Athena Station Pt. 01

Tim was busy, fiddling with some wiring on the far end of the dome. Amy smiled, "Interesting way of thinking."

Tim started a little, and spun around, a huge smile on his face. "Well, I can think and work. Kinda why the commander lets me fiddle around in here. I am getting all the pending work in here completed, without him having to assign a work crew for a non-essential activity. My only worry is that after tonight, there won't be any Pre-installation tasks left on the list."

He looked pleased to see her, she noted with an odd sense of satisfaction. He was dressed in a white MIT shirt and shorts. She pushed off on the tube, and entered the dome, grabbing a handhold on the domes wall to steady herself, and pivoted upright to Tim's orientation.

Tim looked impressed, "you are a fast learner." Amy shrugged with a grin and looked around the dome. "Not quite what I had in mind." She thought.

Tim could sense her disappointment and laughed, "Let me guess, you were expecting a different view."

He moved to the access shaft, and retrieved the control tablet.

He explained, "Each panel is 2 layers of thick glass sandwiching electronic polarization films. With no power going to the films, they keep the light and the heat out of the dome. However, if you turn off the internal lights like so..." he punched the controls on the tablet to turn off the internal lighting, plunging them into darkness.

"... and select the glass panels like so..." he punched up the controls on the tablet and the panels on the bottom hemisphere of the dome, his face illuminated by the tablet's glow.

He looked up at Amy, smiling "... and press enter to turn on the power to those panels... Voila!"

As he pressed Enter, the glass panels he had selected started to become transparent. The dome started to fill with the sunlight coming off the blue planet below them. Amy was suspended in mid air, in a glass bubble looking down on the majestic planet below, Earth. She felt as if the time stopped there for her to enjoy every instant of this experience. In that moment, she felt larger than life, yet humbled by her insignificance compared to the massive planet below.

With the amazement glowing on her face, she glanced at Tim and spotted him looking at her intently, with a small knowing smile.

"What?" Amy flushed a little, as she felt Tim's eyes bore into her. "And that is not a bad feeling either..." she thought.

Tim's smile widened as he averted his eyes to look down himself, and shook his head. "Nothing."

She turned towards him with a small frown, crossing her arms. "No really... What?", she asked.

Tim sighed with a smile, "You are the third person I have seen in here, admiring that view for the first time. Almost identical reaction and expressions. This view has the same effect on everybody I guess. Which in itself is amazing."

The Sun is setting, Amy noted as she glanced on the western horizon. Below them, she could see they were passing over North America. At around 500 miles up, they could see the entire US, from coast to coast. The twilight zone had almost crossed the Midwest, fast approaching the west coast. It was proper nightfall on the east coast, with some city lights visible across the city centers along the eastern seaboard. Amy felt a bit homesick as she looked down.

Tim was apparently reading her face like a book. "So where is home down there? And who's there looking up at you?" he asked in his best George Clooney voice. Amy looked at Tim with a mild surprise on her face, and she looked down.

She pointed to the East. "There. Columbus, Ohio. My Mom and Dad, 4 married brothers, 3 Nephews, 2 nieces, 2 dogs and five goldfish," she rattled off. Tim was impressed.

"Wow Big family! You are the youngest?" He asked.

Amy nodded, "By a long way. My eldest brother was 19 and youngest was 11, when my mom discovered that she had to go through childbirth all over again! She once joked to a friend that I am the perfect example of why birth control methods are not 100% effective"

They laughed and Amy continued, "My dad is a Tax consultant, and mom is a typical housewife. My brothers Andy and Will are in Banking. Phil is a lawyer while Bradley is in the construction business. Everyone born, raised and settled in Columbus. And Me... the Geeky runt of the family! Planning my Ph.D in Extra-terrestrial Mechanical Engineering. And Flight Engineer on a Space Station! An Astronaut. I really fell far from the tree!"

Tim chuckled, "I bet they are proud of you!"

Amy rolled her eyes and said, "Nauseatingly so. Like they will go out of their way to show me off! They are sweet but it can get a bit tiresome, when I have to say hi to half the neighborhood, when I have a video call with them. And So far, I get a call from them *everyday*!"

Tim had a good laugh at that one.

"Well you have just been here 3 days." Tim pointed out with a snicker.

Amy narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose. She was very relaxed in his presence now.

"Ok Lt. Bradshaw. Your turn. Where is home for you?"

Tim let out a sigh and pointed, "Sioux Falls, South Dakota."

Amy smiled, "Wow! And who is looking up at you this evening?"

She looked at him with interest, yet suddenly noticed a slight change in his demeanor. While he was still smiling, his shoulders seem to sag a bit and his eyes were fixed at a spot on the planet below.

"No one." He said in the same carefree manner, which it sounded a little hollow.

He looked up to find a puzzled Amy, so he tried to explain, "Oh I come from a small family. My mom was from from Texas. She married Dad and moved to Sioux Falls with him. My dad's father had passed away before I was born. He had a small Aircraft restoration business, which my dad inherited. When I was 10, my mom and dad died in a plane crash and left me with my Grams.

"Well,That was that. My Gran brought me up. Got me to the academy. She passed away 2 years ago. So now, there is a house down there, with the name Bradshaw on it. Just no Bradshaws down there at the moment."

Suddenly, Amy got a glimpse of a very guy, that hid inside the cool calm collected astronaut. He was still smiling with his eyes fixed on the view below. But his eyes were not smiling. She saw a flash of emotion there like pain, loneliness. It was so different from the persona she had come to know in the past couple of days. It felt alien and different and she wanted to make it go away. She wanted him to feel better. She reached over impulsively, to kiss the corner of his mouth. Her movement made him turn towards her, and the next thing she knows, her lips were on his. It was supposed to be a soft friendly kiss, but now that she was there she did not want to let go. Their lips parted as his tongue slid onto her own. Her arms looped around his neck as he held on to her waist to pull her into him.

They were in Heaven, literally. Floating in each other's arms, as they streaked across the sky. She clung to him as they rolled around, her chest pressed into his. His arousal made itself known to her, which excited her even further!

As quickly as it had started it all came to crashing halt, literally. They had drifted into the wall, which startled Amy. A sudden feeling of falling engulfed her and she reacted instinctly as she pushed against him. . They broke the kiss, short of breath. At same time, the beeper on Tim's communicator came to life. They separated hastily, as Tim fumbled with the communicator and responded.

Tim: Bradshaw here.

OCC: Hey Tim, Greg here. We are detecting a small heat drain on the thermal sensors in the Mast. Do you have any panels depolarized there?

Tim: (with small shake of the head) Yeah OCC, I was testing the targeted panel depolarization. A big temperature drop?

OCC: Negative. Barely a minor one. Just that we did not know you were planning to open the blinds Tim. SO, we had to check it out.

Tim: (Rolled his eyes) Roger that. I am almost done here. Be right there to file the activity report. See you in a few. Bradshaw out.

Amy looked at him with wide eyes and asked, "You think... you think they saw... us?"

Tim shook his head and pointed, "Only way they can see in here via the CCTV cameras mounted outside. That only works if I depolarized all the panels. They called because they could not make out from their current angle if I had indeed depolarized the lower panels. So, I don't think we will be the laughing stock of the station in the morning."

He smiled reassuringly, as Amy blushed.

"By the way, thanks." he said softly.

Amy looked at him inquiringly and asked, "For what?"

Grinning he cocked his head to one side, and replied, "For making me feel good again."

Amy blushed, then looked up into his eyes and said, "You are welcome!"

He looked at her with a challenging glint in his eyes and asked, "Am I?"

She took up the challenge and replied, "Anytime!"

She wrinkled her nose at him, and pushed off into the access shaft.

"Goodnight Tim. Sleep tight!" She said as she floated up.

"Oh I will. Good night!" He called after her, with a huge grin.