A third time I wrenched at the wheel, and still it would not give. My hands ached, and this time the little spots simply would not go away. I had one last chance, I decided, one last good effort in me, and then that would be that.
Without thinking I slid my hand into my toolbox, hoping for inspiration. Inside, I felt the pair of locking pliers and something long, hard and heavy. Whatever it was, I decided, it would make a great hammer! I pulled it out and, working by feel now with my lenses fully fogged up, beat a few times on the wheel’s spokes.
Nothing.
Damnit, this was getting serious! I couldn’t see at all now, and I was running out of options! Angrily I reached into the toolbox one last time and retrieved the pliers, then clamped its jaws onto the wheel, offering me a place to hammer where I could get a clear swing. Then I reached back and swung with all of my might, slamming my improvised hammer with considerable force onto the innocent, inoffensive pliers.
And the wheel spun a little; I could feel it give!
Panting hard now, I swung my hammer again and again, missing sometimes but often driving the wheel around just a little more. After several such impacts, the wheel finally spun free. I dropped my tool and gripped the wheel firmly with both hands, moving the heavy gears faster than they’d ever intended to be driven. Finally the wheel quit resisting altogether, and, hooking my toes under the docking hatch itself, I pushed just as hard as I could against the twisted remains of the Henhouse and ejected them slowly off into space. Aphrodite was free, free, free! And I could now enter my pod, where, if there was any justice in the universe, there would be real air for me to breathe instead of the used-up vacuumy stuff that I was now existing on.
There was one last wheel to turn before the airlock door opened, and I had to find my hammer one last time and beat on it as well before it freed itself up enough to let me in. I dragged myself inside with the very last of my strength, and hit the cycle button after not too terribly much fumbling around. Then I heard the air rushing in, and knew that I would live after all.
Something was very wrong, however. The air was rushing in, yes. But I still could not breathe! Good Lord, what could be wrong now?
It was the suit, I realized in my darkening mind, the suit! I was still trapped in my little bubble of bad air, even though I was now surrounded by sweet, sweet oxygen. And the lenses were still fogged over too; I could not see a thing! Here I was, surrounded by good air and fully-functional equipment, and I was still about to die!
Blindly I fumbled around for my tool kit; there had been a utility knife in there, I knew that there had been! But where? I’d lost it, and now I was going to die for it! Finally my groping hands encountered the hammer that I’d used to batter my way inside, and without really thinking-I was long past that-I used it to smash open the lenses over my eyes. Wondrous clean air flowed over my face, and for a long, long time I simply floated in the airlock and breathed, breathed, breathed. The hammer had saved my life three times, I thought to myself as I rested and recovered for a little while, three times in perhaps three minutes. I’d keep it forever, I swore, and hang it up in my cockpit as a lucky charm that would protect me from harm forevermore. It might not be logical, but whenever it was with me, I knew, I’d somehow feel safe.
Finally the nausea faded from my stomach, and I began to feel a little better. My eyes opened, and I was able to see clearly. There were no dark spots, and no foggy lenses to block my view of the world. Aphrodite seemed to be in perfectly ordinary condition; her blowers were humming smoothly and the “inner lock door open” was the only red light in sight. I’d forgotten what it was like, not to be confronted by seas of blinking red lights, or so it seemed.
Then my fingers sought out the hammer that I’d used to save myself, so I could put it away in a safe place before rescuing the others aboard the Henhouse and then adding Aphrodite’s considerable capacity to the efforts at Lagrange. My digits encountered its reassuring smoothness almost immediately and, still a bit dopey, I raised it up to my eyes to gaze upon it for the very first time.
My hammer, the lucky tool that had saved my life, was a dildo. The most obscenely swollen chrome-plated dildo that I’d ever encountered in my life, in fact, complete with a now-ruined heavy-duty vibrator motor.
IX
EIGHT MONTHS LATER…
“…some people may call it a miracle,” Commodore Tottson’s deep voice was saying, “but we spacemen know better. Saving Lagrange Station didn’t take a miracle; it just took the coordinated work of dozens of skilled and courageous spacers, all working together towards a common goal with ingenuity and inspiration.”
I nodded silently from my seat. Not just one Sector had remained habitable at the height of the Emergency, despite the gloomiest of projections, but two. The evacuation had been called off during my first refugee run, just after I’d dropped off the Henhouse contingent at an emergency shack. Keeping two sectors habitable after such a catastrophe had not only been an incredible feat of improvisation, but had also saved thousands of lives. The death toll had proven to be unexpectedly low, though hundreds instead of thousands dead was still bad enough.
“Their efforts,” Commodore Tottson continued, “were most laudable, and should be remembered with respect forever. However, there is one story of improvisation, leadership, and courage that outshines them all.”
Suddenly I felt hundreds of eyes and not a few video cameras focusing on me, and I blushed under my feathers. The missing ones had still not completely grown back in, and I was therefore a bit ragged looking. No one seemed to care, however.
“We’ve all heard the story of Marvin Mackleschmidt. We’ve heard of how he managed to restore critical systems utilizing the unlikeliest of materials, how he quelled a riot and then, most of all, how he crossed open space under conditions that make me shudder just to think about them. Not a single fatality occurred aboard the Henhouse during the Emergency, due more to Brother Mackleschmidt’s skill and professionalism than any other single factor. He not only saved the lives of the men and women entrusted to his professional care after they had been written off by far more experienced spacehands, but managed to actively aid in the rescue of others before all was said and done.
“At first, the Brotherhood of Command Navigators refused to accept Brother Marvin’s report, because it seemed so wildly unlikely. I was there, however, and my own life was one of those that Marvin saved. I took a personal interest in learning what had gone wrong, in detail. And, to my astonishment, I was able to determine that Marvin’s incredible report was factual in every detail. Subsequently, a formal Brotherhood inquiry was forced rather against their will to the same conclusion. Brother Mackleschmidt was not and is not a liar. Instead, he is a true hero.”
I shifted nervously in my seat. The Brotherhood’s first official reaction to my report had been to pull my license for blatant falsifications; only Tottson’s personal investigation had saved me. That, and the fact that I’d not taken the time to remove more than the head of my improvised pressure suit while piloting the refugees. People will tend to talk, when their rescue pilot is seen wearing a taped-over pink plastic sex suit with nipples proudly erect and clutching a chrome-plated dildo.
It had been very kind of Tottson to stand up for me, I knew, even if we Henhouse staffers had saved his life. The Commodore had experienced a very bad week after the incident, between blaming himself for bringing in the Blueberries and then ending up among the rioters instead of the good guys. It hadn’t been his fault, none of it! The whole thing had been a refining accident, that was all. Still, he’d blamed himself and had been unable to leave his stateroom for days.