above, his body cresting into that surface and breaking it and finding no numbers there whatsoever, instead only the stars, not on the flat dome of the night sky but actually in perspective and distance and in color and not a one of them twinkling or blinking but steady and solid and so clearly at different distances and sizes and locations and of varietiesstaggering to behold. A universe comprised of radiation and light and gravity and energy and mass. What equation to describe such a reckoning? What set of numbers? Only the dark matter and the resplendent and glorious universe itself spinning out all around him. Around us all.
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
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
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