Chas put his scuba gear back on and descended the ladder to the moon pool room. He found the cutter easily. He looked at the connector at the end of the wire. It seemed simple enough, and with the pyro cutter assembly in one hand he floated down through the exit. As he dropped down he looked towards the bottom wondering if he’d see the bodies but it was too dark.
He walked his hands over the structure that held the weight stack to the hab and found his way up to the support arm. He took a second to admire the view of the hab and the wall. It had all started out so well. He had really enjoyed being able to work with Kate and had hoped to be able to develop a relationship with her. That all seemed very surreal now, as he floated in the silence beside the hab.
He unwound the short electrical cable and turned so he could see the pyro electrical connector at the base of the arm.
He pulled out the old pyro plug and pushed in the new one. It was the last thing he did. The pyro circuit was still armed. The pyro cutter blew immediately and the shock wave knocked Chas’s mask off and banged his head into the hab. He sucked in a mouthful of water. His larynxes spasmed as the cold water hit them and shut of his throat. He fought harder to breathe in. As he did so the gas bubble from the explosion pushed him up and he floated up past the hab portal. His last view was of Kate and Boris staring out at him, Kate’s hands pressed against the plastic of the portal window.
“No, no” Kate cried out. “Chas.” She banged the palms of her hands on the portal as his body floated up past them. “Oh no. Chas,” she sobbed.
Kate pressed her face to the portal and looked up but Chas’ body was already out of sight. She slid down to the floor and covered her face with her hands. “What happened? What happened to Chas?”
Boris had been wondering that too. The pyro circuits were designed to be very safe. They could only fire when both fire control buttons were pressed at the same time. “The circuit must have retained the charge from the first attempts to fire it. Enough to set of the cutter when it was plugged in.”
“What do we do now?”
Kate was feeling very small and very helpless. She had not been close to Chas but she liked him and had always enjoyed working with him. She knew he had a bit of a crush on her, which made it seem all the more sad.
Boris looked out the portal. “We must try again. There are more cutters in the locker. I will attach another one to the arm.”
“What if the same thing happens again?”
“I will place it at the far end of the arm. The cable should be long enough. When I plug it in, if it fires, I will be far enough away that it will not hurt me.”
“You’re kidding right? If that thing goes off while you are in the water, the pressure wave is going to kill you.”
“No. I think not. Device is designed to force the cutters together. Explosive is in ring around cutter and has shield around that. Only small force will enter the water.”
“How do you explain what happened to Chas?” Kate was sobbing again.
“Perhaps he was holding the cutter when it went off. We cannot know. In any case, there is no choice. I must go out and try again.”
Boris pulled his suit back up and Kate helped him get zipped up, and then helped him with his scuba gear. “Please be careful,” she said with tears running down her cheeks.
“Yes of course. First I add slightly more upward thrust to the drive motors to help pull us free when the charge goes off. I will use tether to hull so as not to be left behind.” He smiled at Kate. “I make joke.”
Kate was not really listening and missed his terrible attempt at humor. Things were going downhill fast. It seemed very unlikely to her that she was going to get out of this alive. It helped to know that she had few choices. Sit still, do nothing and die here eventually as the oxygen ran out, or try again and perhaps die in the effort. It seemed an easy choice. Death by activity was always preferable to death on the couch. She got up from the floor. “I’ll help you,” she said, wiping her eyes, but Boris was already at the ladder.
He dropped down into the moon pool and Kate saw the bubbles stop rising as he moved out under the hab’s weight stack.
She moved back to the portal and watched as Boris appeared a few minutes later with a pyro cutter in his hand.
He worked his way out along the arm to where it was buried in the wall. Kate watched as he strapped the cutter to the arm then made his way back to the hab. She had to press her face against the portal to see him working below.
He reappeared and moved back out along the arm. “What are you doing?” she said out loud.
She watched as Boris went back to the cutter assembly and pulled the straps on it tight again. She could see him try to shake the arm. But nothing happened.
Kate watched as Boris shook the arm again. “What the hell are you doing?” she thought.
Boris looked at the arm where it entered the wall. The coral looked like a pile of small rocks. The explosive harpoon on the end of the arm must have fractured it when the hab was anchored. He reached out and grabbed a piece of the broken coral near the front. It moved slightly when we wiggled it. He grasped the arm with one hand and tried to wiggle the coral with the other. A small cloud of dust formed in the water as the coral shifted slightly.
To his surprise, the chunk of coral came free and he let it fall. He watched as it slowly tumbled down the wall giving off a cloud of dust as it rolled away, down into the dark.
Encouraged, he reached in further and grasped another chunk.
In the hab, Kate watched what Boris was doing but couldn’t understand why he didn’t just come back in and fire the pyros. Perhaps he was worried it wouldn’t fire, but surely he didn’t expect to dig them out? She felt the hab move slightly. The upward thrust from the drives had shifted it slightly. Through the portal she could see Boris was still working on a rock above the arm.
Boris pushed and pulled on the chunk of coral above the arm. Pressure from the arm was holding it place, making it hard to move. He could see the top part of the arm’s harpoon assembly so the arm was not buried far into the rock. If he could get this piece out, perhaps they could just thrust the hab out from the wall and it would free itself. That seemed far safer than trying to fire the explosives in the cutter. After what happened to Chas, he wasn’t very keen on trying the cutter at all. It might work just fine, but it might not fire at all and then he’d have to come back out and do what he was doing now. He was much better off just trying to get the rock free.
He wished they still had the comms masks. When the moon pool room had flooded, the comm battery packs had been in the chargers and the connections were not waterproof. The salt water and electrolytic action had eaten the battery connectors away making them useless.
He wanted to ask Kate to cut the thrust so the hab would drop and take the pressure off the rock. He turned and looked at the hab. He could see Kate at the portal and briefly wondered if he could make signs she would understand, but even if she got the idea, he didn’t think she knew the controls, and thrusting the wrong way could make things much worse. He turned back to the wall and yanked on the rock again.
Kate had wondered what Boris wanted when he turned to face the hab. He hadn’t made hand signs to her but it looked like he wanted to talk. She looked again at what he was doing. It was hard to see because of the distance and because Boris was often in the way. But as Boris shifted to one side to try working the rock from a different angle, Kate saw briefly what he was doing. It was obvious that he was trying to pull out a rock above the arm and it was stuck fast.
“Oh, he needs me to drop the hab,” she said aloud and moved over to the attitude control panel.
Kate could see it was set for a very slow rate of ascent and that the motors were all working hard to try to achieve it. The visual display showed the programmed rate of ascent and the thrust settings and directions for all of the hab’s drive motors. On each side of the touch screen was a line of buttons and next to each one on the screen was a menu item. She tapped the button next to ‘V Rate’ and a dialog opened with the current ascent rate in it. She typed in a single zero and pressed the ‘Enter’ button. The dialog went away. The ascent rate now showed zero with a blue box around it. “OK. So what now?” She pushed the ‘Execute’ button and immediately heard a change in the whine of the motors and a shift in the hab’s attitude.