The Final Expedition

Day Twenty-One

“Hey Max. What are you up to?” I jumped, startled by the sudden voice. I looked up to find Aki hanging upside down just above me. I was at the end of the cylindrical interior of the Leonardo storage module next to the Tranquillity node. Aki had pulled herself through the hatch above me headfirst, so she floated there upside down from my perspective. “Sorry to startle you.” She smiled sheepishly, reaching for a handhold, pulling her knees in and spinning herself around so that she was the same way up as me.

“It’s okay.” I replied, remembering a couple of days earlier when I had accidentally surprised Natalya when she had been gazing out of the cupola. She had screamed in fright when I’d touched her shoulder. “I know it’s easy to creep up on someone when you don’t have footsteps.”

“What are you looking for?” She asked, glancing at the opened white storage bags around me.

“Karpov asked me to carry out an itinerary of our supplies.” I replied. “I’m nearly finished, thank God.”

“How’s it looking?”

“Not too bad.” I said. “Flynn was right. If we ration it all carefully, we should have enough food for at least a year. We might all feel pretty hungry, at least until we get used to eating less, but we should be okay, particularly if we can supplement it with vegetables from the hydroponics experiment.”

“Well, I guess I’ve always wanted to lose two or three pounds.” Aki smiled brightly. I returned her smile.

“That’s one way to look at it.” I couldn’t help but admire her upbeat optimistic attitude, but for my part, I really wasn’t looking forward to a rumbling stomach for a year. I chided myself, wondering how many millions of people on the planet below would swap places with me for a year.