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THERE'S BEEN A MALFUNCTI-"

Trey's voice screams over the transmitter before I hear a slow,
quiet whistle and then my feet leave the ground, an invisible hand pull-
ing me, at a rate I never even thought possible, down the corridor. I try
to scream, but my throat just begs for air as my body begins to freeze
from my feet up to the top of my scalp. Iforce my hands to grab onto
anything, to stop me from being vented out, but I don't have the oxygen
for it left in my body. Helpless, I watch as the corridor grows smaller in
front of me, and I fly out into space. I wave my hands around as rapidly
as I can, trying to grab onto anything, but there isn't anything to greet
my fingers. I'm swimming in a waterless ocean. There is no up, down,
left, or right; there is only suspension, endless suspension. Nothing to
touch, feel, or cling on to. I am alone and forced to be silent as I open
my mouth to scream for help, and my voice recedes back into my lungs,
and a wave of frigid cold slips down my throat, freezing me.

It's been five seconds. My mind races fast, trying to grasp onto
one last important thought before I slip out of consciousness. Before
you qualify to be an astronaut, you take part in years of grueling courses
and training to prepare you for situations like this. But when it finally
comes, you find out that you don't have enough time to prepare at all.
Rather, it just happens. Like a snapping of a branch.

My lungs feel like an exploding balloon, expanding like a
mushroom cloud with the pent-up oxygen. If! could move my frozen
hands, I would try to push my lungs back into theirformer size and
position. I would clutch at my ribs; I would claw at my face to try and
scrape away the frost that's paralyzing all of my movement. I am forced
to watch through the ice at what my inert and floating body lets me see.

I see the space station, Siren's Wake, still spinning, still in
the same place it was before, still orbiting Earth. I see the floating of
trash, computers, equipment, space suits, and other inanimate objects
venting into space with me. I see the faint glimmer of Earth's clouded
atmosphere. I see the nothingness of space. I am reminded of a little boy
dropping a pebble down a long, dark well and not seeing the splash or
the rock hitting the surface or the ripples of the small pond. Millions of
pebbles, stars, seeming to disappear from my eyes.

You read in books and see in films and observe from the grassy
yard in the backyard of your house the many stars in space, the far away

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