by Temi Oh
JUNO
6 P.M.
TRAPPED IN THE DIMLY lit radiation shelter, Juno was terrified. In the wake of the loss of Orlando, their own mission seemed like such vain folly. ‘What are we doing here?’ she asked the darkness, her head spinning with fatigue. ‘How did I get here?’ The air was thin, and she could feel it in the tightness in her chest. Her voice roused Astrid from sleep.
‘What?’ her sister asked.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’ Juno knew that Astrid would guess that she was talking about Harry and Poppy, Jesse and Commander Sheppard, the crew on the Congreve. It was likely that they’d been hit by flying debris. Juno imagined a solar array slicing like an axe through their shuttle. Explosive decompression, everyone inside dying with their eyes open.
Juno and Astrid were lying together on a bunk. Igor, Cai and Fae were on the beds opposite, silent, too cold to sleep, although Fae’s face was buried in the crook of her elbow and Juno could see her chest rising and falling slowly.
‘I don’t know,’ Astrid admitted. ‘But they were far enough away to escape. And Commander Sheppard’s a good pilot. If anyone can get them home safe . . .’
‘And then what?’ Juno asked.
‘We lick our wounds,’ Cai said, ‘and keep going.’ He kept glancing at the door. Juno knew that he was thinking about his garden, about the shattered spires and uprooted plants, mentally tallying the weeks of work it would take to repair.
‘And we were hit,’ Eliot said, rubbing his hands together to try to warm them, huffing out air on his frozen fingers. ‘We’ll have to repair the ship before Saturn.’
‘It might take an EVA or two to fix,’ Igor said.
‘But the thing we do right now,’ Fae told her, ‘is wait.’
Juno nodded, grateful for the body of her sister that she could curl into.
Two hours later, the sensors alerted them: the Congreve was on approach.
9.30 P.M.
WHEN JESSE AND HARRY climbed out of the airlock and back on board the Damocles, Juno realized that they looked oddly similar. Side by side, she noticed for the first time that they were the same height. Their faces twisted with the same desperate fear. For a moment, overwhelmed by their miraculous homecoming, Juno leapt forward and threw her arms around Jesse. ‘You’re safe,’ she gasped. But Jesse pushed her away, shaking his head.
‘No,’ he said, and raised his hands up to the light. Juno saw that they were smeared in blood, a livid red, almost too bright to belong to a human. ‘It’s not mine,’ he said before Juno could ask.
Harry nodded to the open door of the airlock and said, ‘It’s his.’
They all fell silent when they leant over the threshold and saw the body of their commander slumped against one of the walls, barely recognizable, blood soaking his flight suit, eyes white and rolled back in his head.
It seemed absurd to consider now, but Juno had never seen Solomon Sheppard sleep before. Fae she’d caught a couple of times, stretched out on the gurney in the infirmary, pillow etching crease-lines into the side of her face. And even Cai, whom Jesse had once spotted napping at his desk. But not Commander Sheppard. His heart was like the beating heart of their ship. There was something reassuring about the quiet vigil he seemed to keep in the control room.
‘How long has he been like this?’ Fae asked, already unbuckling the collar of his flight suit to check his pulse and breathing. Juno leaned in; she thought she could hear irregular gasps coming from his throat.
‘Hours,’ said Poppy. ‘As long as it took for us to get back here.’
‘He was answering to his name for a while,’ Jesse told them. ‘But now . . .’
‘What am I doing?’ Fae asked Juno, who blinked in confusion. But, then, her training came back to her.
‘An A to E assessment?’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Airways, then breathing.’
Fae had already finished checking both. ‘His airways are at risk,’ she said. ‘I need you to help me get him to the infirmary.’
Harry and Jesse came to her aid, clearly glad to be told what to do. Harry linked his arms under their commander’s, supporting his head, and Jesse grabbed his legs. In that fashion, they followed Juno and Dr Golinsky down the corridor, pulled him up the ladder, along the bridge and into the little room.
‘What are we going to do?’ Harry asked, staring at the body of their commander on the gurney. Solomon Sheppard was a frightening sight, lips and fingers already purple, mouth hanging open.
‘I don’t know,’ Jesse said.
‘For the duration of this mission and for the foreseeable future, Igor is commander,’ Fae said. Then her voice took on an authoritarian edge. ‘But, in this room, I’m in charge, and it’s too small for any non-essential persons.’
‘Harry’s injured too,’ Poppy said. She was in shadow by the door. ‘His arm.’
‘It can wait,’ Harry said. Although, now Juno looked at him, she could see he was gritting his teeth against the pain. ‘I can come back.’
‘You, sit there,’ Fae ordered. ‘Jesse, Poppy, report to Commander Bovarin. Juno Juma, tell me, what is C?’
‘Circulation,’ Juno said, watching Jesse and Poppy disappear.
‘Good.’ Juno watched as Fae pushed a tube into their commander’s throat and connected him to a ventilator. Colour slowly began to return to his lips and nail-beds. ‘You know what to do. Heart, BP, capillary refill.’
Juno nodded. She pulled her stethoscope off the wall, placed the cold chest-piece to his sternum and listened to the hollow drum of their captain’s heart. She reported the number, then repeated the process for his blood pressure, oxygen saturation and capillary refill – which she tested by pressing a finger against his skin and counting the seconds it took for his skin to flush pink with blood again. It was difficult to tell in the cold.
During that time, Fae was examining his head wound. ‘It’s quite deep,’ she told Juno, reaching for the antiseptic wipes. ‘Might need stitches and a dose of flucloxacillin; they’re in the cabinet by the—’
‘Why is he not waking up?’ Harry asked.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Juno, what do we do next?’ Juno’s mind flailed for a moment. It was difficult to reconcile the sterile pages of her textbooks, the mnemonics she had memorized, with the scene before her. ‘Um . . .’
‘This is basic!’
‘Glasgow Coma Scale.’
‘Go on.’
Juno counted the categories off on her fingers. ‘Eyes, verbal . . . motion? I mean motor. Motor.’
Fae peeled open an eye, and Juno watched Solomon’s brown iris roll under her thumb. The kind gaze Juno was so used to had vanished completely, and when Fae waggled a light above him his pupils did not constrict. The doctor swore quietly in German.
‘Is that bad?’ Harry asked, acutely tuned to their panic. Juno knew that unresponsive pupils were a bad sign.
Fae squeezed one of Solomon’s fingers hard. His eyes didn’t open. ‘One,’ she said. The lowest score. ‘Commander Sheppard?’
The man did not move or make a sound.
‘One.’ Fae said. She rubbed hard on his sternum with her knuckles. Juno thought she saw his arm twitch, just slightly.
‘Some motor response to pain.’ Fae exhaled and then turned to Juno. ‘Can you attend to Harry?’ Juno knew that Fae was keen to get him out of the room, so she did as she was told and examined Harry’s arm.
He’d been hurt badly. Some accident on the shuttle, Juno imagined, a broken instrument or monitor screen, had left splinters of glass buried in his forearm. She took a pair of scissors and cut the arm off his flight suit. Harry paled at the sight of his own blood, swallowed and looked away. ‘This is going to hurt,’ Juno warned him. She’d have to remove the glass with tweezers. Give him a shot of antibiotics in case he developed a skin infection. He’d need a few stitches, too.
‘How did it happen?’ Juno asked, opening a cabinet to gather supplies.<
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‘Commander Sheppard?’ Harry’s eyes were still fixed on the man. ‘Our shuttle was hit. He must have seen it before I did. He banged his head against the dashboard, really hard.’
Attending to Harry took her what felt like a long time, and when she was finished Fae pushed a cannula under his skin, began the process of examining his blood. ‘What for?’ she asked Juno.
‘Blood gasses, we can do that now. Also FBC, U and E, CRP, glucose, lactate—’ Juno reeled off a page of her notes but then she paused. Solomon Sheppard had not woken up yet, even though his heart rate and blood pressure were stable.
‘What, now, are our main concerns?’ asked Fae.
That he’ll die, Juno thought, the ground listing under her. ‘Two concerns,’ she said, leaning back against the desk to steady herself. ‘He could be having a seizure.’ Her neuroscience module had taught her that seizures were not always limb-thrashing violent affairs. ‘But we’d need an EEG to tell. It’s more likely – considering the severity of the head injury – that he is bleeding into his brain.’
‘How can we tell?’ Fae asked her.
‘How can we?’ Juno snorted at the absurdity of the question. ‘We’d need to do a CT scan. But since this is a tiny room and not a hospital, there’s nothing more we can do. Nothing.’ Suddenly, the inadequacy of their medical resources was not a theoretical fact, but a physical horror. They’d reached the end of their capacity to help their captain. While on Earth he’d be rushed into a trauma unit, examined, taken for brain surgery, here on the ship all they could do was cross their fingers.
‘We could do a lumbar puncture,’ Fae said.
‘What’s that?’ Harry asked.
‘We put a needle into his spine and drain some of the fluid,’ Juno explained, but even as she did she remembered a warning their lecturer had hammered into their little class of second-year physiologists. ‘But if we do that, we could reduce the pressure in such a way that it forces his brain through the hole in the bottom of his skull and kills him.’ A sound of horror escaped Harry’s lips and it was gratifying to hear, because it was how Juno felt.
‘So . . .’ Fae crumpled onto her office chair, head dropping into her hands, ‘we have a dilemma.’
‘What will you do?’ Harry asked.
‘Juno’s a Christian.’ Fae didn’t look up. ‘She can pray.’
In the silence, Juno listened to the rumble of the machines. It was getting late now, close to 1 a.m. She was bone-tired and terrified. The ship’s main lights had still not switched on, and Juno’s head ached from straining under the dim glow of the single desk lamp.
‘I’m done,’ she said, stepping back from Harry’s arm. Fae glanced over. His arm was in a sling and blood crusted below his fingernails. He still wore the skullcap he’d been wearing when the shuttle launched, so he looked like a bald, wild-eyed alien, eyebrows and eyelashes invisible in the shadow.
‘Go to bed,’ Fae told them. Juno hesitated. ‘You don’t have to stay here all night,’ Fae said more gently. ‘I can take it from here.’
Juno tried to hide her relief.
‘Get a little sleep,’ Fae said. ‘I’ll need you tomorrow. You did a good job tonight. All the right things.’
Juno and Harry wandered dazedly into the darkness of the corridor. The only illumination came from the yellow glow of the caution lights.
‘It could have been us. Not Orlando.’ Harry stopped walking for a moment, leant against a wall.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Why wasn’t it?’ He looked at Juno as if he really believed that she might have an answer.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean . . . it just seems so random. So random and so fucking stupid. I can think of all the different ways it might have not happened. All the times to turn around. To tell them to check the fuel tank again. To. . .’ Harry slammed his fist against a wall, and Juno saw that his eyes were wet. ‘He saved my life, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘Commander Sheppard.’ Harry swallowed. There were bloody smears on the wall-panelling behind him. ‘It could have been me. It should have been.’
Juno was startled by this show of emotion. She reached out to put her hand on his arm, but he pushed her away, ‘Don’t touch me,’ he said, then jabbed a finger at the door of the infirmary. ‘You better do everything you can.’
‘I will.’
‘You better not let him die.’
‘I won’t,’ said Juno foolishly. ‘I promise.’
IGOR AND ELIOT SAT on the control deck while Astrid paced. Poppy was jabbing at buttons on the communications panel, tear stains making dirty tracks under her tired eyes. All over the room monitors were flashing with warnings and error messages. On the dashboard, instrument gauges were spinning. They barely noticed Juno as she entered.
‘Umm . . . hi.’ Her voice was soft.
Astrid spun around. ‘How is he doing?’
‘Badly,’ Juno said. ‘Fae did what she could but he’s probably bleeding into his brain. He’s stable now. Sort of. We might just have to wait and see if he wakes up. There’s not much we can do. It’s not like there’s a neurosurgeon on board.’
‘Neurosurgeon?’ Astrid’s voice was weak with horror.
Juno stepped further onto the flight deck. ‘So, the lights aren’t back on.’
‘No.’ Poppy shook her head. ‘We’re asking Ground for their recommendation but – as you know – past Europa, communication’s pretty patchy. Our telemetry systems constantly broadcast information about the Damocles back to mission control, so by now I’m sure they know something’s wrong with the ship. Though they might not know the extent of the damage.’
‘And what is it?’ Juno asked. ‘The extent.’
‘We’re looking at a real four-point failure,’ Igor said. ‘We were hardest hit in quadrant three. That whole area is depressurized, which means we’ve lost access to – amongst other things – the equipment bay. There was a collision in the service module as well.’ Fear ripped through Juno’s stomach. The service modules were the uninhabited modules that contained most of their life support equipment, the fuel cells and oxygen storage tanks, the main computer, the thermal control systems.
‘There’s been quite extensive damage to the greenhouse and the breathing equipment too.’ Juno thought about the shattered spires and the algae sloshing across the ground. Igor said it all slowly. ‘Until we find a way to fix the fuel cells, we’ll be relying on storage batteries.’
‘Which will last how long?’ Juno asked.
‘Two days,’ Astrid replied. ‘Two and a half maybe.’
‘Why can’t we just hurry up and fix the broken fuel cells?’ Juno asked.
‘That’s the plan. It’s not so simple, though,’ Astrid said. ‘There’s a hole in the hull. Both those quadrants have depressurized. To go in to fix it we’d have to do a full EVA.’ Juno tried to imagine Eliot and Igor outside the ship, struggling to fix the broken fuel cells with the clumsy gloves of their spacesuits.
‘Should Igor perform a spacewalk?’ Juno asked. She wanted to add in his condition, but the rest of the crew guessed her meaning.
‘We’d need another pair of hands,’ Igor agreed. ‘Harry’s injured. So Astrid, probably.’
‘So, we’ll fix the fuel cells and everything will be okay,’ Juno said. ‘I mean, we’ll get back on track?’
Igor lowered his gaze. ‘As Commander Sheppard would say, insh’allah. We’ll try tomorrow. Get some sleep tonight.’
‘How can we sleep?’ Poppy asked, the static on the monitor shining a grey light on her pale skin. ‘We sent out a distress signal hours ago. But I’m not getting a response.’
‘Give it some time,’ Igor said.
‘We don’t have time,’ Poppy muttered. Juno knew that Poppy was thinking about the fifty hours of power they had left, or the thirty hours of oxygen. Juno was, too.
‘Waiting here and worrying won’t get us a response any faster.’ Igor’s voice was firm now. �
�I want you to all go to bed.’ He climbed with wincing effort out of the commander’s chair. ‘Besides,’ he added as if on second thought, ‘Sleep will save oxygen.’
JUNO WANDERED THE SHIP dazed as a sleepwalker. Everything looked different in the dim illumination of the emergency LEDs. She reached out an arm to get her bearings as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. But the walls of the middle deck were so cold already that tendrils of pain shot up to her knuckles and she recoiled.
They were running out of air.
Her mind reversed back over the same anxious tracks. It had been easy – it had been essential – to forget that the Damocles was delicate as a bubble, that she had ventured into the arid vacuum of space with nothing but a few metres of mylar and aluminium to protect her. She’d never forget again.
Both the Beta’s cabins were empty. Poppy’s radio crackled under her bed, spitting out a few bars of music, the limpid rise of a melody audible for just a moment before being consumed by static. She was not in her bed and neither was Astrid.
Juno headed to the greenhouse, and when she opened the hatch the sound of her footsteps echoed in the gloom. It was like a darkened cathedral. Through the vaulted glass ceiling she could see the spinning rings of the other decks and, beyond them, the stars cast a cold constant light.
They were running out of air.
Bright splinters of pain had begun to burst behind her temples. When mountain climbers ventured too high into the upper atmosphere, and altitude sickness set in, it felt like a hangover, then like carbon-monoxide poisoning. If they continued to climb, the partial pressure of oxygen in their lungs would decrease. They experienced fatigue, dizziness, headaches, a gradual loss of consciousness, and then . . .
‘Jesse?’ Juno’s voice reverberated off the shattered spires. The temperature had already dropped so low that her breath misted on the air. Frozen branches of trees were like twisted fingers, catching at loose strands of her hair. Every now and then a halogen lamp would flicker on and light would spear through the icy foliage, making the leaves knife-edged and the creeping undergrowth a steely silver.