Out of Orbit by Chris Jones

friends. During
Endeavour
’s long chase of the International Space Station—it would take nearly forty-eight hours to track it down—Bowersox gave a surprisingly revealing interview about Don Thomas to the Associated Press. Maybe, as with the bee, there were still strings attached after all.
    “This emblem that’s on our shirt was designed by Don,” Bowersox began, talking about the triangular Expedition Six patch that had been stitched to their flight suits, depicting a stylized station eclipsing the sun during yet another orbit around the earth. “So he’s with us every minute in spirit and we think about him a lot and we can only wish him the best. We know this has been very, very hard for him, so that’s been the toughest thing for us, too. But he’s a big part of this mission. Everywhere we go we see reminders of him, and there’s no way we could not think about him.”
    At the same time, Bowersox admitted that he hadn’t spoken toThomas since that awful night when he told his friend that he had been bumped from the mission: “It’s still kind of painful and sore for Don. When he talks with us, it becomes even more painful. We’re going to try to connect with him when we get on orbit or after we get home, after he’s had a little bit of distance. But this is a hard thing, to be so close to accomplishing a dream—going for a long-duration flight was Don Thomas’s dream—and when he wasn’t able to do it, it hurt him pretty bad. So as the distance and the time heals that wound, then I think it’ll be a little bit easier for him to discuss how much fun we’re having in orbit. I’m happy to get to fly with Don Pettit, but I was really looking forward to flying with Don Thomas, too, because he’s such a great guy.”
    Like athletes, however, the men of Expedition Six needed to start thinking only of tomorrow. Along with the rest of
Endeavour
’s crew, they helped examine the Canadarm to make sure its earlier brush with disaster really hadn’t limited its function. Happily, it appeared to work just fine. Testing it further, the crew turned on the cameras attached to the end of the arm and began scanning the luggage stowed in the shuttle’s massive payload bay. The biggest, most important piece of cargo would soon be locked onto the International Space Station: the P1 truss, a $390 million chunk of station’s ever-expanding backbone, a girder assembly that all on its own measured forty-five feet long. In addition to supplying structural support for the modules that housed the astronauts—acting like the sticks in a giant kite or the flying buttresses in a Gothic cathedral, depending on your feelings toward station—the truss contained three ammonia-filled radiators, folded up like accordion panels, that would help vent the excess heat generated along with much-needed electricity by the station’s solar panels.
    Looking at the almost ghostly images of the truss from the safety of the crew cabin, Expedition Six reveled in their special delivery. They could see something beautiful through its utilitarian mass—not so much in what it was but in what it represented. It was a part of what has been called the most ambitious single construction project since the Great Pyramids, and now it had made the giant leaps from drawing board to space to impending installation.
    With it, Expedition Six was about to become a part of history, too.
    ·   ·   ·
    After two nights in space—sleeping with their heads strapped to their pillows, so they could feel the softness of them, and with their arms sometimes floating freely, leaving them looking like drowned sailors—
Endeavour
’s crew woke up excited to catch their first glimpse of their final destination. With each successive rocket burn, still being coordinated and fired from the ground, the shuttle was drawn closer to what first appeared as a small, white light, like a star that was brighter and closer than the rest. Inside that light, Expedition