Adventures of the Cosmic Woman

Prologue

Tears are strange in zero gravity.

The salty water stung her eyes as it bubbled up from under her lids and hovered there. She reached out and placed her hand on the aluminium silicate glass - covering the West Coast of the USA, the Great Bear rain forest of Canada, all of Alaska, some of Russia and a good portion of the Pacific Ocean four-hundred and eight kilometers below – and spread her fingers down the middle in the Vulcan salute.

Doctor Darrian Infield smiled. Little salty droplets hung suspended around her face while her body floated inside the smug confines of the shuttle, surrounded by tubes and pipes and panels and cables.

'I made it,' she whispered. Floating. It had been sickly, at first. The hangover of tingles and tenderness from the pressure of their ascent. But the overwhelming joy in her heart that she was here, finally here, was too much to let her care. Infield let out a soft squeal of delight.

'Hey, you okay?' came the firm American voice of Captain McKenna. She looked up through the tiny passage and saw his face almost fill it up. 'Homesick already?'

'No,' Infield said as she removed her hand and looked at her foggy hand print. Behind it Russia, China and Japan slowly crept across the face of the blue orb. For all the human cities, population, and life down there, not a hint of it was visible. You can't see the Great Wall of China from space.

'Just... taking it in.'

'Oh, yes,' McKenna said as he nodded his head deeply. It showed his ginger hair with a few gray streaks through it. 'We are small, huh?'

'Hmm,' she smiled because she wanted to see his smile. It reminded her of John F. Kennedy or Robert Redford. That classic handsomeness she's noticed right away and got excited about going into space with. The wedding ring he wore was the second thing she'd noticed.

'Well anyway,' he continued, 'we've got KSC on the line if you wanna say anything to Mahlia before you do your thing.'

She inhaled the stagnant air sharply through her teeth.

'What's the matter?'

'Oh I'm being silly... kind of makes it sound like I should like... like... in case I have to say my goodbyes...' her voice got shaky at the thought.

'No, I didn't mean it like that.'

'No - I know you didn't.'

'It'd be nice for Mahlia to hear her mommy talking from space, don't you think?'

'Before the big... thing.'

'Well, we can wait until after if you wanted to.'

'No, it's fine. It's good. I don't want her hanging around in there all night. I'll talk to her now.'

'You sure you're up for this?' McKenna said as she climbed toward him through the passage with her legs suspended behind her. 'There's no harm changing your mind. Being up here can change your perspective - although you are perfectly safe. That I can assure you.'

What choice? She was five-foot-three and the suit was custom made for her. Neither of these 5'9-er guys were going to fit it.

'I better be,' she said as she floated out into the little warren of circuitry and switches and buttons and dials and piping and paneling and the two other bodies already mingled up among it all.

'How you doing?' Lieutenant Dawber said as he looked down and smiled at her while his head and arms were tangled up in cables.

'Fine.'