The barrage outside abated swiftly. Kirk recalled that the rings, although almost three hundred thousand kilometers across, were often less than a kilometer thick. They would have passed through the rings in no time. They were safe for the moment.
Until their polar orbit carried them through the rings again.
Biting his lip, he hastily finished his modifications to the tablet. Unable to replace the casing he had pried off before, he had to leave its inner workings exposed. He hoped the ship’s sterile atmosphere would not contaminate its circuits too quickly.
“Done,” he pronounced. “I think.”
“Glad to hear it,” Zoe said, climbing into a water-filled cooling garment. “Now, you want to tell me what you have in mind?”
He approached the locked inner hatch. “I believe the colloquial term is ‘hocking.’”
“You mean ‘hacking’?”
“Right,” he confirmed, suitably corrected. “That.”
He pointed the tablet at the sealed doorway. In theory, he should be able to “hack” into the ship’s computerized locking system. The elementary programming had been child’s play compared with, say, rewriting the parameters of the Kobayashi Maru simulation back at the Academy. Twenty-first-century firewalls were still a long way from foolproof.
“Wish me luck,” he said. “Open sesame.”
He keyed the override command.
Nothing happened. The hatchway remained sealed.
“Damn,” he muttered. He tried another command, with equally disappointing results. The hatch refused to budge. The indicator light above the exit flashed neither red nor green.
“What’s the matter?” Zoe asked. “Why isn’t it working?”
“That collision,” he realized, “back in the rings. The impact must have damaged the mechanism. I can’t get it to respond.”
“So, we’re stuck in here after all? While the doc is playing kamikaze with the ship?”
“Maybe not.” He turned away from the inner hatch toward the one leading to the open cargo bay outside. “There’s still another way out.”
She looked where he was looking. Her jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“Wouldn’t be a real NASA mission without a proper spacewalk,” he said, “and I’m not sure we have any workable alternatives.”
She stared at the outer hatch and gulped. “Beats sitting around waiting to crash into Saturn, I guess.”
“My point exactly.” He began removing the second spacesuit from its niche. “Help me get into this suit.”
Under ordinary circumstances, donning the suits would take at least fifteen minutes. Adrenaline and necessity sped them through the elaborate process in ten. They rushed through the various checks and tests, cutting corners wherever possible. By the time they had put each other’s helmet on and pressurized the bulky suits, there was barely enough room in the airlock for both of them. They tested their radio receivers.
“What’s the plan?” Zoe asked. “Where are we going in these unflattering get-ups? Once we’re out of this space-age dungeon, that is.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.”
“Hell, no!” she protested. “You can’t just leave me here!”
“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted. “I’ve had spacewalk training. You haven’t. And trust me, it’s not like taking a stroll back on Earth. You’re not equipped for this. I’m sorry.”
She glanced down at the cumbersome suit, which was at least one size too big for her. Her head barely poked out of the metal ring at the top of the rigid torso assembly. The gold-tinted visor covered her face like a veil.
“Then why am I dressed like Barbarella before her striptease?”
“To survive when I depressurize the airlock,” he explained. Even staying where she was, she was going to be exposed to the vacuum for a time. The life-support system on her back held at least eight hours of oxygen, which ought to be more than enough. “Don’t worry. One way or another, this will be over before you run out of air.”
“Got it,” she said. “But what am I supposed to do while you’re out traipsing through space?”
“Keep O’Herlihy distracted as long as possible.” The scientist was bound to notice when the airlock was activated, if he wasn’t too busy collecting data while simultaneously piloting the ship to its doom. He might even come to investigate. “You think you can do that?”
“You’re kidding, right? I was born to distract people.”
Kirk could believe it.
Almost ready to depart, he had a few last tasks to handle first. A command via the tablet started the depressurization mechanism, which, to his relief, was more functional than the inner hatchway. As the air was rapidly pumped from the chamber, he took a metal hammer and shattered the lens of the closed-circuit camera beneath Zoe’s discarded top.
There, he thought. If Marcus wants to find out what’s happened here, he’s going to have to check it out in person.
That should give Kirk time to get where he needed to go.
As a final precaution, he tethered Zoe to the locked inner hatch to keep her from drifting out into the cargo bay with him. “Hold on to the door,” he urged her, “and don’t let go.”
“Not going anywhere,” she promised. “Don’t be too long, though. Okay?”
“You won’t even know I’m gone.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m missing you already.”
The green light over the outer hatch gave him the go-ahead. He secured the tablet to one of the clips on his suit, then tried to activate the second hatch. Despite the oxygen feeding into his helmet, he held his breath to see if the airlock would respond.
The metal slid out of the way, exposing the cavernous cargo bay beyond.
That’s more like it, he thought. Spock would be proud.
He turned to wave farewell to Zoe. She blew him a kiss through her visor, then held on to the other hatch with both hands. They had agreed to maintain radio silence from now on, just in case O’Herlihy tried to listen in.
“See you soon,” he whispered.
He floated out into the cargo bay, holding on to the handrails to control his progress. He had left the short-circuited jetpack behind. In all the tumult, they had never gotten around to repairing it; besides, its miniature jets could never have kept pace with the ship unless the pilot was deliberately trying to rendezvous with him. He was going to have to climb, not fly, to his destination.
The spacious bay reminded him of his first, disorienting introduction to the Lewis & Clark, right after he’d unexpectedly found himself in this century. It was hard to believe that less than five days had passed since then; he felt as if he had already spent weeks in Shaun Christopher’s skin.
Here’s hoping I don’t end up dying in his place.
A ladder led out of the bay onto the hull. He climbed the ladder using carabiners of the sort used by mountain climbers to ascend rocky cliff faces. Kirk had always enjoyed climbing back on Earth; one of his long-term goals was to climb the towering peaks of Yosemite someday. Who knew? Maybe he would have time to accomplish that in this era, if any of them made it back to Earth.
Clambering onto the top of the ship, he paused to take his bearings. The Lewis & Clark was indeed cruising in a polar orbit, perpendicular to the rings. Its delicate solar panels had been retracted, no doubt to keep them from being shredded by the orbiting ring matter. Staring down the length of the ship, he spied the glittering tops of the rings spreading out from the equator, thousands of kilometers below. It was like gazing at the surface of a luminous river made of sparkling boulders and flakes of ice. The inner B Ring shone brighter than the planet itself, even as the rings appeared to be rushing up to meet the ship. Could he reach his destination before they passed through the rings again? Kirk wasn’t sure.