“He hath made the earth by His power,
He hath established the world by His wisdom,
and hath stretched out the heavens by His discretion.”
Jeremiah 10:12 KJV

Solace Station
Orbiting Mars
Earth time: 30 June 2051

Mae McNair stared into the mirror, studying the dark brown eyes of her reflection. She turned her head to the left and then the right, studying her ebony skin. Her face was thinner. They said she wouldn’t be able to tell, but her bones felt thinner, birdlike, surrounded by muscles now atrophied by the lesser gravity. The centrifuge, first on the transport shuttle and then the space station, had helped, but she could still tell a difference. She’d been off-world for over a year.  

The Martian surface had thirty-eight percent less gravity than Earth and there was even less on Solace Station, she mentally quoted the training videos. They’d been alone for ten days since the taikonaut pair had left—home for China. Two additional astronauts were due to arrive in five more days. Ever since that fiasco in 2035, when that guy got marooned down there, NASA hadn’t been back to the surface. The mission logs were required reading for every astronaut. 

“Lots of ‘Mars wants to kill me.’ At least it’s entertaining.”  She grinned at herself, then pulled on the door to the inset cabinet.

NASA had assembled Solace Station remotely from pieces jettisoned at the red planet. Solace Station was to keep anyone from getting stranded again without a backup plan. Besides, it would make a good staging area for the initial colonization missions scheduled to begin in ’65.

Mae grasped a comb and ripped it from the Velcro that held it in place. She smoothed it through her short black curls, replaced it, and then closed the toiletries cabinet. The click of the magnetic latch was loud in the compartment. Bad habit she’d picked up. Talking to herself – while Michael was out collecting info from the probes – might be a hard habit to break before she wound up in a Louisiana grocery store aisle with a crowd trailing behind her. The image tickled her funny bone, and she laughed out loud. Oh, well, a worry for a different day. The boy was due to check in soon, so she didn’t have much time. She grabbed her half-pad filled with her favorite Bible version, over five hundred journal entries, and her favorite music. 

It was time to start her morning the right way.

These days, tax dollars were won in social media, and NASA couldn’t resist the heartstring tug of a mother/son team in space. She sure didn’t mind. And Michael had taken the news like a champ. With the growing popularity of space launches, the experimental space elevator in the Pacific, and the new atmospheric high-rises, family in space was bound to happen, but she still wondered what sort of bribes NASA had offered to hush Michael’s complaints. 

 Now strapped into the observation sphere on a swivel seat, Mae lowered the half pad, considering David’s words from Psalm 31. She always had her morning devotions in “the bubble.” Michael teased her, but it was her prayer closet. Inside it, she was a small part of an expansive universe, cradled in the Master’s hand, an astronaut one minute from life-threatening danger, but kept alive by the Creator of the universe. It might be the first time anybody had invited God right into Solace Station, and she was committed to it. The idea pleased her.

Mae studied the Martian surface from the observation point. Tracks from previous missions, rovers, and otherwise, crisscrossed the red dirt. She rotated in the ergonomic chair until she faced the void spotted with stars and constellations she didn’t know. Earth was a small point of light – incredible. He was with her wherever He led.

Overcome, she sang quietly: 

“And He walks with me,
And He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.”

The song died away as Mae kissed her fingertips and then brushed them across a picture of an attractive, Sidney Poitier look-alike fellow. 

“Wish you were here,” she whispered. 

The three-by-five holo-image was one of the few personal items allowed when they strapped her in for her last rocket ride – her second trip to Solace, her last outer space mission, and an historic first to boot. It had been a good year, and she was thankful. 

Mae checked her watch, and then tugged her husband’s likeness from the see-through wall. As she pulled herself along the corridor toward the command nodule, she tucked the picture in a cargo pocket. 

Time to earn her pay.

She ignored the fluttering in the pit of her stomach. It was nearly time for the upload from mission control. Maybe Abel had sent her something. What began as a discussion about the careful order of the docking procedure for the Expectation retrieval pod had morphed into a friendly back and forth about God. 

They were both scientists. Abel didn’t believe. Mae did. It had been a challenging conversation, but she tried to ignore the bit of thrill. It’d been a long time since she’d had any repartee with a man, much less a religious one. It wasn’t technically against company policy for personal communication of the religious nature, but it wasn’t entirely approved by the higher-ups either. Maybe that was part of why she’d let it go on so long.

In the command center, she hovered beside the communication control. As if on cue, the on-board communications systems displayed a message across the main screen. “Solace, go for Download?” Mission control was as punctual as dependable.

Mae typed in, “Roger, Houston. Go for download.”

The information transfer began. Two status bars appeared on the screen, one for Houston’s download, one for the Solace Station upload. Every twelve hours, they swapped notes with the Texas-based mission control. Houston handled Solace Station, as well as the International Space Station II after the first International Space Station was decommissioned and sent to auction in the private sector.

Mae scanned the incoming messages. Yep. One was from Abel Onizuka, followed by a few from family members addressed to her. Butterflies danced in her stomach, and Mae licked her lips. 

Another name caught her eye. It was vaguely familiar, but she could not immediately place it. She pulled up yesterday’s logs. That’s what she thought. Michael had received one from the same girl yesterday. 

Penelope McAuliffe. 

Mae toggled to another screen. And he’d sent one, too. Her sneaky son had a girl. How serious? she wondered as she directed the incoming communique to his personal mission inbox. Probably serious, if he’d not introduced them. He was like his daddy in that way. The serious plans were secret until decided. She tsked. He had some explaining to do.

“Expectation to Grandma Mars,” Michael Philip McNair quipped. “Headed home. Don’t lock the door. I might be a bit past curfew.” 

Mae rolled her eyes and then tsked into the microphone. “Solace Station,” she enunciated the words clearly, “…to Expectation. You better watch it, Junior. I may be old, but I’ll eat all your ice cream and ground you.” 

Eavesdroppers would like that bit of witty banter. It was fun to think up things that would entertain the wide audience of NASA communication subscribers in mind. She’d have to grill him about Penelope later.

Michael’s chuckle filled her earpiece. “Yes, ma’am.”

***

Michael was still pleased with himself over the “Grandma Mars” bit. He’d been thinking it up ever since he started back from the space buoy. Expectation’s autopilot could handle the majority of the return trip, so Michael skimmed the information he’d retrieved from the collection buoy. The data was easy to transfer, and it could have been transmitted from the buoy to Solace Station, but the asteroid samples could not. So Astronaut Michael Phillip McNair, Physicist, got to ride in a tiny tin can and listen to music for three hours. It reminded him of that deep sea sub they’d used to explore the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, polka-dotted with riveted window ports and just as small.

Man, what he wouldn’t give for a transporter. These trips back and forth every few days were beyond boring. He shifted in his seat. The one-man craft was cramped, especially in the precautionary space suit. But since they couldn’t just beam the samples over, here he was making the fifteenth trip from Solace Station to the buoy and back again. When he was a boy, he’d been convinced that NASA would have figured out transporter tech by now. Somebody needed to get the NASA boys to speed things along a bit.

Michael grinned. He’d spent hours watching those old Sci-Fi reruns with his dad. They’d been made even before NASA had lobbed the Voyager 1 probe at Jupiter. A twinge of sadness followed the replay of his memories. The episodes might have been a stretch, and were beyond old when they watched them curled up on the couch with Cokes and a big bowl of buttered popcorn, but those “what if” stories had inspired Michael to reach farther than the Earth. The grief hurt less than it used to, but Dad sure would have loved to see him and mom keeping the McNair family tradition. Together on a NASA Mars mission. And getting along.

He was close enough to see Solace clearly now. A centrifuge circled the cylindrical tube living quarters. On one end, the crane NASA had used to assemble the nodules that made up the space station sat collecting interstellar dust. 

The ring emulated gravity for the long term spacers – and they were required to spend several hours in it every day – so they weren’t limp noodles with glass for bones when they made it back home. 

Mom didn’t know it yet, but agreeing to the mission with her had guaranteed him a spot in the first Mars landing in twenty years. It’d taken some brain work to bargain that out in writing. The contract had all the obligatory legalese protecting NASA from sending a terminally ill man to Mars, of course, but as long as he didn’t do anything stupid, like die, he’d be the next man on Mars. 

Michael rolled his shoulders and then rubbed his gloved hands together. Just one more year until he made it back to Earth, proposed to his girl, and then only six years until he could get some Mars on his boots. 

He scrolled through the music in his player and settled on Space Oddity by David Bowie. Perfect in an ironic sort of way. The song played through the one-man tin can, and Michael tipped his head back and tried to catch a catnap.

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