Ready for the Ride

Two Months Before Re-entry

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But when it's your crew member, your friend, and you're watching him drown because his helmet is leaking water into it, you hear the screams. He was outside alone fixing the space station in one of our only still wearable spacesuits. We tried to get him inside in time. We tried to revive him. We were almost home.

Well it's supposed to be home, but all of us under thirty haven't been there before. We grew up on the space station, and we've never been to Earth. My friend David was almost home; we could see the earth in the distance.

The space station has been deteriorating for years. Our parents began the mission. The purpose of the mission was to study the effects of children being born and growing up on the station. I was part of that second generation living on the station.

We used to get deliveries of new equipment and supplies every forty-five days or so. With the wars on Earth and budget cuts, we got fewer and fewer of the things we desperately need. David died because of these budget cuts and because the people on Earth no longer care about us. Soon we'll have no choice but to return to Earth, because we will be out of the things that we need. David died for no reason, and I was forced to watch it from the porthole window. The debris that caused the accident was debris from an old Earth mission. David might not have been the first one to die in space, but that doesn’t take away from the tragedy that we all felt from his death.

Month Before Re-entry

Don't get me wrong. We were all lucky that the whole space station wasn't destroyed with that hit. But David didn't need to die, he died because our equipment is failing and needs to be replaced. Communication from Earth has been infrequent lately. The last time we heard from Earth was two months ago. Our captain, who is completely incompetent, got his job through nepotism, of course. He is saying that we need to go home in the next couple weeks. We'll have to take the pods that are attached to the space station back to an earth that I have never seen before.

Day of Earth Re-entry

Now as I look back from the porthole window. I see everyone preparing for our evacuation to Earth. There are things that we do not want to leave behind on the space station. We're not sure of the future of this station, but we know that it's time for us to go.

In about forty-five minutes, this might be my last time in space. Will I miss it? How big is the earth going to feel? I've grown up to only know this space. The Earth below looks so much bigger than where I am now. I can't comprehend how I'm going to fit into a world bigger than this station. David and I were supposed to do this together. Now I feel so alone.

There are five pods with eight crew members each that are going to take us to the Russian wilderness. We don't know what waits for us there. The communication has been so bad we don't even know if people know that we are coming.

I gather my things. I throw my teddy bear into my bag. I look around my little space that I have had since I was born. I guess I'm ready for a new adventure. I know though that I won't ever have a friend again like David.

I buckle my seat harness into place. I adjust my spacesuit that we wear in the pod. I close my eyes. I'm ready for the ride.