They all agreed easily. So they floated through two lab modules and the shabbylooking habitat module where the long-term researchers were housed and finally made it to the cavernous maintenance unit. There, by the airlock, Pancho chose a spacesuit from the half-dozen standard models lined up against the bulkhead, size large because of her height. She quickly wriggled into it. They even helped her put on the boots and check out the suit’s systems.

Pancho pulled the helmet over her head and clicked the neck seal shut.

“Okay,” she said, through the helmet’s open visor. “Who’s gonna time me?”

“I will,” said one of the guys, raising his forearm to show an elaborate digital wristwatch.

“You go in the lock,” said the man beside him, “pump it down and open the outside hatch.”

“And you watch me through the port,” Pancho said, tapping the thick round window on the airlock’s inner hatch with gloved knuckles. “Check. When I say go, you open your visor.”

“And I’ll time you,” said the guy with the fancy wristwatch.

Pancho nodded inside the helmet.

Amanda looked concerned. “Are you absolutely certain that you want to go through with this? You could kill yourself, Pancho.”

“She can’t back out now!”

“Not unless she wants to forfeit five months’ pay.”

“But seriously,” Amanda said. “I’m wiling to call off the bet. After all-” Pancho reached out and tousled her curly blonde hair. “Don’t sweat it, Mandy.” With that, she stepped through the open airlock hatch and slid down her visor. She waved to them as they swung the hatch shut. She heard the pump start to clatter; the sound quickly dwindled as the air was sucked out of the metal-walled chamber. When the telltale light by the inner hatch turned red, Pancho touched the button that slid the outer hatch open.

For a moment she forgot what she was up to as she drank in the overwhelming beauty of the Earth spread out before her dazzled eyes. Brilliantly bright, intensely blue oceans and enormous sweeps of clouds so white it almost hurt to look upon them. It was glorious, an overwhelming panorama that never failed to make her heart beat faster.