“Those are stored below aren’t they?” Chas asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been with Ford when she was prepping them but my guess is they are somewhere in the storage area. At least that’s dry down there. Why don’t you wake Boris up. I’ll go down and see if I can find them.”
Kate found the meds in Ford’s storage area with no problem and brought up a case of syringes to the galley. By the time she got back up there, Boris was making coffee.
“I found the meds. Who wants to play doctor?”
Boris looked at her. “Not primary problem. We have at least 12 hours before we need to take next dose and we have to find way to re-pressurize control room so we can blow the anchors.”
“How can we do that?” Chas asked. “The place is flooded with sea water and the electronics in there will have been fried by now. Seawater and electronics are not good bedfellows as any sailor can tell you. And in any case I don’t see how we re-pressurize the ops center. Any gas we try to pump in there is going to escape through whatever hole it escaped from in the first place. We went over all of this hours ago.”
Kate was worried about Chas. He was clearly trying to hide his feelings but it was clear to her that he was scared. Hell, she was scared too. And she couldn’t image that Boris wasn’t too, it was just difficult to read him.
Boris poured himself a mug of coffee. “Electronics will be OK. Entire control system is filled with gel. This was lesson learned from American Apollo 13 mission. When you have people breathing and cold surfaces, water condenses on the surfaces and can invade the electronics. Hab is designed to prevent that. Bigger problem is going to be getting gas back into ops cylinder.”
“Can we use the scuba gear?” Kate asked.
“That’s in the moon pool.” Chas answered. “And it’s probably flooded too. My guess is that the moon pool and ops are totally flooded. Since we have power, I guess the reactor and gas room is OK.”
Boris nodded. “I am in agreement with Chas. I think both tunnels were ruptured and lower two thirds of ops cylinder is flooded. This must be case or we would have heard sounds from survivors by now.”
That made Kate think of the bodies. Even if they could get into ops, most of the crew would still be in there. The idea of seeing them floating there made her feel sick.
Boris continued. “Kate has good idea. I use scuba gear to inspect ops cylinder. Only problem is how to get into moon pool without flooding this cylinder.”
“What if we move what we need in storage to up here and then open the lower hatch? The water won’t come up here right? We are all at sea pressure.” Chas asked.
Kate looked down the ladder into the storage room. She had just been down there and there was a lot of stuff in that room. “I guess we don’t need much food for the ride to the surface. Enough for five to ten days — we’ll need to figure that out of course. But Boris, how will you get a dive suit? They are all in the moon pool.”
“When storage room is flooded, I will swim in there and get suit. Then I come back, get warm and suit up.”
Chas looked at him. “Well, that sounds easy.” he said sarcastically. “But how will you get the tunnel hatch open?”
“Not problem. Same pressure both sides. So long as hatch is not damaged it will open easily. “
For the next ten minutes they talked about the plan. It seemed very dangerous to Kate because Boris would have to swim through very cold water to get a suit, and he’d have to hold his breath at least until he found a tank with gas in it. And even then it wasn’t likely he’d find a tank with a regulator attached. He was going to have to haul the tank, regulator, suit, fins and mask back up through the storage room into the galley. It just didn’t seem possible.
“I will make two trips.” Boris said simply. “On first trip I must find a mask, then…”
Kate cut him off. “No need” I saw masks in the storage area below. Perhaps there are fins and a suit too?”
All three of them descended the ladder into the storage room. Kate eyed the tunnel hatch warily. There was a lot of very cold ocean on the other side. She looked through the small portal in the door and could clearly see the hatch at the far end of the tunnel. It was only a few feet away and it was closed. She could clearly see where the tunnel had separated from the hab. Lousy welding she thought.
“The hatch to the moon pool is closed,” she said.
“Yes, that is to be expected,” Boris replied.
Chas found a storage bin with two masks, a wet suit hood, and several pairs of fins. “Do you want the fins?” he asked Boris.
“No. I take only mask and wear hood. Better than nothing.”
Over the next half an hour, the three remaining crew of the Pheia moved everything they thought they might need to get to the surface into the galley above the storage room. When they were finished, the galley was quite crowded with a collection of cardboard boxes, plastic storage tubs and cans of food.
“God I hope this is all we need” Kate said. “I guess the cans will survive the water if we need to get more.”
Boris had stripped down to just his pants. He put on the wetsuit hood. Kate couldn’t suppress a giggle. “You look great.” she said smiling.
Chas wasn’t so sure. “You are going to freeze. Don’t you at least want your shirt?”
“No. Better to come back to dry shirt”.
Boris put on the face mask and descended the ladder. Kate and Chas watched from above. Even though they both knew the Pheia was at the same pressure as the sea, it was still unnerving to think that Boris was about to open a door to the sea.
Boris stood in front of the hatch. He looked back up the ladder. “I go now”
He slowly spun the wheel on the hatch. Even with similar pressures on both sides there was still a wall of water over six feet higher than his floor on the other side. He tried to open the hatch slowly but the pressure of water forced it fully open and the wave of water entering the room pushed Boris over and washed him to the far side. Luckily, he had been holding his breath. The water was very cold and he had to fight the urge to go back up for more air. The level of water equalized about a foot below the ceiling level.
Boris swam through the open hatch and along the short tunnel to the far cylinder. He grabbed the hatch wheel and spun it easily then pushed the hatch away from him into the moon pool room. He was running out of breath and contemplated going back but he saw a tank and a regulator still hung on its hook above the tank. He swam into the moon pool room and reached for the tank. As he stretched his arm out he caught sight of something to his right and turned to see the corpse of Duncan floating in the water. He fought hard not to panic. He had expected to see the bodies but the reality was much worse than he expected. It was pale but otherwise looked just like Duncan had looked the last time Boris had seen him. He grasped the tank by its valve and pulled it up out of the rack grateful for the buoyancy that gave the tank almost zero weight. With his other hand he grabbed the regulator and turned around to start his way back to the storage room. He thought about turning the tank on but decided it would take longer than the swim back.
A few seconds later he was gasping for breath as he pushed his head up into the air space by the ladder. “Help,” he said and Chas reached down for him.
“Take tank first,” Boris said to Chas and pushed the tank and regulator up to the surface.
Chas pulled them both into the galley and then quickly grabbed Boris who was shivering badly and pulled him up.