Read A Step Beyond for Free Online Page A

and slightly above the others. The docking module was not designed to hold so many human bodies at one time, complicating Robbins’s ability to maneuver to a good vantage point.
    “Welcome to Space Station
Unity
,” Nelson said. “I am Colonel Tom Nelson, and these are my colleagues. . . .”
    As soon as the camera was turned off, Komarov looked around the room, and declared: “There have been some additions since I was here last.”
    “Yes, there have,” Nelson responded. “The MSC was modified to accommodate the new arm. And the German GEM II module was installed last month. I will be taking you there shortly.”
    “Your fondness for acronyms will be your undoing,” Satomura remarked.
    Nelson smiled politely. There was something about Satomura that he didn’t like. “The new arm can handle fifty percent more mass. One hundred and fifty thousand kilograms total.”
    “Yes,” Komarov said, touching his surroundings. “The simulator was accurate. And beyond this module lies the life-sciences research laboratory.”
    “Quite correct,” Endicott responded. “I spend a large portion of my time there. We are about midway through an embryogenesis study. The Chiroptera order has yielded some interesting results.”
    “Chiroptera?” Tanya asked.
    “Bats,” Endicott responded politely.
    “We, too, have had some interesting results with the Chiroptera,” Satomura said. “The experiments were conducted during our last mission.”
    “I have read the preliminary reports,” Endicott replied and was on the verge of giving his opinion of the reports when Nelson interrupted and invited the others to follow him through the portal. They formed a semicircle around Nelson at the far end.
    “Has anyone heard of Edward E. Hale?” Nelson did not wait for a response. “In the late eighteen hundreds he described a space station two hundred feet in diameter. The station was made of brick. He called it the brick moon. The inhabitants, he speculated, would communicate with Earth by jumping up and down on the surface of the moon to produce Morse code signals. As you can see, we have come a long way since then.”
    “Our Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was, how do you say, more real,” Vladimir said.
    “Yes,” Nelson responded. “He also appeared on the scene half a century later. By that time bricks had been determined to be aerodynamically unsound.” They all chuckled at this.
    “Very amusing,” Colonel Dmitri Komarov said. “I am pleased to see we have progressed beyond their early designs.”
    “I agree wholeheartedly,” Nelson replied with a short laugh. “Although, I suspect a hundred years from now this station will seem as primitive as a brick moon.”
    “A hundred years from now,” Komarov said in a thick Russian accent, “our great-grandchildren will read about us in history books. We are the pioneers of the solar system. Our names will live forever.”
    They knew what he said was true. Decades would pass, centuries, even millennia, and their names would survive. In a couple of hundred years the discovery of America would dwindle in comparison to their feat. And though they felt proud of this, it did not seem entirely justified to them. Their role was fundamentally different from that of many of the earlier explorers. Christopher Columbus was the driving force behind his mission; they were not. Their part did not go too far beyond that of passengers. The American engineers had chosen a monkey to be the very first astronaut, and the monkey had performed admirably. The engineers preferred to consider the astronaut as a redundant component, a backup in case the automated systems failed. But it would not go down in history that way.
    “This is the life-sciences research lab,” Nelson said.
    “What have you done?” Tanya asked, pointing to a battered hummingbird with its wings tied back.
    “Ah,” Dr. Endicott said, “most unfortunate. In the middle of our first night, the poor creature managed to free herself