commander kate bowman is at the helm. she's got a kind of quiet assurance. you'd like her. mission co-pilot ed santen is beside and behind her. she speaks into a mike to rest of the ship -
bowman tries to bring the rest of the ship back to life. half a dozen systems are just plain dead and have to be locked out. things are not good. light's beginning to come up. moments away from entering front-side orbit. kate opens a panel marked obs and throws a series of switches.
on a large viewscreen, bowman can now scan the surface to about a one meter resolution. searches. starts wide, scanning the edge of the horizon as it comes into view. picks up the glint of the mev. zooms in. at first there's nothing but the crashed mev in profile. then the severity of the damage comes clear. bowman tries not to react. nothing else is there. no sign of activity or escape. the footprints are beyond the resolution of the camera. there's no reason to believe anything but they're all dead.
bowman is doing her best to keep the tone light. but she's gotta know whether or not he thinks he's gonna live or die.
bowman checks the gauges. eight liters was burned.
bowman reaches for the mike, begins -
time's passed. bowman has searched with the 10m scope. ir, thermal. she picks up the occasional footprint. tracks their progress. finds some odd rock configurations. and. nothing. they're just gone. finally, she gives up. picks up mic sadly for one last time -
bowman comes rushing in. too fast. slams up into a wall. resets. belts herself in.
bowman is calculating madly as she goes on. trying to sound calm. she's anything but.
she's shook. she knows he's right. not a damn thing she can say. tries to maintain. barely. looks up at one of the screens. in four minutes she's back on day side orbit. and then home. intercut with:
she bursts from the darkness into the light of day side and is gone. radio turns to static.
she's strapped in now. counter on a screen is ticking down. 13, 12, 11. she tries to allay her horror at what she's doing. reaches for the mike.
countdown continues. nine, eight, seven. then just breaking the horizon way out in front of her, a shiny metallic speck breaches into the light. it's a man, glued to thirty-year-old spacecraft. four, three. she slams down an abort button, as with the other hand she twists the radio over to the suit-to-suit frequency.