by Tom Abrahams
He opened his eyes and looked again at the reflective helmets velcroed to the wall of the airlock. He resolved that regardless of how much time he had and what other tasks he needed to complete, taking care of his crewmates was atop the list. He would make sure they returned to Earth with him. And if they didn’t, it would be because he died trying to make it happen.
He wasn’t sure what protocol might be. He didn’t know what Mission Control would advise, although he could guess.
As far as the brass at NASA was concerned, he’d saved two very expensive EMUs. He’d heard they cost anywhere from ten to fifteen million dollars each. He’d return them to Earth if he could. So there was that.
Two hours later, Clayton pushed himself through the Zvezda Russian service module and into the Soyuz habitation module, squeezing past the large silver and black docking probe, lowering himself into the spacecraft. Before he began loading up the spaceship to go home, he needed to be sure he could make it work.
The Soyuz was a classic design, a ship in three parts. At the top was the hab, on the bottom was the instrumentation module, and in the middle the crew module.
Clayton squirmed through the hab and into the crew module, easing himself into the center seat, the seat reserved for the commander. It sat lower than the engineer seats on either side. It was Boris’s seat. He strapped in.
In front of him were a series of buttons and levers and a periscope with exterior cameras. There was a pair of control sticks at his knees for if he had to manually control the ship. He prayed he wouldn’t need them.
It was the first time he’d been in the module since they’d arrived as a trio two and a half months earlier. Clayton looked to his left. That had been his seat on the way up.
He stared blankly at the panel of buttons and knobs and switches in front of him, his mind drifting to the day they’d launched.
He’d eaten most of his breakfast of kasha and boiled eggs. His stomach was dancing with nerves, and he’d not been hungry. Boris had insisted he eat, telling him he’d need the energy later in the long day.
They’d laughed and joked on their way to the launch pad. Boris had talked about his wife and children, imitating their voices and mannerisms. He was joking about his daughter’s first date with a boy when they’d pulled up to the pad. It was the same spot from which Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, had launched into orbit aboard a Vostok and traveled around the Earth in April 1961. His trip had lasted one hundred and eight minutes.
Once at the pad, they’d climbed a narrow set of stairs to the gantry and then ascended an elevator to the top of the rocket and the entry to the Soyuz capsule. Clayton remembered thinking the rocket hadn’t looked that big from the ground. From the top of it looking down, however, it seemed massive.
He’d been the first to climb into his seat through the habitation module, followed by Ben, then Boris.
“You ready?” Ben had asked Clayton with a big smile plastered to his face. “I’m not sure who’s more excited about you flying into space, me or you.”
The launch crew had closed the hatch and they’d begun their system checks. Clayton replayed the sequence in his mind, reminding himself of some of the tasks he’d have ahead of him when he was ready to leave.
Once they’d checked their communications, turned on the various systems and confirmed they worked, they did suit checks. Only then did they relax.
For close to an hour they sat there in the tight quarters, three men locked in cramped quarters, awaiting launch. Ground control piped in music to pass the time.
“Louis Armstrong,” said Boris in his thick accent. “I like his music. Satchmo, yes?”
The strains of American jazz filtered through the capsule. Clayton had closed his eyes and let the music move through him. It had been a surreal moment.
He was a regular guy, a math whiz who was good at problem solving. He lived in a normal middle-income neighborhood with a wife and two kids. He drove a Ford F-150.
He wasn’t a hero. He didn’t think of himself that way. He was Clayton. Good ole Clay.
Yet he was about to blast off into space, as so few people had ever done. He was set to “boldly go” as James Tiberius Kirk would have said. He was risking his life for the betterment of mankind. In some small way, he’d believed the things he’d study and learn while in orbit would help future pioneers and generations of scientists.
He’d been drawn from his daydream and the beauty of Pop’s trumpet with thirty minutes to go before the launch. They’d rechecked all of their systems at least twice.
He’d flinched at the heavy thump that rocked the Soyuz as the gantry was pulled back from the rocket. Boris had laughed at him. Ben had reached across Boris, patted his leg, and smiled.
“This is it,” Ben had said and the capsule started vibrating, building into a rumble as the engines started. There was the countdown and the final clearance.
“Tri…dva…odin…”
Clayton had felt an enormous, heavy push, sinking him into his seat as the engines engaged and the rocket lifted off from Yuri’s pad. The rumble had pulsed through his entire body. His pulse had quickened. His breathing had been rapid and shallow, his helmet plastered to the back of his seat.
It had been exhilarating and frightening all at once, as if he were on a roller coaster without a harness. He’d wanted to scream with excitement. He couldn’t help but laugh as the adrenaline had coursed through his trembling body. For eight and a half minutes they’d rushed skyward. It had felt like five seconds. As soon as it had begun, it had been over. They were in orbit.
Clayton had wanted to talk about the launch, the childlike giddiness tickling his senses, but he’d resisted. He’d known the other men had been to space more than once. This was nothing for them.
And then Ben had thrown up his fist and cheered into his mic. “That was awesome.” He’d laughed. “It never gets old.”
“I love the launch almost as much as the landing,” Boris had added. “What did you think of it, Clayton?”
Clayton’s cheeks had been sore, but he couldn’t be sure if it had been from the gravity bearing down on him during the launch or the smile glued to his face. He’d given his friends a thumbs-up.
“I’m speechless,” he’d said, beginning to notice the lack of gravity. A whole new sensation filled him. He’d experienced weightlessness before. This was different. This wasn’t like the C-9B Skytrain II in which he’d trained using parabolic maneuvers to give him moments of zero g. It was the real deal.
Now, seventy-two days later, he was in Boris’s seat. He knew the trip back wouldn’t be as fun as Boris had predicted.
He’d have to delicately maneuver Boris’s and Ben’s bodies into the crew module one at a time. He’d had the grim task of removing them from their suits. They’d not been able to fit through the PMA between Node 1 and the Russian segment. He’d done everything he could to avoid looking at their faces. He’d closed their eyes, at least. That had helped. They were still in the airlock, dressed in their undergarments. They didn’t need their Launch and Entry Suits, called LES, or the Russian equivalent called the Sokol.
He did need to wear a Sokol, and he’d have to change into the pressurized, thermal suit before he pulled the trigger and returned to Earth. That suit could save his life if there was a pressure leak or any number of other problems.
Before he did that, however, he’d need supplies. The Soyuz was supposed to land in Kazakhstan. Supposed to. Given the endless number of variables and no communication with the ground, Clayton couldn’t know for sure where he’d land. Plus, he had no concept of what the world might be like when he did return.
The capsule contained a survival kit, a newer version of the original Soviet NAZ-3 gear; the gear was exhaustive. The Russians hadn’t forgotten anything.
Stored in a myriad of white Nomex bags and strapped into the sides of the capsule were the pieces of the kit. Aside from a snowsuit and a wet suit for each of the three men on board, they’d includ
ed a Makarov pistol and ammunition, a wrist compass, waterproof matches and a fishing kit, whistle, screwdriver, sewing kit, double-edged switchblade saw, granulated ethyl alcohol, strobe light with a spare battery, flare, fire starters, a knife, an antenna, a signal mirror, medical kit, canteen, hoods, gloves, cold suits, knit caps, boots, a penlight, a pair of radios, and vacuum-packed food rations.
The Soviets designed them to provide emergency supplies for landing in any environment. There was enough in the kit to sustain three men for seventy-two hours. As the lone survivor, that kit would last Clayton nine days.
Still, despite the Russians’ forethought, he’d need more. He pulled himself upward through the habitation module and back into the Zvezda service module. He needed to search the crew quarters and take whatever he could find that might be useful once he landed back on solid ground.
He started with Boris’s compartment, which the Russians called a cayuta. It was the closest to the Soyuz. He positioned himself above it and pulled open the single padded door.
It was the size of a phone booth but so much more personal. Clayton kept his hand on the door, afraid that letting go of it would allow the boiling guilt to overwhelm him.
Boris was dead. These belongings weren’t his anymore. Not really. Still, Clayton took a deep breath of filtered air and pulled himself inside the cramped space.
Against one wall was Boris’s sleeping bag strapped to the wall. Boris, like Clayton, needed to simulate sleep on Earth as much as he could. Some astronauts liked floating free in their quarters as they slept. Clayton had tried it and didn’t like it. Boris must not have either.
Across from the bag, photographs of the Voin family were tacked to the wall, a sad gallery of a life that no longer existed as they had in those happy, frozen moments.
There was Boris with his arms around his wife, Albina. He was dressed in his military uniform, his shoulders pressed back with pride. Albina was on his arm, a genuine smile on her face, a deep spray of laugh lines emanating from the corners of her eyes.
Another photograph was of the entire family: Boris, Albina, their daughter, Nadia, and son, Alexei. They had their arms around each other, shouldering backpacks on a bluff. Behind them were the Ural Mountains. Clayton recognized the jagged black peaks from his time training in Kazakhstan. They were as stark as they were beautiful. The Urals were a metaphor for the people of Eastern Europe. He touched the photograph with a finger and swallowed against a dry throat.
“Focus,” Clayton told himself, blinking back from the fantasy of what had been. “Find what you’re looking for.”
The problem was, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He only knew he’d find it when he saw it. Neither of the laptops affixed to wall-mounted arms were functioning.
On what passed for a floor, there was a trio of two-by-two-foot metal boxes held down with bungee cords. They were latched closed but didn’t appear to have locks. Each was labeled with a piece of white electrical tape and Boris’s name written across it. Clayton pulled himself lower in the space, his legs sticking out into the module, and unlatched the first case.
Inside he found some extra white socks, a blue and gold Russian Orthodox Bible, some mission patches and pins, and a red Aeroflot Airlines T-Shirt. Clayton pilfered the socks and closed the box. He reattached the bungee and opened the second box.
In that box there was a rectangular package inside plain brown wrapping. Clayton remembered Boris receiving the package on the last Space X supply delivery. Boris hadn’t been excited about it, instead choosing to rifle through the candy treats and handwritten letters from home.
Clayton ran his finger along the Cyrillic script on the box, trying his best to read the scribbled letters. “Avar-riya-noh-yay rah-dee-yoh.”
Emergency radio.
His eyes widened. A smile spread across his face as he ripped into the package like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning.
The shreds of brown wrapping separated and floated above him as he held the black cardboard box firmly in his hands.
The radio was a Yaesu FT1DR digital/analog transceiver. The box indicated it came with a lithium ion battery. He opened up the cardboard flap and pulled out the limited warranty card. It was valid in the US and Canada only.
“What?” Clayton joked aloud. “No ISS warranty? What a piece of junk.”
Underneath the thick operating manual sitting inside the box’s lid were all the needed components still covered in their original plastic. He unwrapped the antenna, the pre-charged li-ion battery, the AC adapter, and the transceiver itself.
It was squatty and fit comfortably in his palm. He flipped it over, finding the charging port and the other important features. He snapped the battery to the back of the radio. It was attached to the radio’s rear outer shell and had a belt clip, which Clayton used to attach it to the pocket of his jumpsuit. He slipped the charger into the pocket and went for the third box.
He didn’t think he could find anything better than a HAM radio. He was wrong.
Inside the box was a relic of the Russian space program. Clayton didn’t even think they were allowed in orbit anymore. He didn’t care how Boris had managed to smuggle the device on board, he was merely thankful that he had.
He gently pulled the Soviet TP-82 into his hands. He held it there, staring at it for a moment as if he were looking into the Ark of the Covenant. The TP-82 was a triple-barreled combination firearm and ax. It was a survival aid for cosmonauts who risked being stranded in the Siberian wilderness after landing and before recovery.
The pistol, which could fire two different gauges of ammunition, had a detachable buttstock and was also a machete. It was a brilliant and brutal weapon used for more than twenty years. By 2007, the remaining ammunition designed for the TP-82 was deemed unstable and the elegant dual-use relic was replaced with a standard semiautomatic pistol.
Clayton ran his hand along the woodgrain forestock wrapping the barrel of the weapon and then strapped it back into the box. Next to it, carefully folded over onto itself, was an ammunition belt.
He stuffed the socks into the box alongside the weapon and ammo belt, pulled several of the photographs from the wall, and carefully set them inside the container, underneath socks. He closed the box and grabbed it with both hands before tucking it awkwardly under his left arm. He maneuvered his way back to the Soyuz, glided into the crew compartment, and strapped it into his seat.
Still giddy from his finds, he quickly floated back to the Harmony node and his own crew quarters. Unlike the single-door Russian cubbies, the four crew quarters in the American side of the ISS had thinner French doors that gave them their privacy.
Clayton fingered open the doors and floated into his quarters. Despite lamenting the end of the shuttle program, one benefit of hitching a ride in a Russian rocket was the PPK allotment. The PPK was the Personal Preference Kit. It was limited to twenty personal items. Whereas a shuttle crew could only have brought one and a half pounds with them in the PPK, the Soyuz allowed for more than two pounds.
Clayton had used every ounce of his allotment for the PPK and for the OFK, the Official Flight Kit. He’d even worked the system by getting some of his favorite sweatshirts and ball caps labeled as “necessary supplies.” But as he fished through his quarters, he didn’t find anything practical to take with him other than a box of energy bars.
He spun himself using the pole mount for his laptop and grabbed photographs off the wall behind it. He didn’t take the time to look at them, to think about them, to worry about the people in them. He couldn’t do that. Staring at Boris’s family had been enough.
He stacked the photographs on top of one another and tucked them into a crease at the edge of the box of energy bars. Clayton gave the space another cursory glance and pushed himself out of the space toward Ben Greenwood’s, which was directly across from his in Node 2.
He floated in the doorway to Ben’s quarters. His space was relatively empty. He liked living a Spartan life on the ISS.
The less he had with him, the more he’d appreciate those missing things when he got back to Earth.
There was one thing Clayton took: a photograph of Ben and his parents. It was taken in Kazakhstan before they went into quarantine preflight. Ben had proudly affixed it to the wall next to his sleeping bag. It was the last photograph of the three of them.
Ben was in the center, his arms around his parents’ waists. Ben and his father wore matching smiles. Clayton could see the older man in the younger one and vice versa. Father and son no doubt. They even shared the same receding hairline.
Ben’s mom was smiling too, although it was different. Clayton could tell it was forced. Her teeth were pressed together as she might show them to a dentist. In her eyes, instead of beaming pride, he saw worry.
He’d never noticed it in the photograph before. Maybe he was transposing his own emotions, manipulating her gaze with what he knew now to be her son’s fate.
Ben’s mother had never liked his chosen profession. She understood it, she was proud of him, but she didn’t like it. She’d told Clayton once that she’d had a recurring dream her son would die in space and that she wouldn’t get to bury him. She’d confided in Clayton that the nightmare would wake her up drenched in sweat.
“No American has ever died in space,” Clayton had tried to reassure her. “Ever.”
“There’s a first for everything,” she’d replied, sadness in her voice. It was like she knew. A mother’s intuition or something.
Clayton stuck the picture into the power bar box with his other photographs. He’d return it to the Greenwoods. It was the least he could do for them.
He backed out of Ben’s quarters and flew out of the Harmony module, making his way back through the maze to the Zvezda service module. He found an outlet with a North American adapter in it and plugged in the AC charger for the radio, unclipped the radio from his belt, and connected it. Even if the li-ion battery had a charge, he’d need it fully juiced.
Clayton left the radio plugged in and floating while he pushed himself from Node 1 through the Russian FGB Module into the service module. He maneuvered to the rows of sealed plastic bags clipped to one of the four walls. He picked through the labeled bags, looking for his favorite dehydrated and ready-to-eat foods. “Favorite” was a relative term, as so many things were in space. Although he wasn’t in love with any of the foods, there were some that were more tolerable than others. He held a half dozen in his hands and spun to the opposite wall. There he found red containers, which held Russian food. He plucked a couple of the Russian meals and added them to his haul, stuffed all of the food into a trash bag, twisted the top, and tied it into a knot.
