NEWMAN

The four astronauts - two astronauts and two cosmonauts, technically speaking - were waiting for the night to end. There was little else to do, Juliana thought. It was a strange feeling. Most of their lives on board the station were strictly regimented. Slots of different tasks, a little free time to watch or read stuff, chat with people on the ground, and sleep, all according to schedules drafted by a committee of the various partners of the Station, uploaded on tablets.

And now, there were in an emergency, and they were doing nothing. In her old schedule, she’d be getting ready for bedtime, slipping into the floating sleeping bag, adjusting the breathing mask she used instead of fans, plugging her ears, adjusting a mask over her eyes, and getting ready for eight hours of zero-g sleep, which was the most comfortable sleeping position anyone could dream of.

The shock of the inexplicable shutdown, the impossible Change, all that was receding, and she was starting to feel tired, she admitted. Yet she knew the emergency was far from over, and she probably had to face hours of frenetic action, punctuated by waiting periods like this.

One of the Russians, Ivan she thought, was using the tablet and typing messages aimed at Moscow. The USA had taken over the managing of the emergency, unsurprisingly, but that did not mean the rest of the partners in the ISS were staying silent. Japan was probably screaming at Shuko for answers, and the RKA was certainly waking up everybody they could. It was, what? Five in the morning there? She reflexively brought up her arm and noticed that the watch was not there. She wondered when she’d lost it before she spotted the watch piece floating. The bracelet must have just broken.

Which was strange. Her clothing already looked like it had been through a blender or something, but the leather must have held while she was Changing. Only to break just now. Was she stretching? She looked more carefully and spotted pieces of leather still on her arm.

She could still blink in surprise, even if she had four eyes now to do so. She’d hidden the fact from Houston so far. That somehow felt like a step too far. Weird skin, melted organs, sure. But confessing to having four eyes, four completely functional eyes that felt natural at giving her 360° sight could cement the idea that they were aliens replacing the crew, not mutated humans.

She picked carefully at the leather. It seemed to be stuck to her skin. She scratched harder, and it peeled off. She looked at both leather and skin. The skin seemed pretty much the same, undistinguishable between where the leather had been adhering and the rest. The leather, however, looked scraped, raw.

She picked at her T-shirt. Parts of one sleeve seemed stuck the same way and ripped away when she pulled. She tried to twist, failing from her modified skeletal structure before she realized that she could just bring the arm up and look with side eyes.

It did look glued, but there was no trace of blood or anything that could cause the cloth bits to remain glued. Besides, the cotton had ripped easily.

‟Frank?”

‟Let me look at your sleeves.”

‟Uh? Is that some kind of weird proposition?”

‟I want to check. Is your T-shirt glued in parts on you?”

The figure of Frank fussed on his clothing.

‟Maybe?” he admitted. ‟Is yours doing the same? Is that why you’re asking?”

‟I think… my skin is absorbing the fibers. You too.”

Ivan stopped typing. His cosmonaut friend twitched slightly.

All three were looking at her.

‟We were wondering how we breathe without a mouth. The skin is the only candidate… but it might not stop there. We might also eat stuff that way,” she said.

‟Now that you mention, I’m slightly hungry, I think,” Frank added.

‟It must be pretty inefficient. At both functions, even. There is no way an outer tegument, especially one looking like that, is as good as lung alveoli or a mouth-and-stomach system.”

‟It looks good so far for oxygen. Or maybe we don’t need too much.”

‟I’m also thinking that,” the voice of Shuko came from Central.

Of course, the JAXA member of the crew heard from there. Their voices resonated across the station. Maybe Yaytsev’s idea of radio waves as “sound” was not too much outrageous.

‟Not going to test until we need to,” Yaytsev, who’d stayed silent after he sprang his latest news, replied.

‟In last resort, yes,” she confirmed.

‟How long till the end of the eclipse?” she asked him.

‟Four minutes or so,” he replied immediately.

That was one of the things that impressed her with the Russian. He had always seemed to know exactly what time it was. She’d once clocked him, and he might be drifting by a second or less per minute.

‟Okay. Ivan, I need to talk to Houston. I need a plan for as soon the power goes back on.”

‟Go ahead. It’s useless.”

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‟What?”

‟Moscow keeps asking for some duress control phrases. To confirm I’m Radanovich, and that you Americans are not holding me hostage while they feed CGI.”

‟Seriously?”

‟They want more confirms. I even offered to make gestures live on TV while they watch, but they speak about deepfakes and stuff.”

‟How can you…”

‟Exhausted everything. I even apologized to Ops for puking on him during training. Not convinced.”

‟They don’t think we’ve been Changed over the Zone?”

‟They don’t even think there is a Zone.”

Blinking was the only answer she could give. Words did not adequately convey her surprise. Although she should not have been surprised. Despite the cooperation between NASA and RKA that had prevailed for most of the ISS’s lifespan, trust was too easily broken.

Ivan shoved the tablet into her hand, and she shelved away the Russian troubles to focus.

Ops?

BYRNE

Ops?

Kayleigh Byrne reassembled her notes. She tried to ignore the NASA Deputy Director, who had managed to pop into the control room while the various teams in the adjacent room integrated everything they had, and brought scenarios within the thirty-five minutes where the ISS moved in the shadow of the Earth.

ISS? We have you moving out of eclipse in two minutes.

Correct. Those plans? I want to act ASAP. No watt to waste.

Kayleigh looked at the chronometer. 34 minutes. It had been adjusted based on the last data.

You have 34 minutes to shutdown. Put all heaters on, and move all air around. We’re uploading the models.

Good. Next orbit?

We have good news. We’ve got a better model of the expansion. Turns out there’s a gigantic constellation of satellites that keeps shutting down and restarting by the dozens all the time.

The primary control center for the satellite constellation was smack into the affected zone in Redmond. They’d switched over to a backup in their southern California HQ almost as soon as the phenomenon had begun, but with the zone expanding, they’d switched to the last resort, a hastily mounted center in their Texas experimental facility. They had called NASA earlier, but nobody had thought to connect them to the ISS control center.

With their satellites constantly rebooting, thanks to their solar panels still lighted, they had a near-perfect real-time picture of the zone. Better than the Pentagon’s rough maps.

She finished her explanations.

So, it’s slowing down slightly. Newman – she assumed – typed.

And that means the second orbit, you’re not clipping that zone. You’re safe for ten orbits after the next pass. Or maybe nine, depending on the exact model.

Only?

The zone going to be monstrous by then. It’s already eleven hundred miles in diameter and that’s growing at over a hundred eighty miles an hour, even if looks to be slowing down over time.

The ISS link didn’t update for almost a minute. She added,

The alternative plan was to burn all your fuel to raise the orbit, slowing you down slightly so you’d be a tiny bit eastward on that next orbit. It was looking dubious, and we’re safer keeping you in normal orbit.

The answer ignored Plan B.

Evacuation?

Scenarios for that are still being drawn. It’s complicated.

BARANOV

‟They’re fucked,” Yaytsev realized before he could stop himself.

‟What?” Juliana exclaimed.

‟In nine orbits, let alone ten, we won’t have Houston online. It will be in the Zone already if their model holds.”

‟Is that why she said it’s complicated?” the commander asked.

‟Probably. Although we can switch to Moscow after the eighth orbit. Huntsville will be offline just behind them, no time to waste.”

‟If we can convince them it’s real and not an American scam, you mean.”

Light started to rise in the Cupola, and Yaytsev realized he’d missed sun-up. The ISS had moved out of the eclipse from Earth’s shadow, right on schedule.

The others were almost as fast to realize the fact. Commander Newman immediately started giving orders.

‟Okay, Yaytsev, you start spinning those fans. Check CO2, everything, and double-check Houston’s plan for heating. We have…”

‟Less than 10 minutes after shutdown before the next eclipse,” he automatically answered. ‟Although I need to see that model first to adjust the prediction. Eleven thousand miles seems too high.”

‟Do it. Frank, Ivan, start checking the return vehicles. I want an assessment of how they can operate after repeated shutdowns. I’ll be with Shuko in Central.”

‟Aye aye.”

Yaytsev could, in theory, operate the ISS from anywhere, now that he had the credentials. The main data buses kept working even in an emergency, as long as the Zone – funny how everybody called it “The Zone” already – did not interfere.

He looked at the tablet he was dragging along himself. Once he reached the EU lab that was his destination, he finished typing.

No. And stop asking for codes. I’ve given you all standard non-duress codes, and you know it. I don’t need some excuse to be able to give you the codes you want.

Moscow was acting schizophrenic, he thought. They kept acting as if he was really Yaytsev Baranov, yet refused to believe him. He stopped looking at the tablet and focused on the magnet, held in various ways over multiple containers that were, for the moment, empty, as the experiments were not underway.

It was one of many studies on electromagnetic engineering in zero-g, using electromagnetic fields in the absence of apparent gravity to manipulate metals and stuff and see what happened. And the magnet gave some aura, some indefinable “thing” that did look like the expected residual magnetic lines at rest.

Later, he thought. He had work, models, and calculations. No time for spurious thought.

Priorities.

He started adding outputs, in categories. Critical, Essential, Major, Dontcare. He kept comparing the model with the current power draws, refining estimates. Then he looked at a specific entry. Then he called up the orbit, mapping a set of distorted circles over Seattle.

‟Frank?”

‟Yaytsev?”

‟Tell me the batteries are nominal on your Dragon.”

‟One sec… looks good. They’re just starting to charge, although that’s probably useless for now.”

‟Worse.”

‟Problem?” the commander’s voice came.

It was funny the way the voices echoed without being distorted much over the interior of the station. Normally, you couldn’t hear each other over the natural noises of the station even when shouting. But if they were talking over some radio, then everything worked better. And they were all on the same channel, hearing each other.

‟I’m looking at the power draw of the Dragon and the Soyuz. The lines are designed to keep them topped up, not to do a refill like a launch.”

Silence answered him.

‟Complicated.”

‟You can say that. The Soyuz can land, but it’s too small for all of us. The Dragon is large enough, but can’t land. And both will need two partial orbits to reenter, even with safeties off. You need a recovery team to reach us when we splash, meaning aiming for a specific point.”

‟Go on. I think I need to hear it from you.”

‟If we want the east coast, we need to launch after the next shutdown. But the batteries will be flat, it will be eclipse already, and the solar panels are designed to extend the flight duration, not charge it.”

‟And if we charge the Dragon after shutdowns…”

‟It will have enough autonomy, assuming no clipping the zone… in seven orbits. And I don’t think we can get a re-entry orbit that doesn’t shut the Dragon.”

‟Maybe ground has one. Or a different splash zone.”

‟As they said. It’s complicated.”