(9) Tilly's Seventh Flight

>A bright flashbulb momentarily bathed the new Agency Director and his mechanical pilot in white light, one of Georges' hands tucked in his pocket with the other resting at Tilly's shoulder while they posed. "Perfect! Penny be a dear and get one of just the pilot next?" Following the cue Tilly took several steps away from her de-facto master, and was photographed with her hands behind her looking away at Director Georges and the magazine reporter. The two men and their robots stood off the fringes of a large group who'd gathered in mission control that evening for an impromptu party their new boss had thrown together for himself. Quickly glasses of champagne had been swapped out for free-flowing beer, and popular music from the radio had been piped through the room's loudspeaker giving the party a loose and casual atmosphere. Staff from crucial mission controllers all the way down to janitors had come packing the large parking lot outside, and many had brought their spouses and a few friends besides. Mr. Jones and his assistant android Penny from the robotics magazine Crosswire Press had not technically been invited, but by slipping in with the flowing crowd and waiting for Director Georges to finish his second drink they'd managed to easily snag the surprise interview when opportunity presented itself. "Director Georges," Jones began with a guarded smile. Georges beamed, loving the sound of the title fitted to his name more each time he heard it. "I'd like to ask you more about your Agency's planned orbiting telescope. Is it true that multiple key components were manufactured under contract by Atlas?" the reporter finished, making Georges' grin twitch. "Why yes, we began branching out to new contractors under Director Debus after Sterling's misgivings over DoD payloads, and will continue to under my leadership." Tilly looked back at the photographer when she realized they were both staring at the exchange between their humans. Penny was a different model than the pilot she'd photographed, black hair tied in a tight bun with more suggestive curves than the pilot hidden away under her charcoal-grey pencil skirt and jacket. For a moment Penny looked back Tilly's direction, the two robots' optics meeting for a few seconds. She gave the pilot an unimpressed scan up and down before turning and walking the few paces back to their masters before she could be caught in some menial conversation with her fellow machine. "But Director isn't it also true that Atlas is likely going to be dropped from Government contracts entirely after the accident last month with their self-propelled artillery test?" Jones was pressing, and Georges made an uncomfortable smile. "That's military, totally separate from us. Besides, that incident was due to their AI if I'm not mistaken, all we're using is some of their hardware." Quickly jotting down the quote Jones hid a smirk. "And flying a Sterling robot on it of course. Director, if I may-" Penny tugged at his sleeve, looking up at him with optics that matched her dark clothing. "I would like to get a few more shots of the party Sir, unless you need me still." Jones checked Georges' expression once before nodding. "Sure sure, now Director let's switch gears. I'd like to ask you about the current state of US/Soviet cooperation..." Tilly watched as Penny filtered back into the crowd and was lost beneath the shoulders of the taller humans, then quickly decided her fellow machine had the right idea and left Georges to fend for himself with the reporter.

>As the party went on around her Tilly felt crowded and out of place among all of the quickly-inebriating humans. The nandroid maneuvered through the packed room with difficulty and made her escape through the main hall, not feeling truly comfortable again until she had exited the building and stood under the stars. Breathing in cool air and exchanging it for internal heat, Tilly smiled to herself as she strolled across the grounds of the launch complex towards the vehicle assembly building leaving the muted sounds of the gathering behind her. Cleanup of the party's aftermath was still hours away with the sunrise, she thought to herself when she started climbing the many flights up the building's exterior, and she would not be missed for the duration of the evening up here. Halfway through the trip up Tilly had to stop and rest, a consequence of her third-party servicing missing the steadily-building wear to her hip joints. Most of the time she was fine, but only a couple of weeks after her last repair she'd begun to notice the symptoms any time she tried to climb this tall building without a break. As dry joints cooled back down and stopped flashing internal damage warnings at her for the hundredth time, she looked down through the grated steel stairwell and saw a flash of movement on the ground below. Curious, she poked her head over the side of the railing to get a better view just in time to see the small side door to the VAB close. Blinking to herself once Tilly shrugged and started back up the next set of stairs, wondering if perhaps an engineer or janitor had forgotten something after the work day had ended. By the time she reached the top, Tilly's thoughts had turned to her quasi-master. Naturally she was happy for Georges, and part of her recognized that his leadership of the Agency would likely mean even more chances for her to fly, but with his promotion had come a far busier workload that took up much more of his time. It was only after seeing him locked away in his new office that she realized she missed the daily casual conversations with him, and lamented how inaccessible his new position had made him. Sighing to herself Tilly laid flat on the roof of the building staring upwards as the moon rose overhead. It was strange, she thought to herself with hands resting over her battery case, how she could feel some sense of paradoxical loneliness down there in mission control with all those humans milling about. Compared to three years previous she had plenty of friends to confide in now, but they were scattered across the globe even less immediately-accessible than Georges. Since returning from the moon Tatyana's letters had begun arriving again, and Tilly had quickly written back to reestablish their link. Not long after, a creased and heavily-stamped postcard from the Mongolian steppe had come in answering Tilly's own opening letter to Ehri, written in mostly-correct english courtesy of a hard-sought upgrade obtained in the capital according to the herds-droid's message. Nadya she knew could not write for her own safety of course, but even so Tilly was happy to picture the troubled Soviet in the mental image she held of Outmodeback. "Everyone's got somewhere," she spoke out loud as soon as the thought crossed her CPU, her soft voice almost startling herself in the silence of night. Picturing the little recharging room at mission control that she called hers, Tilly found that she could only think of it as a rest-stop between her flights, a place to store herself when she was waiting. "So where's mine?"
>Below her unseen, Penny quietly closed the VAB side door behind her and looked around once before silently making her way back across the grounds to collect her human partner from the party.

>The Harlow orbital observatory had been worked on for nearly three years, starting life with the fresh influx of federal funding following Tilly's successful first flight. Other missions had taken priority soon after though, and during the uncertain period following the loss of the first joint mission to the moon the half-completed telescope had been shelved temporarily. Now though the machine finally neared completion, and would be the first mission to be launched under Georges' administration even as work hurried along in the background to human-rate a lunar lander. During the weeks leading up the the launch, Tilly busied herself learning how to operate the complex controls of the observatory, practicing how to spot and focus on objects in the solar system to record. Much of the work the station would accomplish during the first weeks of operation would be not unlike the brief flyby of Venus, data recorded automatically and transmitted back to the ground without delay, though optical observations would require Tilly to be skilled enough to not only use the  equipment but also orient the vessel accordingly while doing so. Three on-board flywheels, the most significant contribution by Atlas, would be used to orient the station and lengthen the mission without relying on a limited-fuel reaction control system. Sitting in her dark simulator Tilly looked through the mock-up of the optical telescope's eyepiece at nothing, slowly changing the simulated orientation to move between imagined targets. It had taken her several tries at first, but now after multiple hours of running these exercises Tilly had come to appreciate the inertia-based machine for the fine control it offered her, as well for not being as potentially explosive as propellant. "Alright Tilly I don't see any more room for improvement today, end simulation and come on out," Collins' voice called to her from just outside the sealed-in little box she operated. As she climbed out and stretched her servos, Tilly smiled at the robot-wrangling engineer. "I think I've really got the hang of it now, I mean it'll be easier when I'm up there and can really feel my orientation but even now the control feels nice and smooth!" Collins didn't look up at her for several seconds as he scribbled a note onto his clipboard. "You've been at or above expected performance all week, we can keep running drills but frankly," glancing up at her finally the stuffy man gave her an uncharacteristic nod of approval. "I think you've got the hang of it too."

>Still beaming from the approval Tilly strolled back into the main building after a brief walk across the launch complex grounds, entering through the double doors as a handful of men filed out passed her on their way home for the day. Getting the tacit approval of Collins, a man who seemed always ready to compare her benchmark test scores with his late-favorite Kimmy, had put a bounce in Tilly's step. Turning the corner down a long hallway she even began to hum a few bars of Fly Me to the Moon to herself softly, hardly noticing the humans she passed on her way back to her suite. "Ah, there you are!" a friendly voice called out from behind her just as she was reaching the doorway to her small recharging room. Turning she was met by a relieved man, thinning grey hair slicked backwards with thick-rimmed glasses framing his face. "Mr. Dryden sir? What can I do for you?" Tilly asked of the man who had succeeded Georges' old position. She had not spoken very much with him since his promotion, the job of coaching the mechanical pilot now fell under Collins instead, but what few interactions they'd shared had already endeared him to her. "A favor, I hope," Dryden began, catching his breath and giving her a smile. "I seem to have put myself in a rather awkward spot at home. It's our anniversary you see, I've got reservations set for the wife and I but well, it slipped my mind entirely to get a sitter for my boy!" Scratching at the back of his neck nervously Dryden gave her a sheepish look. "Normally Holly would be there to watch him, but she's in the shop for repair this week and my mind has been here at work, I didn't even give it a thought!" Already Tilly felt sympathy for the man's plight, and when she saw him clasp his hands together in a pleading manner her mind was already made up before computing it through. "You need a sitter on short notice?" she asked before he could carefully word his request, crossing her arms behind her back and standing up straight. Dryden smiled again and sighed, relieved. "It would save my skin, Tilly!"

>Streetlamps poured streaks of orange glow in through the windows of Dryden's car as he and Tilly drove through Tampa on their way towards the suburbs where he lived. The nandroid had asked a few basic questions about the boy's age and the duration of her stay, but Dryden had soon switched the conversation back to the workplace they'd just left behind them. "It really is going to be wonderful Tilly, you'll see so much for us!" The nandroid turned her optics to him as he spoke, smiling at the man's infectious enthusiasm. "It was a mistake to turn the first telescopes in space downwards on one another, a waste when so much more is out there still to be seen!" It was true, she thought to herself, Nadya had nearly been wasted on the Soviet's silly spy station. "What should I look at with the optical scope first?" Tilly asked, curious about the man's passion-pick. "A true image of Mars without the atmospheric blur would be a sight to see," Dryden said suddenly wistful. "I think that alone would be worth the investment." His nandroid passenger nodded and looked back out of the passenger window trying to see beyond the sky's encroaching clouds. As if on cue a few drops of rain began striking the windshield, and she turned away from the obscured skies as her driver activated the wipers. "I want to try and look at the outer planets too, seeing Jupiter from the ground is neat and all but I bet I can even get good pictures of Uranus and Neptune once I'm up there!" Dryden took his eyes off the road for a split second and beamed at her own enthusiasm. "Every observation will be new and exciting for us all, and there will be plenty of time while the x-ray survey is underway. It'll be up to Director Georges ultimately, but you may even be up there until Christmas if things go well." Tilly thought for a moment about her many months in the third stage habitat returning from Venus, a sudden worrying thought crossing her CPU. "Sir, he wouldn't just keep extending the mission after that, would he?" Dryden shook his head bitterly. "Not a chance, Georges wants you available for future flights and isn't too interested in continuing to operate the Harlow station indefinitely. Still, just maybe the wonderful new data and images you gather will motivate him to try expanding the pilot roster again and continue observations with a new machine?." Shrugging, he added wryly "Allow an old man to hope."

>Despite Dryden's advancing age his son James was still quite young, born to a wife half a generation younger than the soft-spoken man. At first little James had been shy around Tilly, and even with his father prompting him with a glowing description of his babysitter's unique job the boy had kept himself sequestered in his room alone until it was time for dinner. The somehow strained silence in the house when it was just Tilly and the boy was far more disquieting than the nandroid had expected, and only when left alone to process it for a bit did she recognize that James must surely be missing his own familiar nanny. Taking a steaming cardboard tray from the kitchen microwave, she peeled off the plastic film and stared unimpressed down at the handful of fish-sticks, stunted french-fries and rapidly-cooling green beans. "Humans eat the weirdest junk," she muttered to herself, thinking back on every delivery of donuts, pizza or bagged drive-thru burgers she'd brought to the men of mission control. Ascending the stairs and moving to the first cracked-open door of the second story, Tilly rapped her metal knuckles against the wood twice pushing the gap open slightly. "I've got supper if you're getting hungry, and I thought maybe you'd like to eat in here for tonight since it's just us?" Tilly did her best to sound friendly, but worried that her inexperience with children was detectable even by one as young as him. James looked up from the small pile of toys scattered across his floor and gave her an uncertain look before a muted growl emanated from his stomach. "Okay," he said quietly, taking the offered tray and sitting back cross-legged on the floor against the side of his bed. For a moment Tilly forgot herself and looked around the room, marveling at the walls packed with posters, magazine clippings, some tacked-up baseball cards, all the random ephemera of childhood that gave the place a sense of life that her spartan quarters back home lacked. James swallowed a fish-stick nearly whole and wiped his fingers on his small shirt. "Did you really go to outer space?" the young boy asked cautiously, eyes turned deliberately downwards at his TV dinner to avoid meeting the optics of the strange robot. At the question Tilly smiled, a little relieved at the softball question. Since arriving here she'd become acutely aware just how much of her early-life training had been deleted outright in her desperation to increase drive space during her Venus flight, whole weeks of time spent in Bradberry's classes learning how to carefully handle a child's often delicate and temperamental emotions were simply gone. Bridging the gap between the life she had now and her original purpose as a child-rearing nandroid had appeared insurmountable with James holed up in his room and Tilly drawing memory-errors trying to think of what to do to entertain her charge, but now as she recognized the familiar shapes of the toys at her feet she was confident she had an 'in'. "Yes, six times as a matter of fact!" she answered him happily, smile widening at the boy's expression. James blinked wide eyes at her, forgetting a french-fry still sticking out of his mouth. "fweally?"

>Thirty minutes later both Tilly and James sat on the floor of his bedroom surrounded by his collection of toy spacecraft, a mixture of sci-fi staples and realistic real-world models brought home by his father from the Agency. Each story Tilly told of her adventures, minus the classified bits of course, had enthralled little James more than the last. With accurate models and the real-life astrobot there in his bedroom, he enthusiastically played each story out with the little spaceships making the appropriate 'woosh' sound effects where he thought they belonged. Tilly played along with recreating her journeys to orbit and beyond finding the boy easy to please while indulging this interest, the exercise amusing for herself as well. After exhausting the personal stories Tilly had brought with her, James began making up his own about his nandroid sitter to act out with the models, each more fantastical and improbable than the last. By the time Tilly was landing on Jupiter/James' bed to fight space-aliens/green army men, the nandroid was laughing and improvising along with the boy happily. For just a moment part of her wondered if this was what her life would've been like day-to-day had she never been assigned to the Agency upon graduation. It was a strange thought, but somehow for the first time in several years she could just about imagine herself back in the role she'd been built for. "But then!" James interrupted her introspection, "The capsule is coming back from a successful campaign against the Jupiter-ians, and when you're parachuting down ZAP! Lightning strikes and the parachutes catch on fire! WHAM!" Punctuating his epilogue with sound effects James dramatically slammed the toy Capricorn capsule into the carpet, and Tilly froze up for just a second while she processed the mental imagery in grim detail. His smile fading as he looked up at the suddenly unnerved nandroid, young James gave her a very serious look and added in a reassuring tone "Only for pretend though."

>By the time Mr. and Mrs. Dryden returned home that evening James had been comfortably tucked into bed, leaving Tilly alone in the living room to flip through channels on the black and white television looking for something worth watching. "Sir and Ma'am, welcome back!" she said with a smile, turning from her spot on the couch to greet them as the front door swung open. "-legal ramifications of the Craw case ruling are sure to be felt widespr-" the news anchor was droning as Tilly fumbled for the remote and shut off the television. "How was your movie?" Mrs. Dryden strolled inside and hung her jacket on the rack with a huff at Tilly's question, making a bee-line for the stairs soon after. "Dreadful, I'm never letting him take me to another Hitchcock film again!" Stopping at the foot of the stairs, the young woman turned and pointed a finger back at her husband. "And I mean it dear, we're throwing out the bird-bath first thing tomorrow!" As she disappeared up the stairs, Dryden waited in the entrance and gave Tilly a worn smile. "Well at least one of us enjoyed it. How was James?" he asked as Tilly stood to join him in the doorway. "A little shy at first, I think maybe he wasn't sure how to react to another nandroid right away." Stepping through the door after him, she added "We got on just fine after dinner though, he's a very imaginative young man!" Dryden led the robot down his driveway back to his still-warm car, and even got the passenger door for her before entering the driver's side. "I'm glad he didn't give you any trouble, the poor boy was a mess after Holly crashed on us last week. I hope this was good for him." Looking down at her lap, Tilly fidgeted slightly. Getting to play nanny for the evening had been worrisome at first, but wonderful after a time. Before tonight Tilly's ideas about what domestic life would have been like for her were always rooted in the experiences of others, particularly Tatyana's, but with even a small taste the unknown of what might-have-been was significantly more comfortable for her to process. "I think it was, Sir."

>The following week was more relaxed than any that had preceded one of Tilly's flights, and only a final bit of preparation stood between Tilly and being flight-certified for her seventh ride aboard a rocket. Following her weeks at Unity Base with Tatyana Tilly had returned with stories of the EVA pool her Russian friend had trained in, quickly prompting the Agency to construct one of their own. While she felt confident enough floating on the outside of a spacecraft by this point in her career, particularly after her last ride off of the moon with Tatyana, Tilly still jumped at the chance to satisfy the engineers by testing out their new training environment. Suited and helmeted despite being manufactured waterproof, she walked slowly into the pool becoming neutrally-buoyant underwater thanks to the numerous air pockets lining her diving suit. When she closed her optics, Tilly could almost pretend she was again in the open vacuum of space. Apart from the feedback her internal gyroscope gave her telling her which was was up, the sensation of floating weightless above the bottom of the pool was nearly identical to the sensation she'd had for the many months spent drifting between bodies in space. A small enclosed structure in the deep pool served as a sort of obstacle course, and with the reassuring coaching of Collins in her earpiece she pulled herself along a tether through the water until she'd reached the entrance. Inside the underwater structure there was no light but Tilly's own suit-lamp to see by, but the short arrangement of hallway and rooms simulating some future station was easy enough to navigate that after a few minutes she switched off the light on a whim and tried pulling herself through the mock-up by feel alone. Floating in the darkness without reference-point below or above was a disorienting feeling, and before it grew too uncomfortable she turned on her suit-lamp again to orient herself, wondering what had come over her. Breathing in recycled warm air she checked her internal temperature and registered herself at two degrees above normal. "I'm starting to get a little warm in here, should I head back up?" Tilly called over her headset, floating in the semi-darkness awaiting response from the world above. "Roger that I'm seeing the rise too, gonna need to work on the diving suit some more it looks like. Alright come on out, we can be done for today." Collin's professionally-terse voice came over her headset, and she turned towards to find the exit. For just a moment, her suit's beam of light illuminated bulkhead after bulkhead as she turned around in place searching for the hatchway out, disoriented by the near-identical walls of the enclosure. Spotting the blue light spilling in through the hatchway finally she gave a sigh inside her helmet, and began pulling herself towards the light. "You're fine," she muttered to herself, perplexing the team listening-in on her radio.

>Preparing for launch had become something of a ritual to Tilly by this point, suiting up in her suite and strolling towards the launchpad accompanied by ground crewmen. Each time that she'd made this journey to the launch tower's elevator platform had been different, from the naive excitement of the first to the worn resolve of the last. As the pad technicians pulled tight the straps which held her in place aboard the station-mounted capsule a familiar face appeared behind the men, grinning at her from behind a pair of sunglasses. "Director Georges!" Tilly called out, matching the man's wide grin. "I had to come see you off, kind of tradition by this point eh?" Georges said, pulling a cigarette from his ear and lighting it casually. Reaching up at his face, the nonchalant Agency Director pulled down the shades  and handed them to Tilly, recalling with a smirk how she'd taken the same pair with her on the first flight to the moon. "For good luck," he said as she took and folded them to fit in her suit's breast-pocket. "Thank you sir. So, I guess I'll talk to you again when I'm up there?" Tilly gave Georges a confident smile, and he matched it with an optimistic expression. "I'll be just a comms-check away Tilly." With a final nod Georges leaned back from the capsule's entrance and let the pad technicians finish their work. As the capsule's hatch closed, Tilly wondered just how long her open-ended mission might stretch. One month was easy, but imagining six or more stuck aboard a craft endlessly circling the Earth made her uneasy just to process. Sighing and compartmentalizing her worry again, Tilly listened intently to mission control's call-outs as the countdown progressed from the last hour to the final seconds.

>After a successful launch and insertion into low-earth orbit the Harlow orbital observatory unfolded wide solar panels, letting both the station and its mechanical pilot bask in the free recharge the sun provided. On her second orbit, Tilly undocked her small capsule and reoriented to connect properly with the orbiting laboratory. Once inside she'd gone quickly to work, delighting at the startling array of instruments packed in compared to the bare habitat she'd occupied on her third flight. For just a few minutes before getting to work, Tilly simply marveled once more at being in orbit, gazing out the porthole at the familiar blue-green world below her. Compared to visiting the moon or beyond low-orbit was merely a walk in the park to her now, but her familiarity with weightlessness did nothing to lessen the unadulterated joy that being in space gave her. Once the long background survey of local x-rays above the atmosphere was underway, Tilly wasted no time in deploying the optical telescope and opening the cover with the flick of a switch, floating across her small station to take up position at the hooded viewport containing the scope's eyepiece. Maneuvering the station and locking it in position for observations took concentration, but after a few minutes of frustrated blurriness Tilly finally focused in on her first target. "Aha! That's ice!" Tilly exclaimed to herself giddily as her telescope tracked the resolved red disc of Mars. The red planet had been an intriguing curiosity for her ever since first gazing up at it following her first moon landing, but through the weak telescopes on the ground and the hazy atmosphere she'd only ever seen it as a blurry smudge, details promised but never seen sharply until now. Clearly-defined white capped the alien world, and Tilly looked on in wonder at the strange landscape hinted at by the dark blotches of brown staining the red dirt. Nearly forgetting her mission for a moment Tilly quickly snapped a photo using the trigger at the telescope controls, smiling as she imagined the look on Dryden's face when he saw what she now witnessed. Keeping the red planet in view as long as she could Tilly easily imagined herself standing there, boots caked in rust-colored dust while the strangely-shaped moons sat motionless overhead joined by the tiny blue dot of the Earth. "Someday," Tilly said out loud to herself, looking up from the telescope and staring through her window at the red point of light before it slipped behind the curvature of the Earth.

>For two weeks Tilly orbited Earth again and again every ninety minutes, each day bringing new observations that enthralled mission control nearly as much as they awed herself. Neptune and Uranus interested her greatly as a concept, but spotting the two outer worlds had been a mild disappointment as the mono-colored planets gave up little detail. Still, with multiple passes and observations Tilly had recorded the existence of several previously-unknown moons around both distant worlds as well as strange thin rings around each planet, the belt around Uranus strangely toppled over in a way that baffled the little robot. Jupiter had been next on her list, now working inwards from the outer worlds one by one, and Tilly had been forced to check that her own visual processing wasn't glitching when first seeing the many sharply-defined cloud bands of the massive gas giant. She observed the king of the planets pass after pass, noting with a cry of excitement when the wide red spot she'd been waiting for appeared. Recalling what she'd read a few weeks earlier during her preparations for this mission, Tilly tried to process the visual data of the enormous red storm with the context of its sheer scale, and found herself unable to conceptualize what she was seeing in any clear way. Unsettled by the impossible to ignore thoughts of her comparatively minuscule scale, Tilly left Jupiter for future observations and turned the Harlow observatory carefully towards the solar system's ringed-jewel. Uncomfortable computation of world-sized hurricanes was replaced by silent awe as she gaped at the wide rings of Saturn through the telescope, snapping as many images as she could for the scientists back home. With preliminary observations done and the other instruments of her vessel busy gathering all manner of data by themselves Tilly found herself looking out the window for a long stretch of time, first staring at the points of light one by one, but then gazing at the black patches between them as curious speculation processed internally.

>At the beginning of her third week in orbit Tilly carefully oriented the Harlow observatory towards a new target, the station's flywheels spinning up and slowing to aim her in the desired direction. Looking through the viewport the pilot android expertly focused the optical telescope on a small patch of blank sky, carefully trying to resolve the image while the gyros and flywheels of the station kept her aim true. Already she'd seen much up here, but the new-found sense of scale she'd discovered on this flight urged Tilly to look further out. How far could she see? Curiosity and thrill drove her now as it had these past several years, and the promise of seeing something else new sent Tilly's CPU into overclock. Her view was black for several minutes, but as light filtered in slowly and her optics adjusted to the darkness Tilly began to see small smudges of light poking out from the inky curtain. "There's so many!" she said out loud to herself seeing the many strangely-shaped points of light beginning to resolve into disks, an irrepressible grin creeping along her faceplate until the corners reached both round cheek lights. Deep in the bowels of the station the mission chronometer ticked exactly three hundred and fifty hours of operation, and on cue one of the three flywheels maintaining orientation spun up rapidly without permission. The failing component reached unsafe speeds in a fraction of a second, blowing past its operational limit until it shattered inside the housing with a muffled 'crack'. In the span of only a couple seconds Tilly's view of the emerging galaxies blurred as the station picked up unexpected rotation. "Hey! What are you-" she began, then was stopped by a brilliant flash and a barrage of internal warning prompts. As the station rotated the sensitive optical telescope was turned on its axis, and pointed for just a moment directly at the sun. Tilly's vision was gone, a blackness punctuated only by the warning messages she sensed more than saw. 'No signal' two identical prompts read from each optic, followed quickly by an alert warning her to seek servicing. Breathing heavily to calm herself, Tilly looked around her cabin but could see nothing. Cautiously she ran a self-diagnostic, prodding carefully at her unresponsive optics hoping them to be only temporarily offline. After a half-second the report came back, delivering updated information to her CPU. "L-lens burnout?"

>Tilly blinked, and her vision remained worryingly unchanged. Panic started to rise, and the nandroid held her hands out in front of her groping around for anything she could touch. "Scrap, scrap, scrap!" Bumping into the cabin ceiling as she rose, Tilly whined and felt along the wall, disoriented. She had to call home, of that she was certain, but how? Reaching out cautiously metal fingers brushed over the array of switches and buttons at the control panel and she pulled back nervously. "T-they all feel the same," she muttered, her breathing quickening as she rapidly processed all the ways this might doom her. Feeling the station still tumbling through her internal gyro, Tilly put her arms around herself and squeezed, overclocked processor running wild with grim conclusions. At her chest she felt something small crack, and was momentarily distracted from the downward spiral she had been sent into. Unwrapping her arms from herself she patted her chest, sensor-laden metal fingers carefully finding the edge of her breast pocket and feeling the contents. One of the lenses of Georges unlucky sunglasses had popped out, and Tilly put a finger through the space where it had been. Taking a deep breath and letting out the hot air slowly, Tilly pulled her hand back out of the pocket and lightly slapped the lights at her cheeks. "Enough, you can do this!" she encouraged herself, and carefully began reaching around until her hands settled on the hooded viewscope of the telescope. Closing dead optics out of habit Tilly brought up image files from memory of the past two weeks, settling on her last view of the wall from the angle she now floated at. It was difficult, but as she slowly turned in place and recalled crisp memory files a mosaic of her surroundings began to form in her still-functioning visual processing unit. After ten minutes of matching images together, Tilly felt she had a good mental model of the station's interior, and carefully reached out to test her work. "Telescope," she said to herself slowly as she touched the spot where she expected it to be and felt the viewport again. "and the porthole is....yes!" Trailing her fingers up the metal wall she found the rounded opening and protective glass exactly where it should've been. "So the control panel is right over...there!" Tilly pointed despite not being able to see her own hand, and floated in the direction of the controls as seen in her mind's eye. On cue she stopped and felt for the switches, enlarging the image saved to memory of the beige-buttoned panel as she traced her finger over each one. "No, no, no, definitely not that one, aha!" As the felt shape of the radio controls matched her memory she was certain, and with only a moment's hesitation she depressed the switch to transmit. "Mission control, this is Harlow Observatory! I think I'm in trouble, Sirs!"

>Georges had rushed out of his office as soon as he'd gotten word of the situation, flat-out running the last hundred feet or so of hallway to the main control room. Gasping for breath, he'd needed to rest a moment at the doorway while the CAPCOM operator troubleshot with their pilot. "Not from in here no, the z-axis control won't respond at all. I think I could probably use the RCS on the Capricorn to stop this spin though sir." A sharp beep sounded after Tilly's voice rang out over the speaker, and Georges breathed in deep as he approached the radio operator and took the headset off the man's head in one quick move. "Tilly? Listen, the earliest we'd be able to come up there for you is after New Years," covering the microphone for a moment, Georges looked down at his CAPCOM operator who matched his own dubious expression. Even excepting for divine miracle there were serious doubts among mission control that the human-rated capsule would be ready quite so early. The radio crackled back for a moment, followed by the little robot's faraway voice. "So you're saying I've gotta fly in the dark if I wanna come back anytime soon, right?" Another shrill beep followed the end of her message. Around the room several of the men there exchanged looks of surprise and doubt. Georges stood silently for a long moment, looking around mission control at his team. All eyes rested on him now, and for the first time since taking the position he felt the responsibility heavy on his shoulders. 'either we lose her indefinitely because she's stuck up there, or she tries a return and maybe we get her back?' Georges thought to himself, wondering what kind of money he'd be willing to bet in Vegas on the robot's odds of survival. Holding the microphone to his face, the Director waited several more seconds before speaking, giving everyone in the room the same stern look. "We'll be coaching you from down here the whole time. C'mon home Tilly."

>Inside the slowly spinning station Tilly moved away from the control panel of Harlow station and pulled herself by memory through the hatchway connecting her capsule. The Capricorn design was familiar enough to her now that she was able to quickly pull herself into her seat and strap in by feel alone before searching her memory for images of the cabin from this position. Orienting her mental image of the controls with the feel of metal and plastic beneath her fingers, Tilly slowly brought the rotating station to a stand-still with short bursts from the capsule's RCS, breathing a sigh of relief as her internal gyroscope registered the feeling of stillness once more. From undocking through the burn for reentry and the coast towards the atmosphere below, Tilly stayed in constant communication with the ground team, Georges occasionally piping in a bit of encouragement that made her feel she wasn't alone. After over an hour of no visual input, Tilly felt oddly calm with her mental map of the small cabin grounding her. Only through re-entry itself was she nervous, the heated atmosphere around her capsule closing off communication with mission control for several minutes. On descent she was on her own, but was ticking down the seconds on her internal chronometer. Without visual data to tell her how close she was to the ground, she had only her timer and crossed metal fingers to ensure she didn't open her parachutes too early or too soon. The image of young James smacking a toy capsule into his bedroom floor played across her CPU for a moment, and nearly sent her spiraling back into worry before she headed the thought process off. "Only for pretend," she muttered to herself, and flicked the double switches to deploy the parachutes.

Epilogue

>Jones stood in the employee bathroom of Crosswire Press in front of a large mirror spanning several sinks adjusting his tie. After just a few short weeks he and his Sterling-provided assistant Penny would be returning to the Spaceflight Agency in Florida to cover a press event regarding their latest mishap in space. There were many things that the reporter was comfortable not knowing, such as exactly why certain rival companies to the robotics giant that owned his employer seemed to be having so many failures lately. He did not know precisely why such failures always seemed to occur not long after a visit by the unassuming duo tucked away in a wide press-pool followed by a slanted write up in their magazine, nor did he know in detail what Penny got up to when not by his side. What he did know was that the inscrutable nandroid's disappearing act whenever they were in the field to get a story always yielded juicy details and fine photography, and crucially he knew not to ask too many questions about her semi-regular contact with Sterling Robotics. Jones also quite keenly knew that the Floridian condo he'd bought last year wouldn't pay itself off, and knew that with each story of Sterling excellence they published their parent company's reputation improved along with his own job-security. Lastly Jones knew already what he'd be writing in his next story, and only needed a quote and photo from the Agency Director on why he'd backpedaled on contracting through Atlas, instead signing a hasty yet-to-be-announced exclusivity deal with Sterling. The door to the restroom opened slightly, and Penny's head poked in giving Jones a glance up and down. "Almost ready, Sir? It's nearly five." Jones turned to smile at her and gave a nod. "Lead the way!"