Look, Up In The Sky ...

I'm looking up. Well, we're all looking up, waiting for what must be a most remarkable sight. The International Space Station is supposed to fly over our beach tonight, low enough and close enough for us to see. With our bare eyes.

Six of us stand at the end of the raised walkway within five feet of high tide on Malaquite Beach in southeastern Texas. We can hear the waves crashing against the sand and feel the breeze. We jabber away, about, well, just casual stuff.

We chat as we scan the sky, looking for something moving.

We're standing in the dark at the edge of the ocean looking up for something we've never seen so we don't know what to look for. Except something moving. We stand, chat, crane, watch.

Oh, look. Hurry, look! See it? There's a pinpoint of light breaking though the night sky, down to our south, making a beeline toward, well, up. It's arcing, like a tennis ball lobbed over the net, only it never breaks into descent. It just keeps going up.

Oh, look again! The point of light is now an orb, and it's getting bigger. Much bigger. Man! Look how fast it's going!

It's now arcing overhead and it's huge! It's transmorphed into that little triangular shooter in the original Asteroids video game. Well, it's now arcing higher and away from us and is getting smaller. It's an orb now. No, no. It's a pinpoint again and now, zip, it's gone. Just, well, gone.

Like it was sucked into a black hole.

We're still standing on the walkway at the ocean's edge and we're looking up. There's nothing up there to see anymore. But there's no idle talk, no chitchat, no jabber.

Just ahhs and ohhs and wows.