Her eyes blink in recognition, gleaming with alertness. Her intellect engages and she gains a new sense of calm. She radios that she is drifting but she has a visual of Explorer. Her eyes scan the enveloping darkness, trying to get a fix on the gleaming orb that is Earth, her face alive with concentration as she makes calculations. With North at 12 o�clock, the Shuttle is at the center of the dial. She frowns as she tumbles backward again, recalculating. The sun is slipping behind the Earth.
She studies the rim of fire until it too slides from view. She can see the International Space Station at 7 o�clock. Ryan blinks, mildly alarmed. She calls to Matt. Silence. Slowly, the sun recedes further behind the earth and the light bathing Ryan�s face evaporates. As she is swallowed by the darkness, she speaks once again, calling to Matt, the Explorer, and Houston. The whole face of the Earth is in shadow. And so is Ryan. Her eyes dart. It is utterly silent. She spins in the darkness, waiting.
There is only the silence, complete and absolute. She calls again. Nothing. She watches the earth slip from view yet again. When next she speaks, the words are as delicate as snowflakes, tripping off her tongue like a prayer. A soothing light hits Ryan�s face. The moon is rising over the Pacific Ocean. It�s almost full and its soft cool light pours over the globe, brightening the deep blue waters.
And then, the faintest thread of a radio transmission stitches its way through the silence, listening as static sing through her helmet, stinging her ears with the sound of her name. Matt is on the radio calling to her. She responds with excitement. As she watches the figure of an astronaut takes shape.
Matt tells her to flash her light. Ryan opens a pouch in her suit, fishes out a flashlight. Hands trembling she shines it toward the approaching dot. He spots her. He asks her the status on her O2 readings and tries to calm her down so she doesn't burn up oxygen.
Ryan can see Matt quickly growing in size. She continues to flash her light. She slips the light back into her side pouch just as Matt appears as if from nowhere and grabs her. Ryan holds on to Matt. Instantly, they begin to spin together. Matt takes out a tether. Ryan is paralyzed, holding onto Matt tightly and looking at him in fright. He stares back, "I know. You never realized how devastatingly good-looking I am. But I need you to stop staring and help me with the tether. Okay?"
He runs the other end of the tether to the harness on Ryan�s suit and attaches it. Matt places his hand on her breastplate and gives her a gentle nudge. Drifting again she begins to freak. The tether tenses and she stops nine feet away from Matt. Matt ignites the thrusters, tugging Ryan behind him. But this proves a difficult endeavor as her momentum drags him, changing his direction. Matt ignites a new thrust to re-direct his position. As he does so, Ryan�s change of momentum makes him swing again.
Using his thrusters, Matt negotiates a new position and, igniting a long thrust, he jets away. Ryan cannot repress the anger boiling up, and she screams dammit! His plan is to head back to the Explorer. They are communicating with Houston, though they are in the 'blind.' Meaning, they can't receive their signal, but he is assuming Houston is receiving theirs. As Matt accelerates toward a lower orbit, his momentum takes over, steadying Ryan�s swing. They descend, gliding through pieces of debris.
Among the space junk, a Solar Panel from the Hubble is distinguished. Matt eyes a small dot in the distance: the Shuttle. Matt reaches for a digital watch strapped to his wrist and sets up the timer for 90 minutes, he tells Ryan to do the same. He explains to her Houston clocked that debris at fifty thousand miles per hour. Factoring in their current orbit, they�ve got 90 minutes before round two of the debris. Ryan sets her watch, studies the counter as it begins to count down. As they travel, the Shuttle begins to take form.
They check their 02 level and Matt continues calling to Houston. He sees Shariff's body changes direction to approach Shariff. He has to ignite several small thrusts to try and steady his direction, fighting against Ryan�s momentum. Shariff�s body is tethered to a brace that was ripped away from the Explorer. Matt approaches the brace and ignites the thrusters to slow down his course, and he grabs onto it. Ryan, continuing her momentum, crashes against Shariff�s body.
The contact slows her trajectory, but it throws Shariff away, his tether tensing, pulling the brace with him. Matt, holding on to the metal, spins with it. He detaches Shariff�s tether from the brace and attaches it to himself. He lets the brace go and immediately ignites his thruster, pulling the two tethers behind him which, as they tense, bring Ryan and Shariff closer together. Matt tries to ignite a very long thrust in the direction of the Shuttle, but this is difficult as the momentum of the other two bodies pulls him in all directions.
Tentatively Ryan extends her right hand to grab onto Shariff�s body harness. And she sees Shariff�s broken helmet. A hole the size of a soft ball pierces through it and has left a tunnel of frozen dried bloody mess. Ryan�s face is inscrutable. Finally she looks away, but this time something arrests her gaze: A laminated photograph floats next to Shariff, tethered to his suit. In it, his wife and son smile, happy in the embrace of Shariff. Transfixed, Ryan is unable to look away, something complicated confusing her eyes. The photograph floats in space above Planet Earth.
As they approach, the damage to the Shuttle becomes apparent. Explorer has been badly hit. The Shuttle has suffered devastating damage. The tail is beyond repair, one wing is completely destroyed, while the other waffles weakly, nearly sheared from the fuselage. They approach to search for survivors. Matt thrusts to slow down his trajectory and slowly bumps against the windshield of the cockpit. At the mercy of Matt�s momentum, Ryan hits hard against the nose of the Shuttle, losing her grip on Shariff.
As she caroms off, she grabs onto what is left of the cockpit�s window. Matt takes his flashlight and looks through the broken windows, lighting the cockpit. Ryan pulls herself up and looks through the window. The cabin has been destroyed. A disarray of objects, smashed and devastated.
BANG. The face of an astronaut appears right in front of Ryan and crashes against her visor. The eyes are frozen, unblinking. Ryan gasps, wheeling backward and away. At the end of the cabin, among the floating objects, a second lifeless body drifts among the wreckage.
Ryan regards it silently, mesmerized. Matt clicks Shariff�s harness onto the Shuttle. Ryan reports to Houston in the blind that him and Ryan are the sole survivors of the STS-157. Matt turns to Ryan, who is staring at the dead astronauts inside. She apologizes for not stopping her work sooner, but he assures her they were going to be hit no matter what. There was nothing she could�ve done to change that. His plan now is to get to the Space Station to use their escape pod, the Soyuz, to get back to Earth.
Matt gestures vaguely to a bright dot in distance. She stares at the dot, it's quite aways away. He gently pushes her into space. She slowly drifts away from the Explorer but is suddenly stopped by the safety tether. Matt ignites his propellers and, giving a couple of small thrusts, he combats Ryan�s swing. And with a longer thrust, he shoots forward, pulling Ryan behind him. The two astronauts push forward together, leaving behind the shell of the Shuttle and the remains of the Hubble.
The Space Station is in a lower orbit, 550 kilometers above Earth. We see the two astronauts crossing the distance. A thrust, and they coast ahead, and then another thrust. Matt pulls Ryan behind him. Two specks glide across the dark sky as a sliver of light grows on the darkened hemisphere. The sun is rising, it looks brighter than ever outside of Earth�s atmosphere. The oceans and the continents brighten as its light spills over the Earth beneath them. Warm rays of sun caress the two astronauts as they propel themselves across the empty expanse.
Kowalski is ever calm and efficient in the crisis, continuing to reassure Stone that they will both make it back to Earth safely. He tries to keep things light by talking about the beautiful view. But Ryan is not into the view right now. She�s stricken with fear. Matt looks at the dark emptiness that engulfs him and smiles. Ryan�s wide open eyes are transfixed on Earth, like a deer in headlights. The two discuss Stone's life back home and the death of her young daughter in a schoolyard accident. Matt studies her curiously. She is frozen in this moment, as if stunned.
He studies her in his mirror. She looks away, toward Earth. It looks small. Remote. Matt lightens the moment, "Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is we're five minutes from the ISS and I know where the Russians stash their vodka, and that is good because I'm running on fumes. Bad news is I'm gonna be ten minutes short of breaking Anatoly's record." Suddenly, beeping comes from inside Ryan's helmet. Her O2 tank pressure is red lining. Matt tries to assure her that she still has oxygen in her suit and to conserve her breaths.
As they approach the ISS, it is clear that the ISS crew has evacuated due to the debris field causing damage. Matt reports to Houston in the blind that the first Soyuz module for delivering ISS crew and returning them to Earth is missing, used by the ISS crew to evacuate the station.
The second Soyuz module exhibits surface damage, and its landing parachute has been deployed. It becomes clear that the remaining Soyuz module cannot return them to Earth safely. As they approach the ISS they realize they have almost no air left and only one thruster burst remaining in Kowalski's pack.
Ryan�s losing her breath. They approach the Space Station, which is just ahead of them and a hundred meters below. She�s sweating and starts to hyperventilate. She looks down, eyes the Station passing beneath them. It looks as though the Station is going to slip away altogether. Matt triggers his thruster, turning sharply. Ryan�s trajectory
carries her in a straight line and they are approaching in the right direction, straight down toward the Station, but at great speed. The Station is getting very close, and they�re going very fast.
Ryan, following her own momentum, begins to pass Matt. Just then Ryan crashes against the solar panel, but is unable to grab hold. As she tumbles past, the body of the Station looms. Matt misses the solar panels, and collides against the Station. As he begins to drift past, he reaches out and snares a railing. Ryan passes flying above him. The tether tenses, pulling Matt. The momentum is too great and he lets go of the railing.
Ryan floats over the roof of the Space Station, trying to grab hold of the handles and rods that stick out of the modules, but she�s floating too high. She�s quickly reaching the end of the Station, there is only one handle left ahead, her last chance before floating away into the black void. She extends her arm and grabs the handle tightly for dear life and she stops. She�s holding onto the handle. Inside the helmet, she looks up and sees Matt is floating straight toward her and he collides against her.
For a moment they are face to face, only the glass of their headgear separates their faces. But she loses her grip on the handle and the impact projects her into the emptiness. Her drifting is intercepted by a Solar Panel. She crashes against it as Matt rolls above it. Ryan bounces down towards the Earth, tensing the tether, pulling Matt, making him descend over the other side of the panel. The sharp edges of the broken panels cut the tether in two. Ryan is drifting away from the Station.
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