“Yes.” I sounded surer than I felt… but the duct tape hadn’t failed us so far.
So we wrapped tape, round and round and round some more. We used the rest of my roll, making a thick, tight band from her knee to her ankle.
It should hold, I thought. It had to hold. We couldn’t bring her dead body to Travis after coming so close.
I’m not a praying man, but I prayed. Please, just ten minutes. Let it hold for ten minutes.
SINCE AQUINO SEEMED to be more or less stabilized, we moved Holly up to priority one. I crowded into the air lock with her and I pressed the button… and nothing happened.
[381] “Please don’t tell me it’s stopped working now!” I shouted.
“Calm down, Manny,” Kelly said over the suit radio. “It only works on manual now. Alicia is cranking it… there it goes.”
It seemed slower than it had when I entered the ship, a thousand years before, but it was turning.
We had worked it all out before we got into the lock. As soon as there was enough space, I squeezed through the door and snapped onto the lifeline attached to Red Thunder. No time for any rapture during this crossing. I pulled myself along, talking on the radio the whole way, alerting Dak and Travis that we would be in a hurry when Holly came over. I only started slowing myself when I was twenty feet from the ship. I soaked up my momentum with my legs, got turned around just in time to catch Holly as she came speeding along the line. I quickly unsnapped us from the crossing line and attached us to the line leading back to Red Thunder’s air lock. Hand over hand, with me in the lead, we made our way around the ship.
I got her in the lock and started it cycling. Elapsed time: five minutes flat. Okay, God, we didn’t need the whole ten minutes, so hang on to the surplus and let me use them for the rest of this stunt.
I looked back at the wreck and saw Alicia starting across, hauling Aquino at the end of a short rope. Trying to hurry slowly, I pulled myself back to the crossing rope and waited for her. You go back for the fox, row him across the river, bring back the goose…
When she was safely on her way to the lock I pulled myself across the gap once more. The lock was just finishing its rotation, bringing the taped-over window into view again. I didn’t like the looks of it, I thought it might be bulging. It stopped. Cliff would be letting it flood with stale Ares Seven air. It bulged even more. Nothing I could do about it, it would hold or it would not.
Then I thought about it some more. I pictured it…
“Kelly! You and Cliff get away from the door, it might-”
That’s when Cliff pulled the inner door open, and the patch gave way, the tape-wrapped circular window hitting me square in the faceplate. Some of the remaining adhesive glued the patch in front of my face for a second, until I yanked it away.
[382] It all lasted only a few seconds, with small objects being shot through the hole by the escaping air like weird grapeshot. I stayed off to the side until the eruption died down. I pulled myself around to look through the hole, but something was blocking it.
Somebody’s spacesuit backpack.
Cliff was breathing hard. “Manny, Kelly got sucked into the air lock. There’s a bunch of junk jammed in there with her. I’m clearing it away as fast as I can, one minute, I think. Two minutes, tops.”
I couldn’t see anything but the red fabric covering Kelly’s backpack. But then some snow began to drift out of the hole.
“Something hit me pretty hard in the side,” Kelly said. “I’m trying to get my hand around to it… there’s a clear fluid leaking, Manny. Not blood. Clear. I’m… I’m scared, Manny. I feel like I’m buried alive.”
There she was, inches away from me, and there was nothing I could do.
“We’ll have you out in just a minute, honey,” I said.
“I’m starting to feel… kind of cold. It’s suit coolant leaking, isn’t it, Manny?”
“It must be. Even if you lose it all, you can’t freeze that quick, babe. I’m going to set a new Olympic hauling record. I’ll have you back safe and sound in Big Red before you know it.” But was her voice fainter? And if it was, was it because she was speaking softer… or because the air was getting thin?
“I’ve got it cleared, Manny,” Cliff said. I could see Kelly’s backpack move away from the empty porthole. “I’ll squeeze in here, and you crank us around.”
“Me… crank what?”
“The manual lock turner,” Cliff said, a little impatiently.
“What… where is it?”
“To your left… are you oriented with your feet aft?”
“Yes.”
“To your left, two feet away, a red arrow should be pointing to the hatch cover for the manual control.”
“Got it.” I grabbed the hatch cover handle and pulled. And I pulled [383] myself right off the ship. In free fall nothing can be pulled, twisted, raised, or lowered unless you are tied to or braced against something that will give you leverage.
I planted my feet against the side of the ship, reached down, and pulled. And pulled, and again, and again.
“Hatch cover is jammed,” I said. “I’ll try it-”
“Never mind, no time. I’m out of the lock now. Cranking it around…”
The empty hatch window rotated away from me, and in about a minute the inner door appeared, and the instant it was open enough I reached in and grabbed one of the shoulder straps the Russians had put there for exactly that purpose, hauling a wayward, disabled, or dead cosmonaut without damaging the suit.
… You leave the goose, then row back and pick up the sack of grain.
A fine mist was coming from a small tear in the fabric of her suit, freezing almost instantly. Now I saw some blood mixed in with it.
“I’m cold,” Kelly whispered. “I’m real cold.”
How much air was she losing? In the time I had to get her across she would not freeze to death. But she could die very quickly with no air. I looked at the system lights on the forearm of her suit. Oxygen pressure was green, but for how long?
There was what seemed like several miles of rope between us and Red Thunder’s air lock. Actually, it was three ropes. Twenty feet along the wreck from the lock to the crossing line. The line was a hundred yards long. Then there was the line from Red Thunder’s cockpit to the air lock aft, about fifty feet. Too long.
Sometimes you can’t hurry slowly, you just have to act. I worked it all out in seconds, then I planted my feet against the hull by the lock and jumped.
At first I thought Kelly’s weight on my right arm had pulled me off course. My target was the titanium thrust ring Caleb had worked so hard on, so long ago. The last of the three ropes was tied to it. If I could snag the ring or the rope, I’d have saved two, maybe three minutes. If I’d aimed badly, I had killed Kelly. If we both soared off into space, Travis would come get us. I’d be alive, but Kelly would certainly be [384] dead. I had plenty of time to work that out as we flew between the two ships.
Though it was the fastest crossing I ever made, it felt like the longest. How fast were we going? Fifteen miles per hour? Thirty? Probably not. But there was a threshold speed, beyond which my hand would not be able to stay closed when I grabbed the ring.
If I was even close enough to grab it.
Then I saw I would be close enough. I reached out.
“Try to hook your elbow through the ring,” Travis said.
Elbow… I was going to be close enough. I held out my free arm and let the ring hit me, instantly curling my arm. It was almost pulled out of its socket as my body and then Kelly’s pulled at me, swinging around the ring.
My arm was forced straight out and I lost contact with the ring. I’ve missed. I’ve killed her.
Then I opened my eyes and saw I was floating motionless relative to Red Thunder. I shoved my feet against the thrust ring and swung us both into the air lock.