"And that's why flames in space are spherical, or round." Martha Livingstone, Ph.D. explained as Captain James Stanley, USN blew out the flame. Maj. Chris Dathwaite, USAF tried to hold the camera steady in the three-dimensional freedom of weightlessness.
"Thank you, Freedom, for that excellent presentation on how life is up there," came the voice of a NASA television personality. "Now, Captain, you just got a few new visitors, right?"
James, who just seconds ago had been unwittingly competing for what oxygen we humans had been able to carry higher than it rightfully should have been, responded, "Exactly. Since Atlantis docked 2 days ago, the shuttle astronauts have been--"
"Like Martha?"
"Yes, Houston, shuttle astronauts, like Martha, or Chris behind the camera, or Jake floating off-screen to my right, have been extremely helpful in constructing our space station and conducting our experiments."
"It must have been humorous when your co-host came to shake your hand. When she arrived, you said, 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume'," the perpetual cheer over-inflected her question. She was, undoubtedly, one of those employees of the space consortium without an uttered promise for even a chance of a spaceshot; for her, NASA was not a path to the stars but a road to a paycheck. So she over-inflected in an attempt to hold the interest of the schoolchildren, present and future, who would sit through this thinly-veiled attempt at education.
"You needn't make unnecessary presumptions," James said tonelessly, "You can just ask if you want to know the answer."
"I mean, I meant," the voice was flustered at this refusal of banter, "did you actually say, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" when you met her?"
"No, why would I do that?"
"Well, cause you're Stanley, and she's Livingstone, and there was this case where, well, umm, Stanley rescued Livingstone, and that's what he said when they met."
"Well, space is not only a new frontier, but a different one. It seems like if I hold on to the cliches of old ones, I may be doing a disservice to both."
"Yes," the voice paused, no doubt trying to interpret frantic hand gestures from her producer, "well, thank you for being with us, Doctor and Captain. For Houston and Mission, I'm--"
"Besides," James interjected quickly enough that any perceived rudeness could be blamed on the several seconds the audio would take in its roundtrip between orbiter and orbited, "with all the supplies Atlantis just brought us, it seems in this case Livingstone is the rescuer."

"You didn't have to be so mean to her," Martha said as soon as the red light went out.
"I wasn't mean. I was explicating," Capt. Stanley said, "wasn't it supposed to be an educational show?"
"You two bicker like a married couple," Chris said, jumping in as he coiled the cord around the now-dormant camcorder.
"She was just trying to be amusing, and admittedly failing, like all DJ's and hosts do. It's just her job."
"Well, if her job description includes incompetence, I guess maybe I was a bit hard on her," Stanley said. He turned back the the rows and panels of buttons, switches and displays that commanded their home-above-our-home.
"I take it back," Chris said, "you argue more like a divorced couple."

As they spoke, they were gliding over the land beneath them, 5 miles every second. Tanks of oxygen and hydrogen stirred, cooled to scant degrees away from theoretical stasis, waiting to form water and generate electricity. Already-formed water waited to be converted by the sun's rays back into oxygen the astronauts could breath. Electrical signals pulsed from component to component over wire, fiber, and spacial ether to control the most imaginative beachhead humanity had realized. Chemicals with names unspellable were burning at a slow rate, waiting to be called upon to propel organisms of simple hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen where their vision will guide them and their ingenuity carry. Inches separated these men and women from the abhorrent vacuum surrounding their tenuous habitat that perpetually fell but, in a Newtonian twist, never landed. All in all, it was a normal day for the international space station Freedom and the space shuttle Atlantis. At least, if anything went wrong, they had each other, which is more than most people can say.