A relief to get out of the small chamber where for hours he had been pre-breathing the low pressure pure oxygen that filled his suit. A relief, forty days after launch, to get out of the cramped, noisy environs of Seba and Halivah, the twin hulls of the Ark, that competitive, fractious hothouse. Yet he was still deep within the bowels of the ship, deep within the factory-sized Orion launch stage, and his view of free space was obstructed by struts and tanks and shadows. He could hear nothing but the whirr of the pumps in his backpack, the hiss of static from the comms units in his Snoopy-hat headset, and the rasp of his own breathing. The latching end of the manipulator arm—formally the Mobile Servicing System—was waiting for him, just as according to the EVA plan, right outside the hatchway. The arm was like an ungainly robot hand, sprouting latches and tool stubs and cameras, swathed in white insulating cloth, bright where it caught the spotlights. Wilson turned around, grabbed the edge of the hatch with his gloved hands, and launched himself feet first toward the arm’s latching end.
