A haunted castle in the sky

THE cosmonauts from Mir who went walking in space on September 6th did not find what they were looking for: the hole made in the craft's Spektr module by its collision nearly three months ago with an unmanned supply vehicle. Yet the mood at mission control in Korolyov, just outside Moscow, was relaxed. There was laughter when Anatoly Solovyov, perched on the end of a manipulator arm like a bug on a blade of grass, took a break from poking around Spektr's surface to unfurl a banner wishing Moscow a happy 850th birthday. And when two television crews in the press gallery almost dropped their cameras into the pit below, Vladimir Solovyov, the (unrelated) flight director, merely gazed up at the commotion and remarked languidly, “Tell the Americans to sit down, before there's an international incident.”