The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The impact sent a deep shudder through the station. To Lazutkin, still glued to the base block window, it felt like a sharp, sudden tremor, a small earthquake. Foale, swimming through the node toward the open mouth of the Soyuz, felt the violent vibration when his hand brushed the side of the darkened chamber.

“Oh!” Tsibliyev shouted, as if in pain. He stared at his screen, barely comprehending what had happened. He said aloud, “Can you imagine?”

The master alarm sounded, eliminating all but shouted conversation.

“We have decompression!” Tsibliyev yelled. “It looks like it hit the solar panel! Hell! Sasha, that’s it!”

Confusion broke out as Lazutkin turned and began to swim toward the node, intent on readying the Soyuz for immediate evacuation.

“Wait, come back, Sasha!” Tsibliyev barked.

It was the first decompression aboard an orbiting spacecraft in the history of manned space travel. As Lazutkin hovered beside him, waiting for an order, Tsibliyev remained at his post, staring at the screen, like the captain of a stricken ship.

“How can this be?” he asked.“How can this be?”

After that his words were drowned out in the manic din of the master alarm.

Floating alone in the node, Foale paused. After a moment he realized he was still alive. His ears popped, just a bit, telling him that whatever hole had been punctured in the hull, it was probably a small one. The station’s wounds, whatever they were, were not immediately fatal. They should have enough time to evacuate.

He turned and faced the entrance to the Soyuz, where a tangle of cables, a mass of gray-white spaghetti, spilled out of the escape craft’s open mouth. Executing a deft little flip, he turned backward and entered the Soyuz feet first, extending his legs behind him, his head and shoulders protruding from the capsule.

As he turned to look back toward base block, Foale fully expected Lazutkin and Tsibliyev to come charging into the node after him to begin the evacuation. They didn’t. Foale waited five, ten, then twenty seconds. There was no sign of the Russians. They remained somewhere back in base block, out of his sight.