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Russians—the blessed Russians! . . .”
    The flying machine suddenly plummeted toward the ground.
    “Let’s go,” called Josh, already running.
    Casey and Abdikadir worked the main engine’s power levers, struggling to raise their arms against the spin’s centrifugal force. They got the engine shut down and the chopper’s spin abruptly slowed. But without power the chopper fell freely.
    The ground exploded at Bisesa, bits of rock and scrubby vegetation expanding in unwelcome detail, casting long shadows in the light of that too-low sun. She wondered which bit of unprepossessing dirt was to be her grave. But the pilots did something right. In the last instant the bubble tipped up, and came almost level. Bisesa knew how important that was; it meant they might walk away from this.
    The last thing she saw was a man running toward the stricken Bird, aiming some kind of rifle.
    The chopper slammed into the ground.

5: SOYUZ
    For Kolya the Discontinuity was subtle. It began with a lost signal, uncertain sightings, a silent stranding.
    The time for the
Soyuz
ferry ship to detach from the Space Station had arrived. The last handshakes were exchanged, the heavy double hatches were closed, and though
Soyuz
remained physically attached to the Station, Kolya had already left the orbiting shack where he had spent another three months of his life. Now there was only the short journey home, a mere four hundred kilometers down through the air to the surface of the Earth, where he would be reunited with his young family.
    Kolya’s full name was Anatole Konstantinovich Krivalapov. He was forty-one years old, and this tour of duty on the International Space Station had been his fourth.
    Kolya, Musa and Sable, the crew of the ferry, clambered down through the living compartment of the
Soyuz
, making for the descent module. They were clumsy in their thick orange spacesuits, their pockets crammed with the souvenirs they intended to keep from the ground crews. The living compartment was to be jettisoned during reentry and would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, and so was full of junk to be removed from the ISS. This included such items as medical waste and worn-out underwear. Sable Jones, the one American in the crew of three, led the way, and complained loudly in her coarse southern-USA English. “Jeez, what’s in here, Cossack jockstraps?”
    Musa, the
Soyuz
commander, gave Kolya a silent look.
    The descent compartment was a cramped little hut, filled by their three couches. Sable had been trained up on the ship’s systems, but she was the nearest thing to a passenger on this hop back to Earth. So she was first into the cabin, where she scrambled into the right-hand couch. Kolya followed, clambering down into the left-hand couch. During this descent he would serve as the spacecraft’s engineer, hence his allocation of seat. The compartment was so small that even as he headed for the furthest point of the cabin he brushed past Sable’s legs, and she glared at him.
    And now Musa came plummeting down, a bright orange missile, helmet in hand. He was a bulky man anyhow, made more so by the layers of his suit. The couches were so crammed together that when the three of them were at rest their lower legs would be pressed against one another’s, and as Musa awkwardly tried to strap himself in, he shoved Kolya and Sable this way and that.
    Sable’s reactions were predictable. “Where did they make this thing, a tractor factory? . . .”
    It was a moment Musa had been waiting for. “Sable, I have listened to your mouth flapping for the last three months, and as you were commander there I could do nothing about it. But on this
Soyuz
, I, Musa Khiromanovich Ivanov, am commander. And until the hatch breaks open and we are hauled out by the ground crew, you, madam, will—what is the English phrase?
Shut the fuck up.
”
    Sable’s face was like stone. Musa was a tough veteran of fifty who had served as Station commander himself, and had even