Forbidden Re-entry

“You are forbidden from entering the atmosphere, Ekaterina!” the voice on the headset sounded grim.

“But, I do not have anywhere else to go,” replied Ekaterina. 

Ekaterina was in her Crew Return Vehicle, waiting for approval from the Mission control center to return back to Earth. She was perspiring inside her spacesuit, trying to suck in as much oxygen as she could. 

“We have just now dealt with a pandemic and lost millions of lives. We do not want yet another pandemic. The cost of yet another pandemic would be in billions of dollars and millions of lives. So, return back to the Space Station and await your death.” came the reply from the Mission control center.

“I want to speak with Rachel,” Ekaterina demanded.

“Rachel is our mission director. It is her order that you should not be allowed back to Earth.” replied the flat voice from the Mission control center.

“If you do not bring in Rachel into this conversation, my vehicle is diving into the atmosphere in ten seconds,” Ekaterina sounded firm.

“Ekaterina! You’re supposed to...”

“Six, five, four,”

“Ekaterina!!!”

“Two, one...”

“Ekaterina”, the voice on her headset was of a middle-aged woman.

“Rachel! Good, God!” Ekaterina nearly cried.

“What do you want, Ekaterina?” Rachel sounded soft, she spoke in a whisper.

“I want to return back to Earth,” Ekaterina replied. In the huge screen on the Mission control center, the employees could see Ekaterina’s eyes welled up.

“You could have symptoms, Ekaterina. We cannot allow you.” Rachel’s tone rose up.

“Just ask your co-workers. We were speaking for the past twenty minutes. I had seldom coughed in the past twenty minutes. Just ask them!” Ekaterina shouted. Outside the visor of her spacesuit, it was all calm and serene. She could see the bright and glowing sun, but the moon was on the other side and she had to maneuver beyond the station to take a look at the moon. She had closed the doors leading to the exit of the space station and is now seated inside the Crew Return Vehicle. An approval from the ground would send her back into the Earth at great speed and she would be back in the blue-and-grey marble in a matter of minutes. Yet, it was hard to get their approval. 

Rachel interrupted her thoughts, “You might not have symptoms right now. Maybe, you would be having them soon and if you are back on Earth, we would have to quarantine you. But the problem we have now is, we do not have an iota of idea about the disease, due to which the entire crew except you had died.”

“Just quarantine me for my lifetime. But, please let me spend the rest of my life, however long it is, on my Earth. Do not imprison me in this dark space.”

“We already have our conditions drawn clearly, Ekaterina. We cannot guarantee you a safe abode if you catch a new illness in space.” Rachel spoke softly over the mic.

Ekaterina closed her eyes and tried to find a loophole in the documents that she had signed. While the rest of the astronauts were signing those documents jubilantly, she had taken a whole day to read through it twice before signing them. The rest of the astronauts are now dead inside the space station, while she had to find a way to continue her life and return to Earth. Life on the space station is only a matter of months if she had not caught the disease, because the food might get depleted in four months. However, if the virus is already inside her, she only has a few days to live. 

Her thoughts now wavered to the start of the collapse of the astronauts in the space station. Two weeks back, there were five crew members - two from the United States, two from Russia, and one from China. Ekaterina was an astronaut of Russian origin. Her parents migrated to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union and she was born in Houston. She grew up with the dream of floating in space and she witnessed all the launches to the space station with her father and her mother. She was on cloud nine when she was chosen as one of the crew members for the International space station. It has been nine months since her vehicle docked into the space station. The eight months were business as usual. But the ninth month proved to be different.

It all started with a sneeze from Rebecca. She had gone for a spacewalk to do maintenance of the space station. While she was busy inspecting the space station from outside, a gust of rock dust had blown past her. She was a bit spooked by the presence of dust in the dark space and immediately announced that she would return back to the station. Even though she had been sanitized while entering the station, some virus had entered her nose. Rebecca later claimed that she had a small crack in her visor which should have happened by the impact of the tiny rocks in the dust. And that is how Rebecca became the Index case. She was the first person in the entire world to be affected by a virus yet to be discovered in the labs on Earth. The virus was analyzed by Yuri, the Russian cosmonaut in the space station who had also majored in Microbiology. The virus was totally new to living beings; it wasn’t similar to any zoonotic viruses already analyzed in the labs on Earth.

Rebecca’s disease progressed from a sneeze to a stuffed nose to a cough. She later coughed blood on the sixth day and all her inner organs started to fail on the seventh day. While Rebecca was on her death bed inside the space station, Yuri and Vlad, both Russian cosmonauts and Li Wang, the Chinese astronaut fell ill to the same virus. It had somehow spread to them from Yuri who had been in contact with the virus while analyzing it. All but Ekaterina were affected by the virus. Ekaterina was puzzled when she did not get any symptoms. 

Rebecca died on her ninth day since her symptoms started, followed by Yuri and Vlad. Ekaterina by then had isolated herself in her chamber and she conserved her energy by sleeping and consuming bits and pieces of the food she had in her chamber. When there were no signs of Li, she started her request to return back to Earth. It has been three days since Li died and yet Ekaterina was unable to get an acceptance from Mission Control to re-enter Earth. The faces of her fellow astronauts were wavering in her mind when she got an idea. 

“I remember reading it before signing,” Ekaterina spoke through her headset, “that in case of damage to the space station and if it collapses, astronauts would be evacuated safely to Earth.”

“But there is no damage yet!” Rachel shot back.

“What if it collapses soon?” Ekaterina laughed maniacally. 

“No Ekaterina. You will be punished for all the damages that you do to the space station.” Rachel shouted at the mic.

“I will not do that. It was my dream to be an astronaut, to be in the space station. I will not even make a single tiny scratch on its walls.” Ekaterina smiled at the camera in her vehicle. The employees at the Mission control heaved a sigh of relief.

Ekaterina felt an urge to sneeze. She sneezed. Her heartbeat rose up. Today was her first day outside her chamber. She had to pass through the bodies of her fellow astronaut to enter the Crew Return Vehicle. This only conveys one result - she had caught the virus. But she regained her posture and said, “Just some dust inside the suit. Nothing much!”

“You said you didn’t have any symptoms. Now, you sneeze.” Rachel raised one of her eyebrows.

“Even if you consider this sneeze as a symptom of the new killer virus, I still have eight days to live on an average. I can be saved on Earth by a team of doctors.”

“Negative. We aren’t going to allow another pandemic on Earth.” Rachel crossed her arms.

Ekaterina sighed. She turned off the camera in the vehicle. She quickly got up, kept the lid of the vehicle open. She reached out and manually opened the lock that secured the vehicle. She then jumped into the vehicle and sealed it shut. She then started the vehicle. 

“Ma’am! The Crew Return vehicle has been powered on.” said one of the engineers in Mission Control.

“Turn it off”, Rachel shouted at the engineers.

“Ekaterina! EKATERINA!” Rachel shouted at the mic. But there was no response. 

“We are unable to access the vehicle. She might have turned off the automatic control mode. She is riding it manually.” said another engineer.

“Shoot it down!” Rachel commanded the entire floor.

“But...”

“Ekaterina is...”

“She is...”

Many such voices were heard inside the Mission Control room.

“My final command. Shoot it down!” Rachel walked out of the room.

“Momma is at the TV. Momma is at the TV!” Little Olga was jumping in joy as photos of Ekaterina flashed across the screen. Ekaterina’s husband Michael hugged Olga as his eyes welled up. He changed the television channel, but Ekaterina was all over the channels. One of the news channels debated whether is it right to shoot down someone who requested help for fighting disease. One of the news channels supported the step taken by Rachel and celebrated her as the person who saved the world from another pandemic. Michael turned the television off.