The smell inside his suit told him that his body had not shared his courage.
Squirming around to pull himself upright, securing a new safety line to the rolling deck, untangling the many lines that held him to the tow line, and making his way forward to stand on the deck above Rams took only a few minutes. The captain was still hanging, just a few meters down the side. Pascal could see that he had the safety line wrapped around one arm, pinning it to his side.
“Captain?” he called when he thought he was within range of the other’s radio. “Can you hear me?” Only silence answered him. He could expect no help from Rams.
But how was he to get Rams’s unconscious body up on deck? It would be impossible to pull the man the short distance up the side with the safety line. At best, he couldn’t lift his own weight under two g’s. What chance did he have of pulling a larger man, and one enclosed in a heavy pressure suit, that far? It would be the equivalent of lifting 350 kilos on Earth! Even professional weightlifters had trouble with that kind of load. No, he couldn’t do that.
Neither did he think he could maneuver the tangled safety line sideways to the winch and use that to pull him up. A lateral pull would be the same as lifting Rams a half a meter or more, out of the question.
There was no choice; he’d have to climb down and attach the safety line he’d brought with him. Easy to say—sure, just drop down and hang over the depths once again. Nothing to it, he told himself. After all, hadn’t he come across the gap?
No, you can’t, his mind replied as the edges of his innermost fear crept back in. He tried not to listen to it as he rigged two lines to the deck; one to support him and one more for additional security. His empty stomach clenched in a knot of sour fear the whole time. He fervently wished that he didn’t have to do this, that there was some other way. Tears stung his eyes. The fear of falling was too great to bear. Why did it have to be him?
The line he’d tied to the Primrose’s winch was attached to his belt, ready to clamp onto Rams’s suit. Not incidentally, it provided another layer of security for himself.
Screwing up all of the resolve he could muster, he turned his back on Primrose and forced himself to take one small step backwards, out and down, paying a few centimeters of line out behind him. He froze. He could move no farther no matter how hard he forced his legs to move. His fear had taken control. He couldn’t put himself in danger.
Thorn suddenly started to roll to starboard and Pascal watched the level deck in front of him start to tilt away. He rapidly stepped backwards, trying to stay on the top of the rolling ship, letting out line as fast as he could.
Then, as Thorn heeled to a sixty degree list, Pascal found himself beside Rams. There was a solid deck directly beneath his feet. “Piece of cake,” he remarked and knelt to attach the safety line to Rams.
First, though, he had to disconnect the tangled line. The tension between that and the safety line to Primrose would break the captain’s arm if he didn’t. He freed the line and let the wind take it.
He disconnected the safety line from his suit to clip it to Rams’s when Thorn began to roll the other way. Rams’s body started to slide down the hull. Pascal extended the safety clamp but was stopped short by the limits of the other line. The ship continued to roll. The captain was sliding. In seconds he would plunge into the dark and fall.
Pascal fumbled to release his own line, trying to balance on the moving hull. His fingers didn’t want to operate the clamp. He felt himself starting to slide on the steepening slope. With a final, desperate twist of his hand, Pascal released the restricting line, lunged forward, and clipped the clamp onto Rams’s suit.
Both of them began to slide, faster and faster, down the increasingly steep side of the ship. In a panic Pascal threw both arms and one leg around Rams’s body, clinging to him in desperation, as the hull beneath him changed to a vertical wall.
Pascal screamed in pure terror as he felt them fall from the ship and down into the dark. He knew that the thin line he had put on Rams wouldn’t hold the weight of both of them. He screamed louder as their downward fall stopped and they swung to the top of their arc and began to fall the other way.
“I am going to die. I am going to die,” he repeated in an unending string of fear-crazed babble. He could feel Jupiter pulling at him, trying to pry his hands apart so he would fall, fall, fall. It was very dark and the manic strength of his arms were all that stood between him and certain death. He clenched his eyes tight and prayed as he had never prayed before.
There are moments in a man’s life when he faces the core of his being; a single defining moment when his true nature is revealed to him and all pretense, all bluff and bluster, are stripped away. This was Pascal’s moment. He knew that he would never be able to conquer the fear that rested in his innermost being. He knew that he was, at heart, a coward.
Something clanged on the back of Pascal’s suit as they slammed against something, hard! He felt them start to swing out, and then “CLANG!”—he hit again. He opened his eyes and saw a vast gray wall receding from him. In seconds, they reached the end of their arc and the wall advanced to smash against him once more. He threw his legs out to brace and absorbed the worst of the impact. Rams nearly twisted from his grasp as they hit.
It took him a second to realize that the “wall” was actually the side of Primrose. It took him another second to realize that it was moving steadily downward beneath his feet.
He risked a glance up and saw the taut line disappear around the curve of the ship. They were definitely being pulled up the side. He set his feet against the ship’s side and walked up the wall, clutching tightly to Rams and frightfully aware of the depths behind him, beneath him.
As soon he came over the edge of the deck he saw Louella standing by the winch. Finally, he was to the point where he could walk more or less upright. From Louella’s perspective it must look as if he were holding the unconscious form of Rams in his arms. He hoped that she wouldn’t realize that he was hanging on to the man for dear life. He hoped that she had not heard him screaming in the dark.
“Secure the ship,” Louella yelled as soon as the winch stopped. With shaking hands Pascal quickly clipped himself to a safety line. That done, he struggled forward to secure the heavy line to the forward docking winch. The slow progress forward and back gave him time to compose himself. Time for the acceptance of his true nature to sink in.
“Don’t worry. Everything’s under control,” were the first words that Rams heard when he finally recovered consciousness. The pain in his leg had stopped, as had all other sensation below his waist. “We’ve got both ships secured and we’re out of the storm.”
“My legs…” he began and then stopped. A woman stood over him like a welcoming angel. One of her arms was in a sling.
“Gave you a nice little spinal to hold off the pain from your broken leg,” the woman said with a chuckle. “But don’t worry, you’ll be functioning below the waist in a few days. At least I hope so.”
“I don’t understand. All I remember is getting hit from behind and…”
The woman smiled. It was a nice smile, he thought. “Pascal went after you and dragged your ass back here.” She grinned, “I think he’ll stop shaking by the time we make station.”
“But how, where, what…?” Rams mumbled in confusion, feeling himself start to slip back into unconsciousness. “I thought that he was too afraid.”