The Furthest Planet

by James Ross Wilks

  Charis shook her head. “The reactor’s putting out too much heat for me to detect bodies.”

  Gringolet shifted again as Bethany brought them in closer to the wreckage. There were no spotlights on Gringolet, so she swung the ship around so that they could see the languidly spinning half-ship in the light from Sol. As one porthole came into view, a pair of hands and a woman’s face appeared at the glass. The woman was screaming something. It was an eerie sight in the dead silence of the cockpit. The woman’s face disappeared and a man’s came into view. Bethany nudged the cockpit even closer, a scant kilometer away. The man was clearly mouthing one word over and over: help.

  “What can we do?” Charis asked breathlessly.

  “Can we bring the whole thing onboard?” Evelyn asked.

  Staples knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Dinah?”

  “It’s too big, sir. Wouldn’t fit in the shuttle bay.”

  “What about towing it?” Staples asked. “We could tow it to the moon.”

  Charis shook her head. “Towing things in space is a mess, Captain. We have the cable, but we’d have to tow it behind our engines, which would cook it. Besides, when we decelerated, its momentum would carry it right into us. And I have no idea how we would land it on the moon, let alone get a docking tube to it. They can suffocate on the surface of the moon just as well as the can suffocate right here.”

  “There’s no guarantee they’d last that long, sir,” Dinah added. “We have to assume that they’re not getting any fresh atmosphere. If we could stop the reactor from overloading, they’d still either freeze to death or asphyxiate. Flip a coin as to which happens first.”

  “What about cutting it up into more manageable pieces?” Evelyn asked.

  “Take too long,” Dinah replied immediately. “And you’d probably vent whatever atmosphere they’ve got left in the process.”

  “Damnit!” Staples struck the arm of her chair. The man’s face was still in front of them, pleading. She could feel the memory of Templeton in the chair next to her, willing her to find a way to do the right thing. “We can’t just sit here and watch them die in front of us.” She forced her brain to work. “What about taking them suits? How many suits have we got?”

  “Six, sir,” Dinah replied.

  There was a flurry of activity as Evelyn worked the surface in front of her. Bethany glanced over at her, then pushed Gringolet in even closer and matched the drifting spin of the ruined ship so that it would not rotate into Gringolet. The other vessel filled the windows in front of them.

  “Bethany…” Staples warned.

  Evelyn hastily disengaged the surface from the console in front of her and held it up to the window.

  “What are you doing?” Staples asked.

  “Communicating,” Evelyn said as she glanced over her shoulder at her captain. “I’m telling them that we’re here to help and asking how many they have.”

  A moment later the man’s face disappeared and there was just his hand holding up three fingers.

  “Okay, so three people in suits take over three suits and go and get them,” Staples said.

  “There’s a problem with that, sir.” Dinah said.

  Staples wanted to scream at her. Can’t something work? she thought desperately.

  “There’s no airlock, sir. I’ve got the schematic for the ship right here.” She pointed at her tactical station. “There’s only one door into that room, and it leads into the central hallway.” She didn’t need to finish her explanation. They had all seen clearly down the central hallway of the Sunflower class ship.

  “So if we open the door into their room, they lose their air,” Staples said.

  “Yes, sir,” Dinah said flatly.

  “People can live in vacuum for a few seconds, maybe even a minute,” Charis chimed in. “If we get in there fast and get them into the suits-”

  Dinah interrupted her. “You’ve got ten or twenty seconds before they lose consciousness. That’s not enough time to get three people into suits, especially in zero G. And if they pass out, they’re just dead weight. There’s no way we could do it.”

  Staples swore. “So what can we do?”

  There was silence for an agonizing ten seconds, then Dinah said, “Compressed air, sir.”

  “What?” Staples asked.

  Dinah was already unstrapping herself from her console. “I’ll explain on my way down to the shuttle bay, sir. I’ll need two more people.” She pushed herself to the back of the cockpit and was gone.

  Staples thought for a second. She had an inkling of what the woman had in mind. After opening shipwide coms, she said, “Jang, Ian, I need you to get down to the EVA prep room. We’ve got a ship in distress and the clock is ticking. They’re low on air and their reactor is going critical. You’ll be assisting Dinah.”

  Jang’s reply came almost immediately. “On my way, Captain.”

  A second later Ian’s reply came through. “No.”

  Staples shook her head as though she had misheard. “What? Ian, what?”

  “I said no. I’m a mechanic, not search and rescue. I don’t care if it’s an order. You can kick me off your ship. I’ve had it. If it’s aliens that-”

  Staples pressed a button and cut him off. “Goddamn it, we don’t have time for this.” She found herself wishing that they had already gotten Brutus back in a body. An automaton would have been ideal for this situation.

  A second later, her watch pinged. She hastily accepted the call.

  “Captain, this is Overton. I’m with Mr. Inboden. He’s still refusing, but I’ll go. I’m on my way.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “Thank you.” She opened another coms channel. “Doctor?”

  “I am already preparing medical, Captain,” Jabir responded, sounding harried.

  “Thank you. We’ll tell you more about what to expect when we know more.”

  With that matter settled, she opened the coms to her chief engineer. “Dinah, what have you got in mind?”

  “We’ve got spare air tanks, sir.” The sounds of her physical efforts punctuated Dinah’s speech. “The air pumps in the shuttle bay are strong enough to put a lot of compressed air in a tank. We’ll have to take them over, breach the room, reseal it, then open a tank so they can breathe long enough to put on a suit.”

  “Oh my God,” Evelyn said.

  “It’s the only way I can see, sir.” Staples thought she could hear Dinah prepping a suit in the background.

  “Then that’s what we’ve got,” Staples assented. She turned to Evelyn. “Better let them know what the plan is.”

  Evelyn looked as though someone had just asked her to communicate a death sentence, but she set to work programming her surface to display one word after another in as large a font as the screen would allow.

  Staples looked at the face in the window. It was the woman again. They were about to ask these people to do the unthinkable. She hoped they would trust her crew. It was the only chance they had.

  Ten minutes later the shuttle bay door in the belly of Gringolet opened and the fighter that Dinah had commandeered from AR-559 slid out. The blister cockpit of the small craft provided room for only one pilot, and Dinah was at the controls. She had been teaching Overton how to fly the ship in some of their off-hours over the past month, but he was not nearly skilled enough to handle the fine maneuvering that the rescue would require. Bethany would have been the ideal choice, but they needed her piloting Gringolet.

  Three large air tanks and three spare suits were hastily lashed across the needle-like nose of the fighter, and Overton and Jang were clipped to the hull as well. The UteV would have been far better suited to this task, but they had left it on AR-559, and the only other craft they had were the Delta V and the Skipper, both of which handled better in atmosphere.

  After Evelyn had done her best to communicate to the people in the remains of the other ship and assuage their fears, Bethany had backed Gringolet away to give the fighter room to maneuver. Dinah ga
ve thrust to the two still-functioning engines, and the fighter moved briskly forward. It was a small matter to close the three-kilometer distance. Dinah did her best to put the small fighter in synchronous spin with the wreck, but unless she continually made corrections, it would eventually drift away.

  That wouldn’t be much of a problem once they had the people in suits and out of the other ship. Like hers, Jang and Overton’s suits had jet packs, and they could maneuver themselves out to the fighter as long as it didn’t drift too far. The problem was getting everything off the fighter and into the ship as fast as possible.

  Once she had the small craft as close to the entrance of the exposed central hallway as she could manage, knowing that every second counted, she said, “Now,” and popped the cockpit. As quickly as she could, she pushed herself out of the small chamber and reached for the air tanks, catching them before she drifted by. Overton and Jang unclipped themselves and each took hold of his assigned baggage. Overton snatched up two spare suits, Jang took a suit and a tank, and Dinah grasped the two remaining tanks. The fighter was already drifting out of position.

  They all clipped their extra gear to their belts so as to free up their hands to help them move and operate their jet packs. The weight created awkward and constantly shifting inertial dynamics, but it couldn’t be helped. The hallway was ten meters off now, and Dinah led the way with a light push on her thrusters. When she had successfully caught up with their planned point of ingress, she grabbed a wall and tried to pull herself into the hallway. The tanks she was towing behind her moved past her and threatened to snatch her back out into space, but she braced a hand against each wall and gritted her teeth. A second later the tanks, having reached the end of their tether, snapped back and she took the moment to magnetize her boots. She hauled the tanks into the hallway and reached out to help the others.

  Two minutes later they were at the room. The door had automatically sealed when the ship lost pressure, but without power to the systems, it was only a manual seal. Jang took one of the tanks and used it to bang three times on the door, the signal Evelyn had told them to expect. He placed a hand on the door and was quiet for a moment. Dimly, he could feel the vibration of three strikes from inside the room.

  “They’re ready,” Jang said over coms.

  “Are we?” Overton asked. He positioned himself behind Jang, and Dinah stood behind him.

  “We cannot wait,” Jang said. “Get in as fast as you can and close the door behind you.”

  “I know,” Dinah said.

  Jang reached out and placed a bracing hand on the wall beside the door. Overton put two hands on Jang’s shoulders. Jang turned the wheel and stepped to the side. Immediately, the door flew open as the trapped atmosphere vented into space. The rushing air momentarily staggered both Jang and Overton despite their preparations, but then Jang moved inside. It took them just under ten seconds to enter the room. Dinah pulled the door shut and sealed it while Jang and Overton each opened a tank of air.

  The three people, a family by the look of them, had placed themselves against the wall that held the door so as not to be pulled out by the venting atmosphere. They were a man in his late forties, a woman of about the same age, and a young woman of about twenty who looked to be their daughter. The family huddled together, gasping for air and trying to protect their frozen fingers. The room had been as cold as a meat locker even before they had vented the atmosphere. As the air from the two tanks filled the room, their breathing slowed and their breath became visible. Dinah was relieved to see that they had listened to the Doctor’s advice. Evelyn had relayed that they should breathe out just as Jang opened the door so that their lungs would not burst. They all looked semi-conscious and miserable, and the depressurization would no doubt cause some medical problems, but that did not stop the three crewmembers of Gringolet from pushing and cajoling them into the spare suits they had brought in.

  As Jang was fitting the helmet over the young woman’s head, Staples’ voice came through the coms. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re in the room,” Jang replied. “They’re in bad shape, but I think they’ll make it, Captain.”

  “How much time have we got on the reactor?” Overton asked.

  “Charis thinks about eight minutes,” Staples replied.

  “We just might make it,” Overton said, and flashed a smile at Dinah.

  Dinah rolled her eyes and tethered the mother to her suit. Overton and Jang were both explaining what they were doing to their evacuees and trying to pacify them with soothing tones. Dinah didn’t bother. The people were nearly catatonic anyway, oxygen-starved and scared to death. She doubted if they would remember much of this when it was all over, and that was likely for the best.

  A minute later they reopened the door, and a lesser gust of air helped to push them outside into the hallway. Jang was in the lead, and he supported the father with an arm around his shoulders. Overton was next, and he guided the daughter. Dinah again brought up the rear with the mother. Each was tethered to their charge. Past the four suited forms in front of her, Dinah could see the stars beyond the severed hallway. The fighter was not visible, but Dinah doubted that they would have trouble finding it.

  The woman she was supporting stumbled, and Dinah put a steadying hand against the wall. That was when she felt it: a rhythmic banging.

  She froze, her gloved hand on the wall. It was too irregular to be machinery. Someone else was trapped on the ship, and they were banging on the wall for all their worth, hoping that someone would hear them.

  “Overton,” Dinah said.

  Overton turned and looked back. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

  “Take her,” Dinah said. She unclasped the woman’s tether from her belt, pulled her around, and looked her in the face. There was a moment when the two women were eye to eye. Her charge was passing fair; she had perhaps been lovely in her youth. She still carried an air of beauty making a slow transformation into matronly wisdom, though much of that was subsumed by her current state of abject terror. Her green eyes were badly bloodshot. Her lower lip shook, whether from fear or cold Dinah did not know.

  Then Dinah pushed the woman away from her, trusting her partner to catch her.

  “There’s someone else on the ship,” Dinah said. “Get them out; I’ll be okay.”

  “Damnit, I hate it when you pull stuff like this,” Overton said as he caught the woman.

  A minute later Dinah had retrieved the spare unused air tank from the room and begun her search. There were four other doors in the hallway, but she knew the rearmost wasn’t a possibility. The schematics had shown that that was the door to reactor control. Given the amount of radiation that Charis had read coming off the rapidly disintegrating reactor, anyone in that room would be unconscious or dead. The bulkheads provided some protection, but anyone left without a suit would probably be facing some cancer issues later in life, assuming they lived through the next five minutes.

  Staples’ voice filled her helmet. “Dinah, what are you doing? Jang and Overton say that you haven’t left yet.”

  “There’s still someone here, sir,” Dinah said, then grunted as she opened a door. The room beyond was breached and empty.

  Staples sighed audibly through the coms. “I won’t bother trying to talk you out of it. You’ve got five minutes,” Staples warned.

  Dinah put her hand against the next door. She could feel the banging on the other side of it. “Got you,” she muttered.

  She quickly tapped out “breathe out” in Morse Code. She had no idea if the person would understand, but she would have to take the chance. From the schematic, she knew that there was no porthole for this room. Even if there had been, there was no time for Evelyn to communicate with whoever was inside.

  Dinah pulled herself and the remaining tank to the side of the door and pulled it open. The weak gust of atmosphere that pushed against her told her that the room hadn’t been fully pressurized. She slipped in on magnetized boots,
closed the door behind her, and immediately opened the air canister.

  In front of her, half-frozen and half-dead, floated a boy of perhaps fourteen. She angled the air of the tank at him, and he gulped it down greedily. She guessed that the boy had been only a few minutes from asphyxiation.

  “Got a boy here, sir,” Dinah said into her coms.

  “We’ll get you another suit back from Gringolet as soon as we get the others on board,” Staples said.

  “No time for that, sir,” Dinah replied. “Even if the reactor makes it that long, the air in this room won’t.”

  “Then-” Staples began, but Dinah cut her off.

  “I need Bethany on the line, sir,” she said.

  When she had finished telling the pilot her plan, she unfastened her helmet and took it off. She was immediately greeted by the shocking cold of the room; it was well below zero.

  The boy, who was dressed in a sports jersey, looked at her in bleary-eyed confusion. His short dark hair topped a long thin face, and he was tall and lanky. Dinah thought that he probably hadn’t even started shaving yet.

  “What’s your name, kid?” she asked.

  “Asad,” he huffed, clutching his arms around himself.

  She nodded. “I need you to listen to me, Asad.”

  Two minutes later, the door to the room flew open and Dinah pushed into the hallway. She was not wearing a suit.

  A tether was tied around her waist, and it led to the suited boy behind her. He tried to keep up with her, but she was mostly dragging him along. Before opening the door, she had hyper-oxygenated her blood by taking several rapid and deep breaths. Then she had blown out all of her air.

  Now she was in naked space, and she had never felt more vulnerable. Every pain receptor in her skin was screaming at her. She guessed that the temperature was about fifty below; it would have been worse had they been further from Sol. She was only wearing her usual tank top and cargo pants. Without the suit, she was even barefoot. Her chest was hitching already. Most people who were exposed to vacuum lasted anywhere from ten to fifteen seconds before passing out. She was hoping for twenty.