“Yikes, that really rang my bell,” Kelly said.
“What happened?”
“Had my helmet against the door when I whanged on it, like a dummy. Hitting again, three times.” A short pause. “Yes! Yes, I heard three taps! There’s somebody in there! But how are we… wait a minute, what’s this?”
“Tell us, Kelly, tell us!”
“The door is rotating. It’s half open… three-quarters open… stopped.”
“I can feel somebody pounding on the door,” Alicia said. “Put your hand on it. Feel it? Somebody’s in there for sure, Captain. And it looks like the door cycling switch works from their side.”
“Alicia, don’t go in, we don’t know if-”
“Sorry, Captain, I’ve got to go in.”
“Me, too,” Kelly said.
“We’re both inside the lock now.”
“Kelly, Alicia, I want you out of there in no more than five minutes, with a situation report. I doubt we’ll be able to hear you once you get inside. Five minutes! Got it? Or all three of us come looking for you.”
“Got it, Captain. The cycling button in here works. The lock is rotating…”
And then there was silence.
31
THE AIR LOCK on the Ares Seven was a barrel type, maximum capacity: two suited astronauts. There was an inner pressure door which you pulled closed behind you. Then the barrel rotated until the one doorway in it faced the outside. It had been designed for use on Mars, when people would be coming and going frequently.
There was a manual crank to turn it, too, which now jammed when it was almost fully opened. But it still could be cranked, in both directions. We didn’t know that at the time. We thought the lock was still working electrically.
So Alicia and Kelly went inside, and we waited. Five very slow minutes. Then we saw a light from the far side of the ship, which had rotated the lock door away from us.
“Good news first, Travis,” Alicia said. “Holly is alive, and she’s not hurt.”
Travis bit his lip and turned away from us for a moment.
“The guy we found was Dmitri Vasarov. There was an indication of trouble and three people got into suits to check out the engine. That’s when the explosion came. Holly doesn’t know Vasarov was crushed, and we didn’t tell her. She’s… well, she’s sort of in shock. She saw [374] Welles and Smith flying away from the ship after the explosion. Smith was alive. She was struggling… Welles… she’s sure he’s dead. He was almost cut in half.
“About, Smith, Captain. Should Kelly and me come back to the Big Red, and we go looking for her first? If Manny brought over a bottle of air these people in here would be good for another day or two, easy… if it doesn’t blow out.”
“Negative, Alicia,” Travis said. “She’s dead now. Her suit would have run out of air a long time ago.”
“God, that’s awful. What a horrible way to die.”
“Actually, Alicia, a few people have accidentally drifted away from a space station, thought they were dead, then got rescued. All of them said the same thing. After a short time of panic and fear, they achieved a feeling of peace. I wouldn’t know about that, but let’s hope that’s what happened to Smith.”
“Amen.”
“So what’s the situation in there? Four survivors?”
“Three. They have the body of Marston, the M.D. Why couldn’t she have survived? She could have handled this so much better than me.”
“Don’t think that way. So you’ve got injuries?”
“Just minor bruises and abrasions on Holly and Cliff Raddison. Cliff might have a fractured arm. Have to x-ray him to be sure.
“Things are a real mess in there. Captain Aquino smashed his head and got his leg caught somehow. He’s got a compound fracture of the left femur, real bad. He lost a lot of blood. Holly and Cliff stopped the bleeding. He’s delirious most of the time. I only stuck around long enough to give him a shot of morphine-and I’ve got to be sure to thank Salty for getting that for us. Then I came out here so you guys wouldn’t worry.”
“What do you need, Alicia?” Travis asked her.
“Okay. First, space suits. Three of them. I think we can use the empty suit we saw next to Vasarov’s body. But we’ll need two more.”
There was a short silence as the three of us in the ship worked it out. Like that old logic problem: You have a fox and a goose and a bag of grain to get across a river …
[375] “They can have mine,” Dak said bitterly. “All the use I’m getting out of it…”
“We’re short a suit,” Travis said.
“You’re forgetting, Travis. Manny can bring over Dak’s suit… and Jubal’s.”
“Jubal’s suit is aboard?”
“Kelly told me she stowed it in a locker. The problem is… can Jubal’s suit fit on Holly, or Cliff, or Aquino?”
“We’ll make it fit, by God,” Travis said. “Dak, go get it ready.”
“Captain, it’s cold in there,” Alicia said. “About ten below zero, and falling. Is there any way we can heat the place?”
“Is there any power available?”
“That went out completely not long before we arrived. Cliff and Holly have been sitting in there in the dark, wrapped up in what clothes they could salvage. They were conserving the one flashlight they found, using their little bit of power to run a heating element. They’re in danger of frostbite.”
“Just a minute, Alicia. Guys, any ideas?”
I didn’t have one. We’d backed up the heating system on Red Thunder, just like we’d backed up everything. I could have torn out a heater, but there was no power on the wreck to run it. A simple catalytic tent heater would do the job. We hadn’t brought one.
“A long extension cord?” Dak suggested.
“We don’t have anything that long,” I said.
“The only thing we can do is to hurry, then,” Travis said. “But we’ve got to hurry slowly, okay? I mean, think before you move. I’m not going to lose you, any of you, including the Ares survivors.”
“Roger. The wreck is leaking, and we don’t like the looks of that lock window.”
“So what do you need?”
“Jubal’s suit, and Dak’s. A big bottle of air. Flashlights, the more the better. Some whole blood, a couple pints. I can’t recall Aquino’s type, but it’s in my medical file. And patching material, lots of it.”
“Roger,” I said, and took off.
[376] SOMEHOW I WRESTLED all that stuff out of Red Thunder’s air lock, all tied together.
Along with everything else I’d brought enough yellow poly rope to outfit a Boy Scout Jamboree. I got everything tied to an eyebolt so it wouldn’t drift, and started casting. I figured it would take a few false starts before I got the hang of it. I was right. But on the fourth try, just as Kelly was coming out of the lock, I got the weighted end of the line dead center. Kelly only had to reach out and grab it. She tied it off, and I attached the bundle of junk to it. She pulled it across, hand over hand at first but then just letting it drift, because though it was weightless, it still had considerable mass, something you could never forget out there or you could get crushed.
When she had the stuff I pulled the rope back, tied it down, then pulled myself along it. First you take the goose across the river because the fox won’t eat the sack of grain…
It took me three minutes to cross, but in only one minute I experienced what Travis had talked about. At first I was scared. Dear Lord, it was empty out there! Just two little specks tied by a thin cord, and me in the middle. But very quickly I experienced something like rapture. Somehow, in all this vastness, my fear was so insignificant, so primitive and unworthy an emotion for this starry cathedral, that it just went away. So be it, I thought. Amen. This place is inimical to life, tries every second to snuff it out… and I didn’t mind. Oh, I wasn’t eager to die, but for the first time I could remember, I wasn’t afraid to die, either. I smiled, then I laughed.