Above It All

Rackham’s heart continued to race. He wanted to swing around, return to the shuttle. Perhaps he could claim nausea. That was reason enough to abort an EVA; vomiting into a space helmet in zero-g was a sure way to choke to death.

But he couldn’t go back. He’d fought to get up here, clawed, competed, cheated, left his parents behind in that nursing home. He’d never married, never had kids, never found time for anything but this. He couldn’t turn around — not now, not here.

Rackham had to fly around to the Kvant-2’s backside to reach the EVA hatch. Doing so gave him a clear view of Discovery. He saw it from the rear, its three large and two small engine cones looking back at him like a spider’s cluster of eyes.

He cycled through the space station’s airlock. The main lights were dark inside the biology module, but some violet-white fluorescents were on over a bed of plants. Shoots were growing in strange circular patterns in the microgravity. Rackham disengaged the Ma

Mir’s interior was like everything in the Russian space program — rough, metallic, ramshackle, looking more like a Victorian steamworks than space-age technology. Heart thundering in his ears, he pushed his way down Kvant-2’s long axis toward the central docking adapter to which all the other parts of the station were attached.

Countless small objects floated around the cabin. He reached out with his gloved hand and swept a few up in his palm. They were six or seven millimeters across and wrinkled like dried peas. But their color was a dark rusty brown.

Droplets of dried blood. Jesus Christ. Rackham let go of them, but they continued to float in midair in front of him. He used the back of his glove to flick them away, and continued on deeper into the station.

“Discovery, this is Houston.”

“Rackham here, Houston. Go ahead.”

“We — ah — have an errand for you to run.”

Rackham chuckled. “Your wish is our command, Houston.”

“We’ve had a request from the Russians. They, ah, ask that you swing by Mir for a pickup.”

Rackham turned to his right and looked at McGovern, the pilot. McGovern was already consulting a computer display. He gave Rackham a thumbs-up signal.

“Can do,” said Rackham into his mike. “What sort of pick up?”

“It’s a body.”

“Say again, Houston.”

“A body. A dead body.”

“My God. Was there an accident?”

“No accident, Discovery. Yuri Vereshchagin has killed himself.”

“Killed …”

“That’s right. The Russians can’t afford to send another ma

Rackham squeezed through the docking adapter and made a right turn, heading down into Mir’s core habitat. It was dark except for a few glowing LEDs, a shaft of earthlight coming in through one window, and one of sunlight coming in through the other. Rackham found the light switch and turned it on. The interior lit up, revealing beige cylindrical walls. Looking down the module’s thirteen-meter length, he could see the main control console, with two strap-in chairs in front of it, storage lockers, the exercise bicycle, the dining table, the closet-like sleeping compartments, and, at the far end, the round door leading into Kvant-1, where Yuri’s body was supposedly floating.

He pushed off the wall and headed down the chamber. It widened out near the eating table. He noticed that the ceiling there had writing on it. Rackham looked at the cameras, one fore, one aft, both covered over with spacesuit gloves, and realized that even if they were uncovered, that part of the ceiling was perpetually out of their view. Each person who had visited the station had apparently written his or her name there in bold Magic Marker strokes: Romanenko, Leveykin, Viktorenko, Krikalev, dozens more. Foreign astronauts names’ appeared, too, in Chinese characters, and Arabic, and English.

But Yuri Vereshchagin’s name was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the custom was to sign off just before leaving the station. Rackham easily found the Magic Marker, held in place on the bulkhead with Velcro. His Cyrillic wasn’t very good — he had to carefully copy certain letters from the samples already on the walls — but he soon had Vereshchagin’s name printed neatly across the ceiling.

Rackham thought about writing his own name, too. He touched the marker to the curving metal, but stopped, pulling the pen back, leaving only a black dot where it had made contact. Vereshchagin’s name should be here — a reminder that he had existed. Rackham remembered all the old photographs that came to light after the fall of the Soviet Union: the original versions, before those who had fallen out of favor had been airbrushed out. Surely no cosmonaut would ever remove Vereshchagin’s name, but there was no need to remind those who might come later that an American had stopped by to bring his body home.

The dried spheres of blood were more numerous in here. They bounced off Rackham’s faceplate with little pinging sounds as he continued down the core module through the circular hatch into Kvant-1.

Yuri’s body was indeed there, floating in a semi-fetal position. His skin was as white as candle wax, bled dry. He’d obviously rotated slowly as his opened wrist had emptied out — there was a ring of dark brown blood stains all around the circumference of the science module. Many pieces of equipment also had blood splatters on them where drops had impacted before they’d desiccated. Rackham could taste his lunch at the back of his throat. He desperately fought it down.

And yet he couldn’t take his eyes off Yuri. A corpse, a body without a soul in it. It was mesmerizing, terrifying, revolting. The very face of death.

He’d met Yuri once, in passing, years ago at an IAU conference in Montreal. Rackham had never known anyone before who had committed suicide. How could Yuri have killed himself? Sure, his country was in ruins. But billions of — of rubles — had been spent building this station and getting him up here. Didn’t he understand how special that made him? How, quite literally, he was above it all?

As he drifted closer, Rackham saw that Yuri’s eyes were open. The pupils were dilated to their maximum extent, and a pale gray film had spread over the orbs. Rackham thought that the decent thing to do would be to reach over and close the eyes. His gloves had textured rubber fingertips, to allow as much feedback as possible without compromising his suit’s thermal insulation, but even if he could work up the nerve, he didn’t trust them for something as delicate as moving eyelids.

His breathing was growing calmer. He was facing death — facing it directly. He regretted now not having seen his mother one last time, and -

There was something here. Something else, inside Kvant-1 with him. He grabbed hold of a projection from the bulkhead and wheeled around. He couldn’t see it. Couldn’t hear any sound conducted through the helmet of his suit. But he felt its presence, knew it was there.

There was no way to get out; Kvant-1’s rear docking port was blocked by the Progress ferry, and the exit to the core module was blocked by the invisible presence.

Get a grip on yourself, Rackham thought. There’s nothing here. But there was. He could feel it. “What do you want?” he said, a quaver in his tones.