‘Is it true what they say?’ Eliot asked, grabbing his helmet.
‘What do they say?’ Astrid asked.
‘That space smells like gunpowder?’
‘You’ll find out for yourself soon,’ Igor said, lacing up a boot. ‘When we come back.’
‘I’ve heard it leaves a smell on the suits,’ Eliot said, looking down. ‘A smell on our spacesuits and gloves. Like burning. Smoky. Sweet.’
Astrid pulled her visor down and said, ‘I’ve heard it’s because of all the combustion going on in the stars.’
Fifteen minutes later they were finally ready to leave, and headed down to the lower deck.
The darkness was unnerving. Astrid had only the lights of her helmet to penetrate the blackness. What lightbulbs there had been had broken, or blown.
A little further along the corridor she spotted the shattered porthole window she had tried to repair the previous day. She shuddered. In the hull of the ship was a scorched hole where they’d been hit. It looked as if a missile had blasted through the metal, a black starburst of soot radiating away from the hole.
‘Heading to the first quadrant.’ Commander Bovarin’s voice crackled through her headset. Astrid followed him. Although she was breathing the clean oxygen in her suit, she could almost imagine the smell of the corridor, of charred plastic and electricity, and as she passed, she was careful to avoid the glinting fingers of exposed wires, the sliced ventilation tubes that Juno and Eliot had tossed aside to close the door to the bridge.
Commander Bovarin was heading around the corner towards the service modules. She and Eliot trudged after him, heavy in their suits.
The service modules were in uninhabited parts of the ship. Beneath the crew module, on the lowest deck, sandwiched between the equipment rooms and the escape shuttle. The service module was the compartment that contained the fuel cells and batteries that provided power to the spacecraft, as well as essential computer systems like guidance and thermal control. Igor pulled open the aft fuselage access door to reach it and when Astrid peered inside, her heart sank. The entire module was a tangle of melted copper wiring. She felt a sickening swoop in her stomach. The service module was their lifeline. Without it, they had no hope of powering the ship, and without power, there was no way to continue the mission.
The prospect of making it to Terra-Two was receding from them. Astrid’s eyes began to sting.
As Igor pulled through the wreckage, she heard his groan of despair over the headset. But his words came to her as if from a vast distance. ‘We’ve lost three essential buses, ESS1BC, ESS2CA and ESS3AB… . And a power surge in the fuel cells means two of them are unserviceable… The LiOH is…’
In the end, they settled for doing the only thing that they could do and patched up the holes in the wall, so that the crew would be able to access the lower deck without having to climb into spacesuits. Then they returned to the middle deck in silent misery, running through the motions of shutting down the EMU systems and other components, changing out batteries and cartridges.
‘We don’t have much time left,’ Eliot said. The entire EVA had taken six hours.
‘Yes…’ said Igor quietly. ‘The service module is just too damaged to support this crew. We don’t have the spare parts we need, not on this ship.’
‘We can’t just give up,’ Astrid said.
‘No. We can’t just give up. But we have to face the fact that the mission has changed now. My job now is to get the crew home safely.’
‘You mean… abandon the mission?’
‘We still have one serviceable escape shuttle.’ Igor was taking apart his EMU as he spoke. ‘It’s enough to get six people back home.’
A chill ran through her. ‘Six people,’ she said softly. And behind both their words, the grim understanding that four people would have to stay behind. Astrid didn’t know what would be worse; suffocating in their crippled ship or heading back to Earth in the cramped shuttle, heavy with failure and regret. There would be no gravity on the shuttle, and with each passing day, during the months it would take to return, their bones would begin to turn to dust. Even as Astrid imagined it she knew it wouldn’t be her. She knew she would not abandon the Damocles or any hope of completing their mission.
‘We’ve fought a good battle,’ Igor said.
‘No,’ Eliot and Astrid said in unison.
She remembered what Poppy had told her, about watching Harry and Jesse steer the Congreve to safety. Astrid had tried to imagine the strength it had taken to keep flying even when the sky was on fire and death was at the end of any careless turn. She knew that her father would say that their God had not brought them this far to fail. Astrid had to believe that too. She had to believe that her destiny was not to die amongst the stars but to bring her crew to rest on the still shores of Terra-Two. She had to hold on to it, and even as she did an idea crystallized in her mind.
‘Is there no chance we can be rescued? Couldn’t a resupply rocket arrive with a new service module attached, or one with all the spare parts we need?’
Such things had happened on previous missions. Two years earlier a centrifugal module had broken on Orlando, and the crew had relied on a two-person resupply shuttle from Mars, whose technicians made the repair in two months.
‘Even if the communications come back online and we request rescue,’ Igor said, ‘our nearest port of call would have been Orlando, but obviously it’s no longer possible for them to fly here and repair the damage. The next closest manned human outpost is currently the Russian expedition on Phobos. Even if they agreed to send any technicians they could spare it would take around eight to fourteen weeks. And we’re looking at a matter of hours.’
‘Because of the oxygen supply,’ Astrid said, biting her lip.
‘What if we take apart the service module in the escape shuttle?’ Eliot suggested. ‘We could fix the lithium dioxide to our filters and scrub out the excess CO2. And then…’ he was breathless with excitement, ‘if we take apart the fuel cells and use them as an auxiliary power supply we would have enough power and oxygen to last us six months.’
‘Three months,’ Igor said. ‘There are enough consumables on the escape shuttle to last a crew of five for twenty-four weeks. With a crew twice the size it would last half that time, or possibly a lot less; if you consider the volume of this ship compared to the shuttle, the pressure of oxygen would be lower.’
‘Three months,’ Astrid said, hope filling her like wind in sails. ‘That’s still enough time for a service shuttle from Mars – I mean, Phobos – to reach us.’
‘Just enough… assuming the comms are fixed and that Roscocosmos have the resources to spare. And the inclination.’
‘Ig— Commander Bovarin,’ Astrid said, ‘it’s a chance, at least… it’s a chance.’
‘We’ve had our chance,’ Igor said. ‘I’m not gambling anymore with the lives of young people now in my care.’
‘But—’
‘Taking apart the one working escape vessel would be like burning a life raft.’
‘It would be like using a life raft,’ Astrid implored.
‘There is no guarantee. I would rather be sure you can get back to your family alive than gamble on a chance only for us all to die here.’
‘Or for us all to live,’ Astrid said. ‘For us all to live and make it to Terra-Two.’
‘Astrid.’ His voice was harsh. ‘You just saw the damage in the service module. It’s irreparable. Short of a full replacement there is no way we’re going anywhere anytime soon. Commander Sheppard is badly injured. Dr Golinsky seems to think that he might be dying, and so am I.’ He looked away from her for a moment as if he could see it, the space station like a bright satellite above the milky surface of Europa. ‘I know what it feels like to lose a whole crew. You think you’re safe, but things change like this—’ He snapped his fingers. ‘One moment they were talking to us, smiling at us, and then… at least I get some time.’