9
Low Earth Orbit
ISS Control
In the Eyes of Commander Randy Bresnik
Home never looked so gorgeous, Randy thought. In the weightlessness of the black void, Commander Randy Bresnik gently caressed the side of the solar panel, his other hand gripping one of his repair tools. His eyes, however, were somewhere else. Despite his face hidden behind the black visor of his space helmet, he could tell his team knew he had the biggest damn smile on his face.
It was routine maintenance. Nothing fantastic. Randy didn’t mind taking the reins every now and again. In fact, he loved it, because it gave him an excuse to gaze at home. Planet Earth. God, she never looked so gorgeous. He always said that, but damn it all she always did. In the corner of his eye, he could see his buddy Joe Acaba working on the other end of the ISS, tool in hand, facing away from home, probably doing more work than he was.
As Randy turned to Joe, he twisted his body and felt himself turn right. He made sure to grip the edge of the solar panel to stop himself, but then he gazed. Out into the wild black yonder. The glare of the sun was strong, but his visor kept his eyesight safe. As he turned his eyes away from the light, he gazed into the black. Millions upon millions of lights dotted the blackness, crafting a portrait so breathtakingly beautiful he could have wished others back home could have seen it. He always loved stargazing.
“ISS Control, this is Houston Command. Do you copy? Over.”
Back to work. Randy mentally sighed, pulling himself back towards the solar panel.
“Roger, Houston. This is Commander Bresnik reading you loud and clear. Over,” Randy replied, watching as his fellow astronaut—or cosmonaut, considering his nationality—and good friend Alexander Misurkin crawled across the ISS, carrying tools. Probably for Joe.
Houston replied almost instantly. “ISS Control, we are getting some strange readings near your vicinity. Take a quick sweep towards the eastern side of the Earth. Over.”
“You got this one, Randy?” Paolo Nespoli’s voice asked through the comms.
Randy kept a strong grip on the solar panel, turning himself over to the right. “Yeah, yeah. Hold on,” he replied, his visor facing the far east side of the Earth. Other than seeing the brightness of the sun shimmer against the edge of the hemisphere and the shining lights from the darker areas farther west, there was nothing that appeared strange.
“Uh, negative, Houston,” Randy said, still gripping the solar panel and gazing to the world. “No external forces that we can see. Maybe you got some solar flares?”
“We are unsure at this time, Commander Bresnik. Keep your eyes to home. Over.”
You read my mind, Randy thought. He brought himself back to the solar panel and watched his team work below. Both Joe Acaba and Alexander Misurkin were crawling down the solar panel they were working on, both turning themselves backwards to stare at the Earth.
Joe pointed forward with his free hand, saying, “Hey, I got nothin’ near the Western Hemisphere.”
“Same for the south and north. What say you, Randy?” Alexander asked, turning his visor up to the astronaut working on the last solar panel.
He wasn’t working on it. At least not anymore. Just like the others, he constantly scanned the Earth to find some sort obstruction, some form of odd occurrence. Yet there was nothing. The comms were silent for almost a minute before Randy finally replied.
“I don’t—”
“ISS Control, there are severe spikes in gravitational instability in your vicinity. Our readings show the ISS is in stable orbit; is that correct?”
Randy didn’t need any confirmation to know that. The ISS had been stable ever since, and there wasn’t any form of disturbance and no words of warning from inside to tell him that something was wrong. “Roger, Houston. The ISS is stable. I don’t know what to tell ya.”
“Looking into it, ISS Control. Keep those eyes peeled. We may have a problem here.”
The grave tone Houston Command gave didn’t calm Randy’s growing anxiety about the current situation. That anxiety was starting to grow the longer he tried to search for the disturbance Houston may have found, yet there was still nothing that he could see. That anxiety started to send shock waves across his skin beneath his suit, causing a very unnatural chill to race up and down his spine.
“You feelin’ that?” Joe asked, gazing at his palm and arm.
Alex turned to him, nodding. Or tried to. He moved forwards and backwards, but still said, “I thought I was the only one.”
“What do you see out there, Commander?” Mark Vande Hei said from within the ISS.
Nothing. Randy saw absolutely nothing. It could have been a solar flare, but they would have been informed earlier if that was so. Feeling the need to tell Houston something of interest, Randy kept his eyes on Earth, saying into his comms, “Houston Command, uh, about those strange readings you mentioned earlier… Uh, we’re starting to—”
Then he felt it. It felt like a tug at first, then it tried to pry him right off the solar panel. Randy reared forward, abandoning his tools and holding onto the solar panel for dear life. He saw below as Joe and Alex were almost pulled back themselves, but they found a grip somewhere against the hull on the ISS. Finding a steady grip himself with one arm, Randy turned himself backwards, trying to catch what caused the strong gravitational pull that he felt.
He saw it. He almost couldn’t believe it.
“What the hell?!”
They all saw it.
It was almost unreal, but it was there just as clearly as Randy saw the world and the stars in the void. It was almost like a tear in the sky. That was the best he could put it. Then it grew, holding a bright blue aura around its edges and forming a massive orb. It grew so gargantuan that Randy couldn’t even see where it began and where it ended any longer. Within the orb it created, something emerged. Almost like it was pushed or pulled forward, out of the darkness came something that made Randy’s heart plummet.
“ISS Control, what is going on out there?!” Houston Command screamed, the comms fizzling out.
Static was their response, but they managed to catch Mark Vande Hei scream, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
“ISS Con—!”
Communications to Houston were instantly cut when the massive object came fully into view.
“Houston?” Randy asked, voice heavy and breathless. The front of his helmet quickly began to fog up from his continued breaths. “Houston!” he screamed, spittle hitting his mask.
“Randy, get back inside!” Cosmonaut Sergey Ryanzansky shouted on their shared comms unit.
He felt the panel lurch forward towards the massive object escaping the vortex, now clearly the source of the gravitational pull he and his team felt earlier. Randy reached back and gripped onto it with all the strength he could muster, gasping for air almost like he couldn’t breathe.
“ISS has broken orbit!” Paolo Nespoli screamed. “We’re being sucked into the planet!”
The planet.
“Randy, get out of there!” Joe exclaimed, waving up to his fellow astronaut from below, where he and Alex barely held on.
The planet. Not Earth.
Commander Bresnik didn’t answer. As he gripped onto the solar panel, his eyes were forced away from the approaching celestial body and turned towards the far Western Hemisphere. Beyond Earth. He reached up to his helmet, slowly but surely raising his visor with a shaking glove. His expression said it all. Complete and utter shock, suddenly filled with unhinged terror. His eyes continued to grow.
“Randy!”
Another tear in space appeared, this one far from Earth, but near something else. Randy could only watch as a second celestial body was practically pulled out of the shimmering black and blue vortex. It slowly moved forward, onward, closer and closer like time itself slowed down. He couldn’t even breathe when that celestial body impacted the Moon.
His body was on fire. All of his communications were fried. As he watched the ISS get torn apart and free fall to the planet above them, the last thing he saw were chunks of the moons scatter from their collision, each piece moving towards Earth very, very slowly.
And then he closed his eyes and burned, as he and his crew fell to the new world.