I nodded, understanding the decisions he was balancing. Under the circumstances, since we could retreat to the Pinta, Terrazas’s life took priority over the ammonia system. Thank God for Mission Control and their flight rules. With flight rules, all the decisions about contingencies had been made ahead of time. It took emotion and quick reactions out of the equation. It gave us the redundancies we needed because we’d thought about how things could go wrong before we got there. And yet …
It was bad enough having to simulate leaving someone to die.
I shuffled the reference books I’d brought to grab volume 44B. “Mission Control already came up with the single vessel contingency, so—right. I’ll refine it.”
He nodded tersely and toggled the mic back on. “Avelino and Terrazas? We have to preserve thirty minutes of oxygen so you have an hour to try to work this before we go with cutting the line.”
“Roger. We’ll keep working the problem out here.”
Terrazas answered, “Confirmed. In this thrilling installment, our intrepid band of space adventurers face THE WRATH OF THE SPACE TUBES. As we listen, our brave hero, Rafael Avelino, prepares to free his hapless sidekick from the wily space tubes.”
After that, Rafael muttered something else in Portuguese that made Parker laugh, but his laughter died as soon as he turned his mic off. Parker reached for the switch again, as if he were going to call another station, but then pulled his hand back and set it in his lap. Jaw tight, he stared out the viewport and waited, the murmur of Rafael’s commentary in the background.
Me? I did math, although there wasn’t really that much to do, so I reviewed equations to make sure that I was ready when I needed to plug in the specifics.
Leonard’s voice buzzed into the room. “All right. I want to go over it again when Rafael and Terrazas are back on the ship, but we’re pretty sure that if we lose too much ammonia, then I can make more. Probably. But that’s a worst-case scenario, and everyone would be happier if I didn’t have to.”
“Good work. And why do we not want you to make it?”
“Toxic. The chances of poisoning the air supply are not insignificant.” Listening to him work out a problem was almost as much fun as listening to Nathaniel. “Figure I do it in the BusyBee, wearing a Mars suit. Should be fine that way. But we probably won’t need it.”
“Understood.” Parker shut the mic down and sat, staring out at the void as the minutes ticked past. He sighed and reached for the mic again, switching it to the MedMod. “Shamoun, keep me posted on their telemetry, would you? If Terazzas’s lithium hydroxide canister gets low, we’ll call it sooner.”
“I have my eyes on it. Everything is within acceptable parameters.”
You would think oxygen would be the big worry on a spacewalk, but that’s the consumable we can pack most efficiently. Carbon dioxide scrubbing, battery life—these are the things you worry about on an EVA. The oxygen is the least of the worries. You’ll overheat before you run out of air.
At a certain point, I ran out of equations and joined Parker in staring into space as we listened to Rafael and Terrazas work. It was an endless cycle of trying to pry the sizing ring bracket free, punctuated by random Portuguese curses.
Finally, Parker sat forward. “Thirty minutes. We have to call it.” His jaw clenched. “You are Go to cut the line.”
“Are we sure these lines are depressurized? It’s like a steel rod.”
Even as Parker was flipping to engineering, Leonard was back on the comm. “The gauge down here is flatlined on zero. That line is part of the permanent installation—I think that’s why it’s rigid.”
“Understood.” Parker glanced at me and we had a moment of rare rapport. The staffing on this spacewalk was all wrong. Leonard should be out there, not in engineering which wasn’t his area of specialty. Sure he’d trained to back Rafael up, but most of his training had been on actually performing the EVAs. I could see Parker regretting his decision to use Mission Control’s duty roster. “Avelino. Leonard says the gauge is at zero. He thinks the rigidity is caused because it’s a permanent part of the cooling system.”
“Copy.” Rafael gave a small laugh. “I am only nervous about cutting my baby.”
“I told you not to call me that. Oh—you mean the ship.” Terrazas was such a ham.
“We can make the repair.” Parker sighed, bending his head as if it were a prayer more than a command. “You are Go to cut the line. Repeat. You are Go to cut the line.”
“Confirmed. Cutting the line and—” Rafael suddenly cursed in Portuguese.
Slapping the mic on, Parker leaned toward the speaker, as if that would get him closer. “Avelino. Report.”
A spray of white fluttered around the viewport, twinkling in the sunlight the way the stars used to on Earth. So beautiful, but my heart froze with it as I pointed. “Parker! Ammonia is venting.”
Those lines should have been clear.
Some larger clumps drifted past, spinning and turning almost red in the sunlight. The sun wouldn’t do that out here—that took the diffraction of an atmosphere.
We were looking at frozen blood.
TWENTY-SIX
ESTEVAN TERRAZAS 1924–1963
Kansas City, KS, May 7, 1963—The second casualty on the Mars mission comes a little over a month after the crew passed the midway point. Critics are pointing to the death of Estevan Terrazas as a sign of incompetence on the part of the IAC. An anonymous source high within the organization says that Captain Stetson Parker had objected to sending Terrazas out, saying that he lacked the experience, but was overruled by Director Clemons.
The director of the IAC characterized the death as a freak accident. According to reports, Terrazas became mired in the ammonia cooling system while doing repairs. In an attempt to free him, the crew cut an ammonia line. Tragically, a faulty gauge indicated that the lines were empty, and when cut, the pressure caused the sharp end of the metal line to whip past his suit and breach it. The suit lost integrity, subjecting Terrazas to the vacuum of space.
Kam and I floated outside the airlock. Again.
I couldn’t summon a single rhyme. My head was filled with the sound that Florence was piping through the ship. Sounds, really: Leonard’s voice narrating as he guided Rafael back to the airlock.
“Okay, reach forward with your right hand and you’ll feel the guide rail at the door.”
The other sound was Rafael’s ragged breathing, the sound of someone trying not to sob. It hitched and tore, hissing through his teeth, then there was heart-stopping silence as he held his breath, until it escaped again to catch on the edge of his voice. But when he spoke? God … he was professional and dead calm. “Confirmed. I have the guide rail.”
“Good. You’re going to feel my hand at your waist as I secure you.”
“Copy.” Then the cycle of Rafael’s breath began again.
I rested a hand on the cold metal of the inner airlock door and leaned toward the port, looking for the men. Leonard’s suit was just a dark silhouette against the darker sky. His face was lost in shadows.
“Rafael’s local tether is bail closed. Slide lock. Black on black. I’m picking up our safety tethers and heading through the hatch.”
In my head, I went through the motions with him of clipping the tether hook and sliding the lock closed so that the indicator showed a solid black line.
“I’m cleaning up my safety tether so we can take everything up back inside.”
Beside me, Kam shifted the towel in her hands. We had practiced having an incapacitated crew member in sims, but there is a large emotional difference between a sim and the reality.
I twisted my own towel into a rope and the soft white terry cloth added its own hush to the ship sounds. To fill the void, I said the obvious. “Once Rafael’s eyes are clear, I’ll help Leonard get him out of his suit.”
“Good.” She drifted by the med kit she’d strapped to a socket on the side of the spindle. “If he becomes combative, I have a sedative.”
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Leonard’s voice continued his quiet commentary. “We’re both secured so I’m going to guide you in.”
“Copy.”
Nothing in his voice said that Rafael was combative. It was just a contingency, like all the other things you prepared for. Through the port window, you could see their silhouettes come into the dim light of the airlock. Were it not for the stripes on their suits, you could not have told which man was which, except that Rafael groped for the walls and Leonard guided him with precise movement.
“We’re in the airlock. I’m letting go for a moment to dog the hatch shut, but you’re tethered to the interior rails.”
“Copy.” The suits were so bulky that you couldn’t see the movement of Rafael’s chest. As he drifted closer to our side of the airlock, the light slid over the curve of his helmet and lit the haze that coated the glass. His face was just a dim shape inside.
I pulled myself to the side of the door to give them some room to come through. As Kam waited by the IV pressure gauge, I folded and refolded my towel, as if there were some optimal way to hold it. Surely the IAC had done some sort of study on this, or some graduate student somewhere had made “maximizing terry cloth” their thesis.
Above my head, the delta-pressure gauge rose as Kam opened the IV hatch valve to let atmosphere flood into the airlock. The air roared through the valve as if a freight train were passing the spindle.
It nearly drowned out Leonard’s voice. “Pressure confirmed. Nearly there, Rafael.”
“Confi—” His voice broke on a cough.
My heart leapt through my chest, as if it could get the airlock open. My training moved faster than that. I shoved the towel between my knees, gripping it with my legs, while I grabbed the ratchet handle and pumped it. Five pumps to release each of the fifteen latches that held the door sealed.
Leonard saw me through the port.
He grabbed Rafael’s helmet and undogged the latches holding it on.
All that redundancy fought us as the same safeguards that kept the helmet secure slowed him down.
Over the loudspeakers, we listened to Rafael aspirating his own tears.
I jackknifed, still holding that damn towel between my legs, and kicked hard against the wall to haul the inner hatch open. As soon as I had a gap, I let inertia carry it the rest of the way and swam forward, grabbing the towel.
Rafael, bless him, held still, even though his hands jerked and twitched in distress. He didn’t fight Leonard as he yanked Rafael’s helmet free. Training might say that it wasn’t possible to drown in your own tears, but globules of salt water and snot floated into the airlock. His eyes and nose and mouth were coated with silvery balls.
I slapped him in the face with the towel. The recoil pushed him back from the water, just a little, and the towel started absorbing stuff. Now, he moved, and lifted a hand to guide the towel into his mouth.
Coughing and spitting, he cleared the salt water, while Leonard braced him. Outside the airlock, Kam glanced up at the speaker. “Parker. We have him. Rafael is secured.”
“Confirmed.” I have never heard so much relief in a single word. “Good work.”
At that, Rafael’s flagging control cracked. “Good work?” He flung the towel away. “I fucking killed him.”
I caught his gloved hands and pressed them tight together between mine. The cold of space’s shadow still permeated the material and bled into my bones. “Sweetie … I know it’s hard. I know. But it isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah? Whose is it?”
Over the speaker, Parker said, “Mission Control’s.” His breath sighed into the mic. “And mine. And God’s. And, yes, yours. And you’ll carry that guilt, I won’t pretend that you won’t, but it is not yours alone. You did the best you could to keep Estevan safe.”
At the sound of Terrazas’s first name, coming from Parker, Rafael crumpled. Fresh tears crowded around his eyes, building into mounds. Leonard snagged the towel from where it was floating and pressed it against Rafael’s face. I let go of his hands, and he clutched the towel, weeping into it.
I twisted, slipping out of the airlock so Kam could fit in. Her voice was cool and dispassionate. If you just listened, you couldn’t tell that her eyes were red and swollen. “Just hold steady and we’ll get you out of the suit.”
If Rafael responded, it was lost behind the towel. As we worked to get him out of the suit, he slowly went limp and nonresponsive. Kam kept up a steady meaningless murmur as if her voice was a tether to keep him with us. At some point in there, Parker arrived and helped Kam get Rafael down to the MedMod. That left me and Leonard to stow the suits.
His jaw was tight as I helped him shuck out of his EVA suit. Our only conversation followed the checklist that the IAC had set up for post–extra-vehicular activity. When the last boot was secured in its bin, Leonard floated, staring at the empty spot where Terrazas’s gear should go.
“Elma? May I…” He brought his hands up to cover his face. “Could you—?”
All the tears I’d been fighting off burned at the back of my throat. I pushed over to wrap my arms around Leonard, and we both floated, spinning slightly, as our grief formed constellations around us.
* * *
Rafael slept in the MedMod.
Four of us sat in the kitchen drinking the hot cocoa Florence had made for all of us. Leonard huddled under a gray wool blanket next to Kam, who stared into her cup as if it would speak to her.
I clutched my own cup. It should have warmed my hands, but they still ached. Hours later, and my hands still ached from touching Rafael’s suit. At least, that’s what I told myself it was. In truth, every part of me ached, as if the grief had frozen all my joints the way that—
I swallowed, and picked up the mug.
Parker slid down the ladder. His eyes were red around the edges and he carried a bottle under one arm. Head down, he walked to the table and set brandy in the middle.
Florence straightened and reached for it. “How’d you get this on board?”
“Get what on board?” Parker settled on the end of the bench, next to me. “Mission Control strictly forbids alcohol on IAC ships to avoid cultural misunderstandings.”
Kam snorted and slid Leonard’s mug toward Florence. “I hate being used as an excuse. This is medicinal.”
I slid my mug forward too. “Doctor’s orders.”
Parker rested his head on both hands. He addressed the table. “I want to go over what we’re doing with the body.”
“Not the bag.” Cocoa sloshed over Kam’s mug.
“That’s what Mission Control wants us to use, because Terrazas is already frozen.”
“No.” I shook my head, fury rising up my spine, and I reached for that heat, gratefully. Goddamn it, Nathaniel had said that we wouldn’t—but he wasn’t in the office, was he? I clenched my jaw and swallowed so I could speak. “I recommend against that.”
“I agree.” Parker still kept his gaze fixed on the table. “Based on your report, it would traumatize an already traumatized crew.”
“Parker…” Kam reached across the table and touched his elbow where it rested on the hard surface. “We’re all exhausted and in shock. It might be best to wait for a bit.”
“I know.” He straightened, and his face was military calm. “But I want this resolved before Avelino wakes up. I don’t want him to have to hear us discussing it, so let’s do our goddamned job and work the problem.”
Leonard pulled the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. “Estevan is still attached to the ammonia line, so we’re going to have to finish cutting it to free him. That section should be completely clear of ammonia.” He swallowed. “Now.”
“It should have been clear before.” My voice was sharper than I intended.
Leonard held up his hands. “The gauge read empty.”
“Stop.” Parker laid his hand flat on the table. “We are not looking to assign blame. We are working the problem of what to do with Estevan. At the current juncture,
the line has been cut and is clear of ammonia.”
“And we have to do that EVA regardless, to repair the cooling system.” I nodded, trying to match the calm that we were all pretending to possess, as if this were just another sim. “I can go out with Leonard to … to clear the lines.”
“Then what?” Florence stood and walked over to the stove. “Do we bring him inside?”
Leonard looked over his shoulder at her as she retrieved a mug. “He’s got one arm stretched out. We wouldn’t be able to bring him in through the airlock. And it would take some work, still, to get the lines off … There’s a block of ammonia around his foot. It would … it would take some work.”
Except for Rafael, Leonard was the only one who had seen the … the problem. We could probably take the BusyBee out for reconnaissance. “What about the BusyBee? Could we load him in that?”
“To what purpose?” Parker’s face was a blank mask.
“Well … then we could work under atmosphere.”
Leonard nodded. “Yes, I think he’d fit through the larger hatch. Only—” He winced, tilting his head to the side. “That ammonia is going to thaw.”
Florence set a mug of cocoa in front of Parker. “So wear a Mars suit, like you were telling Parker you’d do if you had to make replacement ammonia.”
“You heard that?”
“Baby, I hear all.” Florence rested a hand on Parker’s shoulder until he reached forward and picked up the mug. “I’ve got one job on this ship, and don’t you dare say that laundry is that job. It’s just because some folks are too foolish to do their own.”
Parker stared into the mug. “We should decide what the end goal is.” He set it down again, without drinking, and stood. Grabbing a marker, he uncapped it and faced the whiteboard. “I figure we’re looking at these options.”
On the board, he wrote:
Burial in space
Storage for burial on Mars
Storage for burial on Earth
The bag
That last, he drew a line through. “We’ve eliminated one.” Parker looked over his shoulder at us. “What other options are there?”
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