Don’t let it mesmerize you, Pancho reminded herself, forcing her eyes off its gleaming bulk. You gotta look in all directions as once. She glanced its way again and it was noticeably smaller, falling away from her.
The collision monitor’s screen was blinking like the spasmodic eye of a lunatic. Pressure’s still holding, Pancho saw. We haven’t been punctured.
Wanamaker ducked into the cockpit, still in his nanosuit, his face white, eyes staring.
“You’re not suited up!”
“Take the controls,” Pancho said, grabbing the green cylinder of air from his gloved hands.
She swung weightlessly through the hatch with one hand, let the green bottle hang in midair as she frantically pulled a nanosuit from the storage locker and wormed her long legs into it.
The ship lurched and slammed her against the bulkhead.
“Sorry,” Wanamaker called from the cockpit.
Too busy to reply, Pancho pulled the suit on, attached the air bottle, and saw the hood inflate around her face. She breathed a sigh of canned air, then stepped back into the cockpit.
“Thanks, Jake,” she murmured as she took over the controls again.
“We’re almost out of it,” he said, pointing to the observation port. Pancho could see stars and even the crescent shape of a moon through the swarming ice particles. Must be Titan, she thought.
A sudden thump sent them both staggering. The cockpit hatch slammed shut and the life support monitor said with mechanical calm, “Pressure loss in cargo bay. Hull puncture in section six-a.”
Gripping the controls again, Pancho shouted, “Jake, you okay?”
“Okay,” Wanamaker answered shakily.
“Manny? Okay?”
“Yeah,” Gaeta’s voice came through the intercom. “Got banged around a little inside the suit.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Fine. All the water vapor’s siphoned out of the bay, though.”
“How big a hole we got there?”
A moment’s hesitation. “I can’t see any hole. Must be microscopic.”
“We got hit by something bigger’n microscopic,” Pancho said. “Maybe one of the sheepdog moonlets.”
Wanamaker said, “Whatever hit us must’ve expended most of its energy on the meteor shield and only blew a tiny hole through the hull.”
“Maybe,” Pancho conceded. She took a swift scan of the instruments. Pressure in the cargo bay down to nothing, but here in the cockpit we’re okay. Good thing I got into the suit, though. Collision rate’s dropping. We’re coming out of the ring. Good thing about the suit. If we’d’a been punctured here in the cockpit I’d be dead.
“We’re almost clear,” Wanamaker said, a smile breaking out on his weatherbeaten face.
Pancho reactivated the collision alarm’s chime. It was down to a lullaby.
“I think we made it,” she said to Wanamaker.
“I’ll go back to the bay and see how Manny’s getting along.”
“He’ll hafta stay inside the suit until we dock at the habitat. Cargo bay’s the only space big enough for him to climb outta the suit, and it’s open to vacuum now.”
“Right,” said Wanamaker, opening the hatch. The air pressure in the cockpit remained normal. Pancho realized the hatch of the cargo bay must also have closed automatically.
“Oh, Jake,” she called. “Check the freezer, make sure it isn’t damaged.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Wanamaker said, grinning and tossing her a crisp salute.
Pancho grinned at him. But her face contorted in surprised terror as she turned back and saw an ice chunk big as an apartment building dead ahead. She yanked the controls and it dropped from her view.
Wanamaker and Gaeta both yelled in a fervent blend of Spanglish and seaman’s cursing.
“Sorry about that,” Pancho called to them, realizing they had nearly run smack into one of the shepherding moonlets that orbited just along the edge of the ring.
“For what it’s worth,” she added, her grin returning, “we’re in the clear now.”
12 April 2096: Return
Kris Cardenas literally bumped into Wunderly as the two women ran down the passageway that opened onto the airlock area at the habitat’s endcap. Tavalera and Timoshenko were sprinting up ahead of them, almost at the airlock hatch. Timoshenko was pushing a small dolly.
“They’re okay, Kris,” Wunderly puffed. “I monitored their transmissions in my office. Manny’s okay.”
Cardenas nodded. “It was rough, though.”
“But they’re okay.” Wunderly smiled weakly as they slowed to a halt. “Nobody got hurt.” It was an apology, Cardenas understood.
But she was in no mood to accept an apology. “I hope your samples are what you wanted,” she said without even trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Rolling the dolly he’d been pushing up to the much bigger flatbed cart for the excursion suit, which they’d left at the airlock, Timoshenko plugged a comm set into the bulkhead socket next to the heavy steel hatch, then held one hand over the earplug. “Okay,” he said into the pin mike at his lips. “Confirm docking.”
Tavalera turned to the two women. “They’re docked,” he said, unsmiling.
Cardenas waited for what seemed like hours, watching the airlock hatch, waiting for it to swing open, waiting for Manny to return to her. She couldn’t help glancing at Wunderly; Nadia seemed just as eager, just as impatient. Her precious samples, Cardenas grumbled to herself. Manny and Pancho and Jake damn near got killed so she could get her ice flakes.
But beneath her seething emotions, Cardenas knew she could not stay angry at her friend. They got back all right, nobody got killed, all’s well that ends well, she told herself. I can’t be mad at you, Nadia, I understand you too well.
“Gaeta’s in the airlock,” Timoshenko announced, his hand still pressed against the comm plug in his ear. “He’s opening the inner hatch.”
Watching Wunderly’s expectant face, eyes wide, lips apart in anticipation, the last remnants of Cardenas’s anger melted. She slid an arm around Wunderly’s shoulders and said softly, “I really hope they’ve brought the proof you need, Nadia.”
Wunderly’s eyes misted over. “Thanks, Kris. Thanks for everything. I know you didn’t want Manny to go. I know you—”
The inner hatch clicked and swung slowly outward like the massive door of a bank vault. Gaeta clumped over the sill in the bulky excursion suit. Tavalera and Timoshenko immediately went to his sides, instinctively offering to help him.
“I can walk by myself,” Gaeta’s voice boomed from the suit’s speakers.
Cardenas thought he sounded tired, spent.
While the airlock door swung shut again, Tavalera went behind Gaeta’s suit and began unsealing its hatch. Cardenas went back with him.
“The samples?” Wunderly asked, her voice pitched high.
“In the cryo unit,” Gaeta said. “Pancho and Jake are bringin’ it out.”
As if on cue, the airlock hatch swung open again; Pancho and Wanamaker stepped carefully through, carrying the freezer unit like a miniature coffin. Cardenas paid no attention to them. She went around to the back of the big suit and watched as Manny ducked through the hatch and, a little wobbly, set his softbooted feet on the deck.
“You’re bleeding!” Cardenas blurted.
“I am?”
“Your nose.” She rushed to him, put her arms around him. “Are you all right?”
“I am now.” He smiled and touched his nose gingerly with a fingertip. It came away bloody. “Must’ve bumped it. It was a little rough for a while.”