Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

It was only a single moment and then the numbers fell into their places once again. His heart ascatter in his chest. The robotic arm he had designed. The tangent of theta. Pi over two. Sine equals one. The apex had been reached and he was descending down the other side of the long arc and the radians moved through his mind — two pi over three, three pi over four, five pi over six — and it already seemed like something that had occurred in a dream, as if he had been sleeping or had slept and had imagined the thinking of some other man, of some other astronaut. His mouth dry. His heart racing as if he had been startled awake. What was he doing here? What were any of them doing out here at all?

And then it was over. You are here. Nowhere else.

Stevens’s voice in his helmet: “Looking good, Keith.”

He blinked quickly behind the helmet glass. “Uh …,” he said, the sound as if from somewhere else, as if someone else’s voice, someone distracted. “MS-2, I read you. Smooth and steady.”

“Five meters,” Stevens said.

And Keith said: “All clear.”

Then he could see Eriksson on the more distant P3 truss, the long black rectangles of the solar arrays spreading out from his tiny shape like the petals of some metallic flower. He shook his head inside the helmet. Eriksson before him on the truss, moving in his own awkward spacesuit. He had already pulled the full nitrogen tank from its storage site, had stowed it on the opposite side of the truss so that Keith could place the empty tank in his hand directly into the gap left behind and Mort Stevens was moving him into position to do so.

“That looked like a good ride,” Eriksson said.

“It was,” he said. His gaze had settled upon a shape behind Eriksson, out past the black empty bowl of Earth, the curved distance of which was illuminated in a glowing blue arc. There, just at the horizon, rode the smaller sharp sickle of the moon, drawn in a thin white line as if the closed half of a perfect empty circle and holding there for some uncountable moment as he watched, its shape appearing to pause in orbit, unmoving and suspended against the edge of the earth. It might have held there only a moment. It might not have held there at all. In the next instant, the whole of that shape seemed to shudder and plunge into the dark surface of the planet and was gone.

“Everything all right?” Eriksson said.

“Of course.” His voice was faint and weak. He cleared his throat and spoke again, more firmly this time: “Everything’s A-OK.”

“How’s about you turn on your helmet light so I can see you,” Eriksson said.

“Right.” He reached up and flipped on the light. There was a flutter inside his chest as if a hollow there had opened: a cabinet, an emptiness, a vacancy. And a strong feeling that he had lost something. Something tangible. The toolbag. His helmet. The wrench. The instructions tethered to his wrist. But everything he had when he pulled himself through the airlock was accounted for. And yet the feeling remained.

When he and Eriksson reentered the module, Tim Fisher, Mort Stevens, and Petra Gutierrez were all there waiting for them and he shook each of their hands in turn, their faces smiling. He too, smiling now.

“Well done, gentlemen,” Stevens said.

“You too, Mort,” Eriksson said. “Thanks for the piloting work.”

“Glad to be a part of it,” Stevens said.

Eriksson had finished shaking Stevens’s hand and now Keith did so, still half smiling. “Feel about the same?” Keith said.

“Yeah. Works perfectly,” Stevens answered.

“Smooth?”

“Yes. How was it on your end?”

“Fine,” Keith said. He paused. Stevens was looking at him, waiting. “What’s the draw?”

“I’ll get you the data. Super minimal, I’m sure.”

“Within the test parameters?”

“As far as I could tell. No fluctuations.”

“I’d like to see the data.”

“I can start the analysis in the next hour,” Stevens said.

Eriksson laughed at his side. “Christ, Chip,” he said. “Power down, already.”

Keith looked at him, then back at the crew, and tried to smile.

“It worked great,” Eriksson said. “Just like you designed it.”

“All right, all right,” Keith said. He glanced up at Stevens and nodded and Stevens shrugged.

Then Petra: “Sure looked like a fun ride.”

“It was,” Keith said. “Amazing.”

“I got a couple of good pictures of it with the Nikon,” Fisher said. “Through the window.”

“Fantastic,” Keith said. “I appreciate that.”

“Well?” Petra said. “What was it like?”

He looked at her, her eyes expectant. All of them waiting for his response. “I don’t know what to say about it. It was like … floating.” They waited for him to say more but no more words would come to him. Inexplicably, he thought of Quinn.

“Looked pretty amazing through the window,” Fisher said. “You were pretty far away.”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “Seemed like it too.”

There was a pause in the conversation and then Fisher said, “Hey, Bill, CAPCOM is waiting to hear from you.”

“About what?”

“I asked but they wouldn’t tell me,” Fisher said.

“Seriously?” Eriksson said.

“That’s what they told me,” Fisher said. He shrugged. “Private mission commander stuff, I guess.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then Eriksson said, “Well, OK. Let’s go find out what they want.” He moved away from them then, through the round opening into Node 1 and out of sight.

“That’s odd,” Petra said.

And then Keith: “What was that about?”

“You know as much as I do,” Fisher said.

“What did they say?” Petra said.

“They said to have Bill call in when he was back inside. That was all. Jeez, guys, it’s not a conspiracy.”

“Weird, though,” Petra said.

“I guess,” Fisher said.

It was silent again. Then Petra said, “Hungry?”

“Starving,” Keith said.

“Good. You’re just in time for dinner.”

Both Petra and Fisher joined him at the table in the Service Module. They might have continued to discuss the possible reasons for the communication but there was little use in such speculation. Instead, Petra asked him questions about the EVA he had just completed and he tried to describe the sense of awe he had felt but again it sounded so feeble when put into words that he gave up entirely.

By the time Eriksson arrived in the galley, Keith had finished his tortilla-wrapped canned ham and was sipping juice from a foil bag. Fisher had just completed a lengthy argument for the culinary superiority of the canned sturgeon brought in by the Russian Space Agency, a controversy on which Keith had no opinion.

“Ready to eat something?” Keith said as Eriksson entered.

“In a minute,” Eriksson said. “Listen, Keith, we got some news.”

“What kind of news?”

Eriksson glanced at Petra and Fisher and then turned toward him once more. “Let’s talk about it in your quarters,” he said.

“Really?” Keith said. He looked at Eriksson. If there was some expression on the mission commander’s face he did not recognize it.

“Everything OK?” Petra said.

Eriksson looked at her but said nothing.

“What’s going on?” Keith said.

“Come on,” Eriksson said. And then, to the other crew members: “Can you guys clean up?”

“Uh … yeah, sure,” Petra said. Her face in that moment: a mask of concern and confusion.

“Thanks,” Keith said.

They pulled themselves through the modules, Eriksson leading the way and Keith following close behind, and then into the closet-size space that was Keith’s crew quarters and they drifted there as they talked, Keith in the tiny compartment and Eriksson in the curtained doorway.