The Final Expedition

Day Thirty-Three

I glanced up from the screen of the laptop at the sound of a door above me creaking open. I was in the process of editing the camcorder footage I had shot so far.

“Good morning, Carter.” Morrison smiled down at me as he climbed out of his sleeping compartment.

“Morning Wes.” I replied, instinctively glancing through a nearby porthole. The surface of the Earth was in darkness, so it was actually the middle of the night below us. Still, with a complete orbit every ninety minutes, the station would soon emerge on the day side of the planet and it would be morning in a real sense for a few minutes at least and not just according to station time.

“What’s the plan for today?” Morrison asked, running his fingers over his stubbly jaw before reaching for a razor.

“Shoot some more footage of the dead planet below us.” I shrugged. “Take some photos, upload them to the station server. Basically, same shit, different day.”

“It may seem dull,” Morrison replied, “But what you are doing might be more important than any of the experiments the rest of us are carrying out. The spread of the ash clouds across the planet will be important information to pass on when we return to the surface.”

“I guess so.” I sighed, reaching for the camera.

As I entered the cupola, Natalya was already there, gazing down at the planet below us. The path of the station was taking us close to the north pole and we could see the green haze of the Aurora Borealis capping the planet, the shifting green patterns moving over the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

“It’s so beautiful.” She murmured. “Have you ever seen the northern lights from Earth?”

“No.” I replied. “It’s always something I’d have loved to have seen, but this is the first time.”

“I saw it once when I was a little girl, visiting family in Murmansk in the north of Russia. The whole sky was filled with this amazing swirling lightshow. I felt like I was on another planet. To my relatives, it was quite a commonplace occurrence, but I stood in the freezing cold, staring up at this amazing sky in wonder. I remember turning to my father and asking him what it was. He tried to explain, but I was too young to understand. It was my next birthday when he gave me the telescope I mentioned before, so I suppose that night in Murmansk was my first step on the road to becoming a Cosmonaut.”

“It’s certainly quite a sight.” I replied, raising the camera and taking a few shots, glad of something other than the dark ash clouds to photograph. “Makes you optimistic that perhaps everything’s not quite as bleak as it looks down there.” As I lowered the camera, I glanced over at Natalya. She was gazing thoughtfully down at the surface, the golden glow of the sunlight playing over her face. I quickly raised the camera and framed her in the shot. The click of the camera caught her attention and she glanced over at me quizzically.

“A nice shot.” I smiled, turning the camera around and showing her the picture. She smiled and blushed.

“I… I should get back to my experiments.” She stuttered, brushing a loose strand of her blonde hair away from her face. “I have a busy day ahead of me.”

“Of course.” I replied, pulling myself out of the way and catching a pleasant hint of her perfume as she pulled herself past me and through the hatch.