EVO

This series contains adult language and depictions of graphic violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

It's official.

About five minutes before I sat down to record, the news broke that the crew of Artemis II during their orbit around the moon have officially journeyed farther from home than any human being in history.

Beating the record set by Apollo 13.

Congratulations to the brave men and women of the Artemis II mission and get home safe.

Now, on to this week's story.

Soviet cosmonaut Georgi Gretschko floats in the cramped confines of a salute six, conducting routine observations during his 96-day mission in 1977. The silence of space has become familiar over these months.

No wind, no birds, no distant traffic, just the mechanical whisper of air recycling systems

and the occasional creek of the station's structure.

It's during his fourth week aboard the station when Gretchenco first experiences what he will later describe to mission psychologists

as the feeling of being observed. Not by his crewmate, who's sleeping in the adjacent apartment,

but by something else, something that seems to position itself just outside his peripheral vision.

There was a presence, Gretchen's,

Gretchen, would later tell researchers.

Not threatening, not exactly friendly,

just there, watching, waiting.

When he turns to look, of course, nothing's there.

Just the familiar walls of the station,

the floating tools of his trade,

the endless black of space visible

...