[ WP ] BREAKING : Doomed astronaut rescued by aliens ? ? ?

Every EVA was practiced nearly to the point of actions being automatic, but there was something to be said for being outside, nothing between you and the Void except a few layers of material. Only the tether kept your orbit joined to the ship's, otherwise you'd have your own, a little independent satellite going around the beautiful world below. 
 
 Step twelve on the checklist: translate out using a few well timed puffs from her maneuvering unit. The sound transmitted through her suit sounded nothing like science fiction. Pop pop, a little **a** against her **m**, creating an **F** in *that* direction. 
 
 Step thirteen: wait out a timer. They said being out there would change you. They were right. A whole world below you, filled with billions of humans and billion-trillions of life besides. Green and blue, white and brown. A warm, wet, living outpost in a universe that seemed to favor hot gas, sterile rock, and cold vacuum. 
 
 Beautiful. 
 
 Step fourteen: counter the velocity vector with her maneuvering unit. 
 
 Pop pop -- BANG 
 
 The heads-up display in her helmet immediately went wild. Over-velocity warning. MU zero pressure warning, tank 2. MU low pressure alert, tank 1. Suit Integrity Alert: Emergency Reserve Active. She started planning what she would need to do, anything in space had to be planned when resources were measured in grams and distances in parsecs. 
 
 *Tether Disconnect Warning* 
 
 She looked behind her, using a little mirror attached to her suit. Somehow the impossible had happened, the backup to her backups, her last refuge in a time of trouble, was the tether broken and trailing behind. 
 
 Her ship radioed in, told her that her velocity vector was too fast for a spacewalker to come after her with an MU, that they were trying to work out an orbital maneuver for the whole ship but that it would be tricky to do it in time now that she was on her emergency reserve but that they would figure out something. 
 
 She knew how much trouble she was in. She proposed using the last of her reaction mass to set her on a new vector. 
 
 Her captain told her no. 
 
 She was going to do it anyway. She was n't going to die out in the void without seeing up close what she had come so far to see. 
 
 * * * 
 
 `` Commander, what the hell is that?'' called out Mission Specialist Gabriel. 
 
 The Commander launched himself down the module to the Cupola. The station had three of them, always occupied by two or three astronauts at a time; no one wanted to miss a second of the view. 
 
 `` Houston, this is Station,'' Commander Anderson called on his snoopy hat, `` we've got something big headed towards the station, tracking show anything on our orbital path about as big as a person? We're going to have some major trouble here if we run into something that big.'' 
 
 `` Negative, Station,'' answered Houston on the loop. 
 
 `` Commander, look!'' Puffs of gas started coming from the object, which started to resolve into a human-like form. 
 
 `` That thing slowed down, it could n't match our orbit precisely but it slowed down.'' Other station astronauts were gathering in the module. Helena Gabriel had a realization. `` Commander, if it's going where I think it's going, and if it stays on this side of truss B, and if it's not going any faster than I think it is, I might be able to catch it with Juliet Arm if I hurry to the controls right now.'' 
 
 `` Go set it up. Good luck, Helena.'' 
 
 * * * 
 
 They had spent a generation in transit, but they had passed it in the dreamless sleep of hibernation. They were explorers, compelled by the call of life in the void to take a closer look. And so they went, sending sleeper ships and exploratory crews. Here they found a spacefaring culture taking what looked like its third or fourth step into the ocean of stars, flags and two generations of equipment on the grey Moon, a pair of orbiting stations going around a green Earth. 
 
 It was unlikely that she could be retrieved by her ship. They would have to get too close to the human station to rescue her in time. As she approached the station, she used the last of her maneuvering gas to slow her down, both to make sure she would n't damage the station if she hit it, and so she could get the best look possible. 
 
 She saw them, though the transparent material on their station and through her helmet, unaided, in physical form and not from pirated broadcasts or through long telescopes. She perceived them directly with her own senses. 
 
 She was the first of her kind to do that, she claimed it, no one else could have it. 
 
 More warnings in her helmet now. But she felt a profound sense of peace. 
 
 And then a lurch as she matched orbit to the station. 
 
 * * * 
 
 `` Got it!'' Cheers went around. `` Commander, that for all the world looks like a spacesuit, and some damaged equipment. But if that's a human then it's no human form that I've ever seen.'' 
 
 He had to make a decision. Commander Anderson felt it, a kinship with a fellow-traveler of the void. `` Put it in airlock Beta. Dimitri, as soon as the outer door is closed, pressurize Beta, and then get the hell out of McCool Module, we're opening it up to vacuum as a precaution.'' 
 
 * * * 
 
 She was coming back to consciousness. Her shipmates must have done it. She focused in on status displays. Zero on her emergency supply. Breathing gas alert, Oxygen 10 % below nominal. No worse than a tall mountain peak, she thought. She focused out. 
 
 This was not her ship. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The astronauts on station were speechless. They knew simply as probability that there was other life in the universe, certainly, and the galaxy almost as certainly. And somehow, someway, Other Life seemed to be sitting in a Utility Airlock on their station. `` Think it's ok to breathe?'' Ryan, a science officer asked. 
 
 `` It's all we're able to do, maybe we're lucky,'' Hitomi, the medical officer replied. 
 
 `` Keep an eye on it,'' Anderson said, `` Rest of you, to the viewports, it had to have come from somewhere.'' 
 
 And so they were all looking outside when a ship as large as their station shimmered into view, like a Romulan decloaking in Star Trek. 
 
 The Commander's snoopy hat came alive with an alien garble but there was rhythm to it, organization. Language. Two figures were emerging from a hatch on the ship, same-formed as the one in the station airlock. 
 
 So began the New Era for the humans of Earth. 
 
 * * * 
 
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