Joe Baker took a deep breath of the processed oxygen as he stepped out of the airlock. He felt comfortable in the heavy suit as he stepped outside the station—not stepped, exactly. He pushed off with his feet and careened into the void of space, secured to the docking station by the thick white titanium-alloy cord.

This was his first time off of the Earth, and he loved it. The power and beauty of knowing that he was higher than any other human in the world right now, floating blissfully in pure nothingness.

Looking down past his feet he could see the billowing ocean currents swirl in a dismal caldron in the Gulf of Mexico four hundred miles below. It was hurricane season; the coast of Mexico and Central America was lushly verdant, and Baker could have sworn he had spied the Panama Canal down there on his home planet. Looking above the seas, he saw his own country, the United States, hidden beneath a layer of cloud.

Beneath him was his home. Above him and all around him were the endless gleam of stars in the sky, piercing out of the blackness in ways never seen on Earth.

"Come on, Joe, you've horsed around enough," said Captain Forrest over his headset. "Let's get back to the mission."

Joe breathed out audibly as he turned himself around, reaching behind him for his lifeline. The weightless sensation was impossible to get used to, but all in all it was strangely familiar, like swimming in a deep, eternal lake. He pulled himself slowly back to the hangar door twenty feet away, and slammed bodily into the walls of the space station; this would take some getting used to.

"Easy there, Joe," came the voice in Baker's ear.

Joe worked his way along the side of the ship, toward where the broken solar panel was listlessly drooping out of the array.

"Don't know what the hell could have broken it—just throw it off and put on the other one," Captain Forrest said. "The broken one will just burn up into dust in the atmosphere."

There was no up or down. Everything was one. With blood floating in Joe's head instead of rushing up or down, he crawled toward the solar panels and grabbed a hold of one of the bars that jutted out.

Stretching out a gloved hand, Joe touched the shattered panel, six feet by two feet. Its
sensitive endothermic material was ripped through the middle by something large and with a high mass.

"Put your headcam on the hit,"

Wordlessly Joe did as he was told, adjusting the streaming camera so that the narrow beam of light shone onto the wide crack in the paneling.

"Hold it there a sec, we just need to process this..." came the voice on the radio.

For several minutes Joe waited there, his enormous suit holding in the pressure of his own body. Though he had to keep his head still, he let his eyes sneak a quick look at the Earth below him.

"All right, throw off the broken panel."

The panel was hanging in a very broken manner by a single corner, which Joe raised his laser cutter to. Activating the powerful beam, he focused it on the small piece of metal for a few seconds; the corner began to melt and detach.

The panel fell off and slowly began its descent down toward the earth. As it fell, in the blink of an eye another gash was torn in the paneling.

"Joe, did you see that?" Forrest said. Joe's mouth hung open in surprise...

"Just get that panel on and come back inside!"

Joe reached around to his back and unstrapped the large solar panel that was in two pieces. Bringing them up to eye level he fit the two unwieldy sections together, frantically snapping them in place, his heart rate rising.

"Put them in," the captain said over the headset.

Joe clumsily took one end and with that, the other end clicked out of the sockets, floating dreamily away from Joe. He saw what had happened and slammed his half of the panel in place. Setting his feet firmly on the side of the space station, Joe pushed off and hurtled into space after his other half of the panel.

He grabbed the three-foot long solar panel, taking care not to break it. He could only hope that his other panel had stayed in place. As he reached around for his cord, a shower of small rocks dashed off his suit and faceplate. There was no sound; no sound traveled up here in the darkness.

"It's all right," thought Joe. "Things like that happen all the time. Just a minor meteor shower. At leas that explains what happened to the panel. It's all right that I'm going a bit fast. Any second now, I'll reach the end of my cord and be jerked back."

"Any second now."

Attempting furiously to turn around, Joe grabbed behind him for his cord. He could not feel it there.

"It's just tangled around my legs or something...my cord is okay..."

Laughing with glee, Joe found his cord. He pulled it, expecting to be jerked bodily back toward the space station.

He looked behind him.

The cord extended for about three feet, and then there was nothing but space. The meteorites had slashed the lifeline.

Joe didn't realize what had happened for a few seconds; he was numb all over, and he could feel his heart beating in his chest, the volume rising into a thudding crescendo. The space station was a thousand feet away and the distance was growing.

Below him was the Earth, where a fiery death awaited him if he fell through the atmosphere. Above him and all around him was the darkness of space, where he would only survive until his oxygen ran out. About twenty minutes worth of oxygen to be precise.

Licking his lips, Joe spoke five words into his transmitter.

"Hello? Is there anybody there?"

There was no answer. He was alone.

Trapped in his own coffin, Joe whirled through space, the stars blazing like fiery demons above his twitching eyes and the yawning gulf of ozone and atmosphere roaring dully below him, waiting to incinerate him. It wouldn't take long to be burned into dust, and only twenty minutes if he stayed where he was or traveled further into space.

He hung in balance between the gravity of the earth and the endlessness of space. Holding the solar panel out in front of him, his back to the earth and facing the mocking array of starshine before him, Joe began to hyperventilate.

He tried to slow down his breathing, but his heart was pumping at the rate of a machine gun. It was hopeless. He started to purposely hyperventilate, breathing heavily and banging his head against the glass plate in front of him, hoping to maybe faint, by the grace of God, and not have to slowly succumb to anoxia.

He checked the meter on his utility belt, his heart rising into his swollen throat.

00:15:03 hours/minutes/seconds of air remaining.

His fingers hurt for some reason, as did his toes. He longed to move them, to escape this spacesuit and to throw himself out into the abyss, his eyes bulging from his head and his blood boiling and exiting his body in any way possible.

00:14:52 remaining.

What was the point of counting down these final few minutes? He would die when he would die. There was an inherent risk in these kinds of operations. There was a risk in joining the Navy pilots in the first place, even before he had become an astronaut.

00:12:49 remaining.

Denial. Joe, in a futile attempt to calm his body, told himself that the stress was meaningless, that the space station had obviously realized he was gone, and were sending out a probe, or another astronaut—or something, anything! He wouldn't be left to die like this; America couldn't do that to one of its own.

00:10:38 remaining.

Anger. Winding his fist back, he smashed the solar panel that was the cause of this distress. If it hadn't detached, he never would be out here in the first place. He was going to die, and it was all the fault of this useless scrap of metal—there were dozens of solar panels on the array, how much did this particular one really matter?

00:08:15 remaining.

Bargaining. Please God, let them save me. I'm not a good Christian, I know that. I know I hate you, and you hate me, but please, if I ever asked you one favor, let them come and save me. Don't let me die out here, don't let my kids be orphans and my wife a widow. Let them come and save me. Lord, help me.

00:05:29 remaining.

Depression. It was over. There could be no fighting it. The dizziness would set in, and light-headedness would give way to unconsciousness, and fainting would become Death. It was all over. And to think that I had never gotten to know my kids really. It all seems so far away, four hundred miles down on the earth, that I was married in a little chapel in Louisiana. Where are those distant days now? Gone.

Joe knew it was all over. No point deriding himself or pretending numbly not to care or notice. What's won is won, and what's done is done, and what's lost is lost and gone forever.

00:02:35 remaining.

Acceptance. Two-and-a-half minutes left on his life. He would survive a little longer, but for all intents and purposes, his life would be two-and-a-half minutes long. Two minutes and twenty seconds now, to be sure. His final thoughts drifted to a website he had come across, , which calculated the time of his death. He had laughed at it as a joke back then, and he laughed even harder now. Who really knew the time of one's own death?

It was all academic. Everything in his life up to this point was most likely a waste—he was not depressed about that fact, it was just that, a fact. Maybe there had been some purpose in his life. Maybe...who knew? Maybe his death would serve as a warning to others, or something along those vague lines.

00:01:00 remaining exactly. Joe watched the seconds tick down ever closer to the end, preparing himself for his imminent demise. What would it feel like, he wondered. It was nothing but the next great adventure. It was a tragedy, indeed, and to believe otherwise would be a delusion, but it was certainly a point of interest.

00:00:30 remaining exactly. Joe always liked as a child watching the digital clocks on New Year's Eve, and seeing the hours, minutes, seconds, year, month and day all change at that one point at midnight. It would be like that. The clock of his life winding down to zero and him departing off into a new plane.

00:00:10 remaining. Nine seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds, five seconds, four seconds...he counted the seconds to himself as he lay there prone, awaiting his death. Two seconds, one final, solitary second left to go in Joe Baker's life. From the moment of birth, one million five hundred and eighty-six thousand one hundred and eighty three minutes previously, the final second of his life ticked away without any celebration.

The tank ran out, and Joe was breathing nothing but his own stale carbon dioxide. How long would he last? He breathed in and out, knowing that every intake of air was poison. It was like a small child suffocating on a plastic bag; no oxygen, only carbon dioxide. He grew dizzy and nauseous, not wanting to hold his breath, and not wanting to breath in another mouthful of this evil air.

He blinked one last time and closed his eyes. It was all just too much. He needed to go to sleep.