“Poor dear!” Barbara exclaimed. “Trixie, run and get a tissue!”
“We need to get his air hooked up as soon as we can,” Marilyn agreed. She turned to the Dragon. “Have you something in mind?”
She nodded coldly and produced a large black hood that appeared to be made of rubber. “He will wear this on top,” she declared, “and we shall seal it to his neck with liquid latex. This hood is cut very large, for a special slave that cannot wear ordinary headgear. We will glue the air fittings to the back, and fix lenses in the eyeholes. Then we shall strap the bottles to his back and tape him up tightly so that the suit cannot balloon out any more than can be avoided.” For the first time ever in my experience, she smiled prettily and dimpled. “It will work.”
The taping seemed to take forever, even though several of the girls were very accomplished at it. Poor Trixie fumbled a little at one point, and the Dragon snatched the roll of tape right out of her hands. “You blithering idiot!” she had snapped. “Haven’t you ever taped a man up into a sex suit before?” Other than that one incident, however, things had gone pretty smoothly. Jeanine had been prescient enough to tape up my feet triple-thick so as to minimize the chance of a leak, and the Dragon herself had taped my hands very carefully and with great attention to detail, so that they remained fairly flexible.
Meanwhile Patrice had produced what looked like a fairly workable space helmet. I watched her as she tested the fittings with a few drops of shampoo, and nodded vigorously at the results. One of the connections released a tiny string of bubbles, but the leak was on the exhaust side anyhow. It wouldn’t really matter; in fact, I’d worn several commercial suits whose plumbing leaked considerably more. Patrice had slathered on another layer of fixative anyway, and then reinforced the connections with yet more tape. Then she anchored the hose so that it wouldn’t flop around and work loose. When I finally tried the hood on, there was just enough slack to allow me to turn my head slightly.
“He won’t be able to move his head much anyway,” the Dragon observed with a rare nod of approval. “Not once we seal his neck.”
That was the worst job of all, as expected. As I began consuming my forty-five minute supply of canned air, the girls went wild with tape and latex, then employed a hair-dryer to set everything up. Once more Jeanine got out her shampoo bottle and tested for leaks. “I’ve got a few bubbles in the back,” Patrice observed. More tape and latex followed, and then the improvised suit passed its retest. The Dragon produced two mismatched flashlights from somewhere, and they were turned on and then taped to the top of my head, pointing roughly in the direction I was facing.
Marie had been made responsible for putting together an improvised EVA kit for me; there was supposed to be one just outside the airlock hatch, but after the blow we’d taken I could no longer count on its being there. Once I was certified airtight she placed a spare roll of tape in my toolbox, strapped it onto the tank harness that had been salvaged from the main suit, and chained everything into place with four or five pairs of handcuffs. Then she draped a coil of black silk rope over my shoulder, settling it in between my still-impressive false breasts. “I think he’s ready,” she declared.
“I think so too,” the Dragon agreed. “Any last-minute ideas?”
I looked around the Control Room, thinking rapidly. One tool that I was certain would come in handy outside was a gaff, a long pole-like gadget with a hook on one end. What could I use for a gaff? Finally my eyes settled on the Dragon’s whip. It would not be perfect for the job, I decided, but it might help some. Very slowly and carefully I reached out and removed it from her belt. For an instant her face hardened and I thought that she was going to slap my hand away, then she nodded and handed it over. “Very well,” she said resignedly. “I accept the need.”
Carefully I coiled the whip and shoved it under the handcuffs, where it would be available for immediate use. Then, there being no way for me to communicate effectively anyway, I stepped into the airlock, took a grip on the railing, and cycled it before my courage could fail me.
The suit stiffened up immediately as the friendly air around me bled away to the terrible nothingness of space, making little popping and stretching noises all the while. Normal suits didn’t make a sound when exposed to vacuum, and my heart did flip-flops at every tiny reminder of just exactly how utterly insane this little stunt truly was. I remained in the lock for about a full minute, I judged, waiting to see if my suit would explode the way that I expected it to at any second. It didn’t, however, and in time I grew confident enough to open the outer door.
The area outside the hatchway on my left was indeed an utter wreck, as expected. The EVA kits were missing, and a large area of hull was scorched and battered. Out in the middle of this scorched and battered area three luridly colored phalluses extended, marking the location of our earlier repair job. The shafts appeared more ludicrous than obscene from this side of the pressure hull, extending stiffly out into space as if terribly aroused by all the damage. Carefully I flexed all my joints, first very slightly and then as far as I dared. Again the suit held, much to my surprise, though my motions were more limited than I would have liked. This was especially true of my head.
Because the Henhouse was tumbling, the airlock’s exit was definitely “down”, though the acceleration was very slight. However, that direction was always “down” due to the station’s normal spin, and the handgrips had been set up accordingly. Using great care, I let my hands slide down the railing until I was at the bottom, and dangling with only my heavily taped feet between deep space and me.
It was at this point that I really began to sweat, literally as well as figuratively. Normally EVA’s are never done without another qualified spacer ready and standing by to help. Even more, they are never done without employing either some kind of jetpack or else extensive safety ropes utilizing specially designed clips and fittings. I had neither available to me; the EVA harness had been stored with the other gear in the now-missing locker, and the Henhouse had never generated enough EVA’s to justify the expense of a jetpack.
I hadn’t bothered to tell the ladies about this part, there being no need for them to worry about something they could do absolutely nothing about.
I did, however, have available to me a length of black silk rope and a whip; for a moment I stood out in the sunlight and considered how best to employ them. It would be easy enough, I judged, to tie myself to an anchor point, travel the length of the rope, tie it again, and then go back and release my first knot. It would be safe enough, as well, considering the circumstances. The process would take far too long, however, given how far I had to travel and how much air I probably had left. So, clicking my beak in concentration, I decided to break those last few remaining rules that I’d left intact, and freehand my way across the Henhouse without a safety line.
It wasn’t so hard at first. The phalluses provided my first handholds, and I swung past them easily and onto the Henhouse’s main endbrace. This was an I-beam that ran conveniently along my path towards the Solar Farm, and I used its bottom ledges as a highway for my hands.
By the time I reached the beam’s end, I knew that we’d failed to foresee a serious problem. My eye-lenses were fogging up! Underneath all of the rubber and tape, I was sweating profusely in my non-reflective suit. It was far worse than I’d imagined that it would be. The black hood I was wearing served as a virtual magnet for solar radiation. My whole head was beginning to ache with the heat, and I knew that I didn’t have long at all to improvise some kind of shade for myself.