical problems. Everything was done to minimise the risk, but space was inherently an unsafe place in which to work and we’d need to be monitored for the rest of our lives.

  The ISS needed replacing, but it had been reprieved, expanded, and its structure improved on an ad hoc basis. The planned new Orbital Station would incorporate far better radiation protection, but none of the agencies wanted to scrap the current set-up.

  We whispered among ourselves while half listening to Mike’s conversation with NASA and Roscosmos.

  The call ended.

  ‘Okay, guys. We’re stuck in here for about forty minutes until we enter the Earth’s shadow. The danger will be over by the time we emerge. Sorry to the newcomers. Not much of a welcome for you. We get two or three of these a week.’

  ‘Just our luck,’ I said to Yuri.

  ‘Well, Eva. You wanted meet everyone. Now you have time,’ he replied and laughed.

  It’s true. The emergency gave us the opportunity to relax, have a coffee, and talk about current ISS projects. In such fascinating company our temporary imprisonment quickly passed and the induction action for Zinaida and me began once more.

  I’d met most of the astronauts during training but it was good to encounter them again in this environment for which we'd been preparing. As with most visitors to the ISS, few were taller than Mike’s five foot ten inches. When it came to moving around in the space station, smaller was more convenient. My slim, fit, five foot five was ideal, but I wished I’d not kept my hair shoulder-length. I hated stunted ponytails and pigtails, but it was either that or I’d have to improvise a couple of hair bands or print some on the 3D printer. Currently it escaped from my head in virtually every direction. If it was curly it would be an afro!

  Our induction continued with fire extinguishers, emergency lockers, and equipment stores. We’d done it all before in training, but freefall, with its variable ups and downs, added a whole new perspective.

  After the induction,
Mike and I floated in one of the largest empty spaces on the ISS, the Kibo Japanese module.

  ‘Just want to catch up with your mission plans. How’d you get involved in this space junk project?’ he asked.

  We already knew each other from training in Houston, but we’d never really discussed the space débris mission, mainly because it was a Euro-Russian project.

  ‘Long story short, I had no career path towards becoming an astronaut at all but joined European Space Agency mission control in Darmstadt in a science role. Somehow got side-tracked into space junk, then onto ESA science missions at Noordwijk.’

  ‘And that led to this mission?’

  ‘Yes, a Scottish scientist called Angus MacBeath took me into his team and we designed the Space Débris Investigation Vehicle. I still didn’t think I’d get to command it though, yet here I am. I guess I ticked all the right boxes. Can’t wait to get started.’

  ‘What sort of qualifications does a space refuse collector need?’ he asked.

  I laughed. ‘Ha, there’s never been one before. I took Astronomy and Sociology degrees; followed that with a Master’s in Mathematics and PhD in psychology.’

  ‘Phew! Impressive.’

  ‘Don’t know, Mike. Doubt I’ll ever use most of it.’

  ‘You worked with Yuri for long?’

  ‘The past twelve months simulation training together at the Johnson Space Center and in Space City. Did you know this is his eighth ISS stint?’

  ‘Yes, no one’s been up here more often.’

  ‘With the complexity of our missions, he’ll be my security blanket. He’s such a cool, matter-of-fact personality. He says the Soyuz is boring. Too automatic. He’s looking forward to flying what he calls a real spaceship. Very reassuring having him as my pilot.’ I looked around myself. ‘Can’t believe the ISS will be decommissioned. Doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘Well, it’s had several reprieves, but it’s holding up well. The structures are gradually deteriorating, but we’re pretty good at running repairs. I think it’ll still be here in a decade. It was supposed to be replaced by 2020 and here we are in 2035 with no real end in sight. In fact, over the last five years, Russia have added four new sections and ESA, with Japan and Canada, have added another three, so it has almost doubled in size.’