Out of Orbit (34 page)

Now, in the tiny spaces around the cannon, the three men began packing for their journey home. It was surreal almost, their slipping away, two months overdue and filled with mixed emotion: gathering up their things marked the end of the mystery, as well as the end of their waiting, but it also marked the end of their time in a place that had become magical for them. Sometimes endings can read like new beginnings, but for Expedition Six, it felt as though they had only those few blank pages that follow the epilogue left to turn through. This was it.

Only Budarin didn’t seem saddened by the leaving noises. He was puffed up and excited, thrilled to show off to his friends the heart of the Russian space program. Also, the moment the three of them dropped through the hatch, Budarin would assume command from Bowersox.
Soyuz
would be his showcase, and in that short trip, he would jump from outsider to insider, from feeling like a guest to playing host.

Not that Bowersox minded. The prospect of flying in a new ship (or at least in a ship that was new to him) had brought out the old test pilot in him, and that was all that was getting him through. After riding in
Soyuz
, he would have a space résumé as complete as he had ever allowed himself to dream it might be: five dramatic space shuttle flights; a long, peaceful stint on the International Space Station; and now, a journey back to earth in
Soyuz
, the Russian vessel of legend. By the time he returned to Houston, Ken Bowersox would have every imaginary stripe on his shoulder and medal on his chest. The whispers that trailed him would start to sound like an ovation.

As for Don Pettit, it was one more surprise in an assignment filled with them. He had grown so accustomed to the extraordinary that it rarely made him blink anymore.

There was one hitch, however. In a capsule that once didn’t leave room for its passengers to wear spacesuits, there weren’t many places to stow luggage. A few critical experiments were bundled up
and packed away. The emergency supplies were checked and rechecked. And now Bowersox, Pettit, and Budarin were left to decide what few personal effects they would carry home.

On the way up, in the relative vastness of the shuttle, they had been given small satchels, about the size of gym bags, that they could fill with books, photographs, music, and whatever earthly souvenirs they needed to get by. Limited by the cramped quarters of
Soyuz
, they were allowed to return with only three such mementos, all of which had to fit in a single, low-profile pocket on the leg of their Russian spacesuits. The rest of their belongings might one day follow them home, whenever the shuttle began flying again. But there was a chance that their treasures could be jettisoned like trash if station started looking too much like Mir.

Budarin wasn’t weighed down at all by the dilemma. He was never one for sentimentality or affection for objects, and he just as soon would have stuffed his pocket with cookies and a second helping of Jellied Pike Perch (I). Bowersox didn’t waste much time with his decisions, either. He packed up his favorite pair of blue shorts, the same pair that Pettit had soaked with that wayward sphere of orange juice, and a couple of golf shirts. The ugly tie stayed. Easy, done.

But Pettit was the only man in the seats at the auction in Los Alamos all over again, and this time with only a single pocket to fill. In the days before departure, he wrestled.

In the end, he decided that he would have to leave behind his beloved books and tools. (They might prove useful to subsequent crews, he reasoned.) The pragmatic engineer in him also decided to leave behind Micki’s favorite necklace, which she’d dropped into his hands before he left and which he’d taken out and run through his fingers whenever he felt alone. He could always buy her another one. What he couldn’t replace were two long-handled spoons out of the galley, designed for digging the dregs out of the bottoms of pouches, with holes punched into their ends so that they could be looped with idiot string and tied to his wrist, like mittens to a jacket. He had hated those strings, and against regulation he had cut them, but he had fallen in love with the spoons. Pettit thought they were
beautiful in their shape and utility, perfect in their way. He imagined that he would give one to each of his boys, and they would take them camping, eating whatever they heated up over the fire right out of the tin without ever touching the sides.

So there were the spoons, one, two. His chopsticks made three.

·   ·   ·

Despite their packing up, it took time for Expedition Six to start really saying goodbye to the International Space Station, mostly because there wasn’t yet anyone to hand over the keys to. Until Expedition Seven came in and began unpacking their own belongings, pinning up their own photographs, and listening to their own music, station was as much theirs as it had ever been. Their ship remained in their command and still felt every inch like their home. It was such a tough feeling to shake that, even while they were busy preparing their
Soyuz
capsule for launch, they felt as though they were in the middle of just another evacuation drill:
What would happen if we had to leave?
They had difficulty grasping that this wasn’t more practice—that this wasn’t make-believe, and theirs were not simple, isolated motions. There were consequences to them.

Soon this magical place for which they had such feelings would have strangers in it, oblivious to the time-honored routines and memories that had carried Expedition Six through almost six months of laughter and tears. Within a few days, all that would remain of their presence were bits and pieces packed away for safekeeping and the odd coffee splatter hidden away in a nook. They knew that. They knew that they were about to become ghosts.

Too soon, it seemed, Expedition Seven’s own
Soyuz
began its final approach, one more in the long series of lights shining white in the distance. In just a little while, it took on its true shape. Its solar arrays came into focus, and its head and body became more defined. But still, despite its speed, there was no real sense of movement. From inside station, it looked almost fake, like a child’s model hanging from a string.

Pettit began taking video of it, filming through the great window
in Destiny. First he captured
Soyuz
against the backdrop of earth and, shortly thereafter, against deepest space. Cut together, the footage was almost artfully symbolic. Within a few frames, we see a long journey’s beginning and end, as though the trip had taken place in seconds, having gone from blue to black just like that.

Radio signals bounced between the capsule and Zarya’s docking port, the waves helping to act like a winch, drawing the two satellites together. Once they had drifted within forty meters of each other, Budarin talked Yuri Malenchenko the rest of the way in.
Soyuz
approached station at a relative crawl, two-tenths of a meter per second. Just as
Endeavour
had done nearly six months ago, the capsule slowed even more before contact, drawing out the anxiety of union. “If you’re into docking mechanisms, it doesn’t get any better than this,” Pettit said, filming
Soyuz
’s long forward probe finally entering the docking port in a vaguely sexual hookup. A tremor concluded the embrace, the impact just strong enough to announce that capture had been successful. “Right on the money,” was Houston’s happy assessment. Everybody began breathing again.

More than an hour later, after a series of tests showed that there were no leaks in the seal, Budarin set about opening the white, cone-shaped hatch cover that separated Expedition Six from Seven. With Bowersox floating over his shoulder, watching closely, and Pettit taking photographs, now with his trusty Nikon, Budarin unlatched the hatch. Next, he took one, two, three tugs … without success. He kicked back, like a high diver lifting himself from the bottom of the pool, and took a wider view of his work, making sure that each of the latches was undone. They were, and he dropped down to try to open the hatch again. This time, with one good tug, it unstuck, popping like a plug being pulled out of a drain. It floated open to reveal a pair of smiling faces.

“Guys!” Budarin shouted in Russian.

Malenchenko was the first out, helped by Bowersox’s extended hand. They hugged. Malenchenko then made way for Lu by falling into Budarin’s arms.

“Hi, Yuri,” Budarin said. “Congratulations.”

Lu soon popped out through the hatch, hugged Bowersox,
hugged Budarin, and then gave a thumbs up to Pettit’s camera. The five of them floated into Zvezda, with Pettit bringing up the rear and still clicking away, before they finally greeted one another properly and began talking to the ground in Russian and in English.

Among those beaming up good wishes was Bill Gerstenmaier, the ecstatic space station program manager. Having gone from nearly seeing station emptied to seeing it full, he let loose with emotion. “Sox, Don, Yuri, Nikolai, Ed, this is Gerst. It’s great to see all of you guys on board the station. This is one of the happiest days of the program. To see all of you on board the International Space Station is just phenomenal. You guys enjoy your couple of days together and we look forward to Sox, Don, and Nikolai coming home.”

“Thanks, Gerst,” Bowersox said. “This is a real goldfish moment up here.”

The expression “goldfish moment,” was an affectionate wink across the miles toward Gerstenmaier. Expedition Six knew that his job, in a lot of ways, was thankless. When he wasn’t trapped in yet another boring meeting in yet another poorly lit room, he was being besieged by one crisis or another—as though the best he could hope for, in asking for relief from the drudgery, was breathless panic. Only very occasionally was it broken instead by transcendent moments of beauty or grace. He called those “goldfish moments” after one of Gary Larson’s more strangely poignant editions of
The Far Side
. In it, a band of murderous soldiers is storming into a castle over a drawbridge that crosses a moat, but one of their number has been stopped in his bloody tracks, distracted by something pretty in the water. “Oo! Goldfish, everyone! Goldfish!” he says.

With the nightmare of
Columbia
nearly over, and with the drama of the crew’s return still days away, this was one of those rare, sweet moments set aside for watching goldfish.

It did not last long. For Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit, almost doubling the station’s population after six months of stasis made things feel a little tight around their shoulders. It wasn’t so tight that they were unhappy for the company, but it was crowded enough to
unsettle them, elbowing them into reality’s harsh orbit. At last they began to understand that this was the end, and the knowledge knocked them off balance. For Bowersox, it felt as though he was being kicked out of his apartment for not paying the rent. It felt as though he was losing custody of something he loved.

“But it’s great to be together,” he said, trying to shake the unease. “It’s great to see these guys, and it’s great to be here on station.”

The next day, April 29, the five residents held press conferences. Bowersox and Pettit were asked what they were most looking forward to, now that they were on their way home. For their audience on the ground, imagining these three tired, lonely men bundled into a crawl space, the hint of reticence in their voices was surprising.

“I’m actually going to miss station quite a lot,” Bowersox said, admitting to a feeling that had been building in him over the past few days rather than subsiding, and one that he had debated leaving unspoken. “But when I get back to earth, the best part is going to be able to hug my wife and hug my kids.”

Pettit followed. “Certainly being with your family,” he said. “I’ve got two little boys who turned two early on this mission. They’re talking sentences, and I’ve never been with them when they’ve been talking, so I’m really anxious to be with them and my wife. I’m looking forward to getting some good home cooking again, too.”

A couple of days later, on May 2, their last full day in space, Expedition Six did two more ground conferences, these for
The Early Show
on CBS and with Miles O’Brien on CNN. It was clear that Bowersox was still struggling with saying goodbye.

“I’m going to miss flying, floating from place to place here in station, and I’m going to miss the spectacular views,” he told O’Brien. “You just can’t beat looking out the window and seeing our planet. We live on the most beautiful place probably in the universe.”

It was unclear, just then, which home he was talking about. But now he consented to look ahead, if only for a little while. He talked
about looking forward to feeling the wind blowing off Galveston Bay, and yet the sentiment rang hollow. It seemed as though he might never be able to turn his mind fully toward leaving.

But orders were orders, and after a fitful night’s sleep, it was time to make the cleanest break possible. First came the change of command ceremony, a repeat, word for word, of the exchange that had taken place when Expedition Six took over from Expedition Five, only with Bowersox assuming a different role.

This time around, it took the combined crews three takes to record it cleanly. First, Ed Lu read from a prepared script, cold and clinical in a failed attempt to take the sting out of things: “Change of command of the ISS shall be an instantaneous transfer of total authority, responsibility, and accountability from one individual to another.” He passed the radio to Bowersox.

“Today, I couldn’t be prouder to be a member of the Expedition Six crew along with Nikolai and Don,” he said. “Over the last five and a half months we’ve experienced some really sad moments and some extremely happy moments. But most important, we have managed to stay together as a crew.

“Ed, Yuri, you have to be the two luckiest guys who come from the planet earth today. Over the next six months, you get to live on board this beautiful ship … I wish you well, and I hope your expedition goes as wonderfully as ours has. I wish you many fantastic memories.” Bowersox took a breath and said to his Russian replacement, “Yuri, I’m ready to be relieved.”