No wonder people get hooked on this, she thought.

“Okay, EV2, Houston. Coming up to your three hundred feet limit.”

“Copy that.” Three hundred feet was as far as she could allow herself to travel. Moving away from Columbia, Benacerraf was actually entering a slightly different orbit. If she went much further, return to the orbiter would become a full-scale rendezvous, a matter of complex course correction maneuvers.

She passed out of the shadow of the wing, and into sunlight; her EMU seemed to glow.

“I see your light, Paula,” Lamb called.

“I’m pleased to hear it, Tom.”

“EV2, Houston. Confirming your ground-to-MMU direct link is operational.”

“Thank you.”

“And your transponder beacon is functioning.”

“Copy that.”

“EV2, Houston. You have a lot of green-eyed people watching you; looks like you’re having a lot of fun.”

“Sure. This is working very nicely. Ah, I’m glad I’ve got old Brer Rabbit out here with me, out in the briar patch where he belongs.”

She heard Lamb chuckle at that, back in the payload bay. She was aping the first words he’d spoken on the Moon.

Most astronauts got off the active list after four or five flights. They moved out into industry, or up into some kind of program management position within NASA. What kind of man was it who would keep on subjecting himself — and his family — to the grind of training, two years for every Shuttle mission, the enormous dangers of the missions themselves, flight after flight, year after year, logging up the spaceflight hours well into his sixties, endlessly defying the survival odds?