Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  Actually, it wasn’t the thought of getting fired and shipped back to Earth that bothered him so much. He was sick to death of space. He wasn’t particularly stuck on beamjack work, and sometimes he thought he would gag if he had to swallow any more of the freeze-dried guano they served in the mess deck. He wanted to go back, but the time wasn’t right yet. The heat hadn’t blown over down there yet. If he went back now, it would only be a matter of time before the Exiles found out where he was and tracked him down.

  It was a nightmarish fantasy, which had haunted him for over a year now. He would be in a room—maybe an apartment he had rented, maybe a seedy motel room in Texas or Maine or Colorado, where he thought he was safe. Maybe he would be expecting someone to come by—a friend he had made in a bar, or some nice chick with full tits and ass-length hair he had been laying—and he’d go answer the door, but the buddy or the babe wouldn’t be standing there. There would be four or five of them standing at the door. The light of a twenty-watt bulb would be shining dimly on their leathers and the chains they’d be carrying. Maybe one or two of them would be grinning with savage humor, but the others would have the dark, vicious glower they all too often fixed on those stupid enough to say the wrong thing or make the wrong move. Maybe he’d try to slam the door; maybe he wouldn’t even bother, knowing they could bash their way through in seconds. “Hello, Brucie,” they’d say. “Long time no see.”

  Then they’d stomp him into the floor so far the cockroaches would have to get shovels to find him.

  Take it easy with Hank Luton, man, he told himself, grasping the stick firmly with both hands as he headed the pod toward Vulcan Station. Tell him you’re sorry. Tell him it won’t happen again. Let him chew you out and don’t give him any shit back. Do whatever you got to do, man, but don’t let him think the best thing for him to do is to send you back to Earth and get a replacement, because you know the Exiles have put an APB out for you with the Angels and the Outlaws and all the rest, and they can find you if you come up from hiding too fast. Do what it takes to survive, Bruce man….

  A blinking red light on the communications panel caught his attention. He frowned; it was the priority alert for the comlink, informing everyone that there was something on the main channel that everyone on active duty needed to monitor.

  He flicked the monitor switch, and instantly he heard the high beeping whine of the general alarm, which all but drowned out the sound of several voices chattering at once in an almost indistinguishable garble. Bruce’s eyes went wide, and this time he wasn’t playing Eddie Murphy.

  Something had just gone seriously wrong on Vulcan Station.

  10

  An Inch Away from Eternity

  OUTER SPACE IS AN environment that seldom forgives mistakes. It is the most relentless environment into which man has ever ventured. It is an engineer’s nightmare, a hell in heaven for the foolhardy and the stupid. Although to enter, live, and work there demands perfection in every detail, it is in man’s nature to make mistakes, and therein lies the rub.

  During the first decades of spaceflight most of the mistakes were made in the comparatively soft and safety-redundant environment of the launch pad. The mistakes led to long delays in launches and scrubbings of flights and, in the instance of the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the death of three men who were being groomed to walk on the Moon. But although there were near-fatal accidents in orbit during the first years of the American and Soviet space programs, it was a long time before anyone died in space. The worst failures of man and machine were caught on the ground, where the consequences were less terrifying.

  But mistakes always happen. They always have; they always will. No matter how sophisticated space technology became, flaws slipped in. Sometimes men died as the result, sometimes the consequences were less serious. A radio transceiver not switched on, a tether not securely fastened, a misfire of an MMU backpack in the wrong direction, a too-hard docking of a spacecraft, careless entry of a program into a computer, a lost tool during EVA, misunderstood communications between spacemen, miscalculation of body movement in zero g, any imaginable combination of dumb jerk boo-boos: These mistakes, which were either corrected or buffered by safety programs, were more often measured in nuisance value than in their contribution to early graves being dug.

  Yet there were other types of errors which were not easily avoidable. Bad engineering on the ground; mistakes made in design or manufacture of items on Earth, which would later be carried into that place of no atmosphere, no gravity, and extremes of heat and cold. Those mistakes killed.

  A construction pod undocked from Vulcan Station and began to head toward the powersat. Its pilot, a young beamjack named Alan McPhee, gently steered the tiny spacecraft around the bend in Vulcan’s bell-shaped Beta module, heading toward its underside on a course that would take him beneath both construction shack and solar power satellite. McPhee was a good pod pilot, but his skill was not enough to cope with a flaw in his spacecraft.

  A fuel cell, a sphere the size of a gymnasium medicine ball, which was strapped to the outside of the pod’s fuselage, had a weak skin. It had been manufactured by a small aerospace company in Illinois, which subcontracted to Skycorp. The fuel cells were supposed to be carefully inspected by X-ray equipment for weak points, yet this one had slipped through because the technician in charge had been thinking too much about her impending breakup with her boyfriend. A couple of months later, the faulty cell had been repressurized in the construction shack’s pod garage almost a dozen times. Each time additional pressure had been put upon a thin spot in the cell’s lining, which was absolutely undetectable to the naked eye.

  This time, when McPhee took his pod called “We Deliver!” out for another shift, carrying rebars to beamjacks around the powersat, the soft point on the cell’s skin yielded to the internal pressure from the liquid-fuel mix.

  Soundlessly, the fuel cell exploded in space, just as the construction pod was passing the hotdog modules.

  Claude Hooker clamped the tubes leading from his life-support pack into the sockets on his suit’s midsection and gave them a clockwise twist that locked them in place, then took the helmet off the overhead rack and tucked it under his arm. Grabbing a rail with his free hand, he slipped the toes of his boots free from the foot restraints on the floor. Now floating free in the narrow compartment of the whiteroom, he began to pull himself toward the hatch leading to the next compartment, where technicians would ease him into an MMU pack before he would cycle through the airlock and head to work.

  He passed Mike Webb, the beamjack who had sat next to him on the ferry, and another spaceman, a new guy whose name Hooker couldn’t remember. Webb was notorious for being slow in the whiteroom, and the rookie was as inept at getting ready for EVA as only a tenderfoot could be. Webb gave Hooker a quick thumbs-up and a silly grin as a technician struggled to wiggle the beamjack’s legs into the lower half of his spacesuit. Hooker shrugged, managed a weak smile, and returned the thumbs-up. The new guy was trying to retrieve a glove that was floating away from him, and Hooker absently batted it back with his free hand. The rookie, whose name-patch read HONEYMAN, nodded and said, “Thanks, Popeye.”

  “No sweat, Honeyman,” Hooker replied. As he passed the optical scanner near the hatch, Hooker paused to hold his right wrist in front of the lens, allowing the computer to read numbers printed on the card strapped to the cuff and clock him in. A green light flashed on and Hooker started to enter the hatch, gently rotating his body to a horizontal position so that he could fit through the narrow aluminum sleeve.

  “Hey, Popeye, hold on!” someone called behind him. Hooker grabbed a handhold next to the hatch, stopping himself, and looked around. Julian Price, the young black kid who worked in the whiteroom as a suit tech, was pushing himself up alongside. Price reached over to Hooker’s left leg, reached under the cuff of the overgarment, and relocked the loose ankle joint above the boot.

  “Be careful there, man,” he murmured. “You could get in trouble that way, bi
g time.”

  “Thanks, Julian. Wasn’t thinking.”

  “Always gotta keep thinkin’, Popeye,” Julian said, giving Hooker’s suit a quick once-over inspection. “They don’t look at you when they’re putting on your pack over there, man, and I can’t check everything you’re doing when you’re suiting up. I mean, I can do my job, but it starts and ends with you, man….”

  “Yeah, uh-huh,” Hooker grumbled. “See you later, Julian.”

  “Check ya, Popeye,” Price finished, letting him go. He seemed mildly stung. “I mean, don’t be too appreciative or nuthin’ now.”

  Hooker paused again, looking back at Julian. “Sorry, Julio. Didn’t mean anything. I owe you one.”

  Julian’s grin returned. He gave Hooker the thumbs-up. “No offense taken, Popeye. Be careful out there.”

  Hooker returned the ancient gesture and pushed himself through the hatch into the connecting sleeve, wanting to kick himself for being short-tempered with the kid. God damn it, Julian looked out for all the beamjacks going out on EVA like the manager of a high school football team making sure the shoulder pads fit and the jocks were washed. It was a thankless job, but someone had to do it, and Julian did it well. He had probably caught enough loose suit joints, badly connected air hoses, and minute cracks in spacesuit armor to keep an army of beamjacks from blowing out their guts in sudden decompression accidents. No one here had the right to snub him.

  Ah, hell, Hooker thought. I’ll find a way to make it up to him. Hooker had plenty of telephone time logged to his credit that he had never used; there was no one on Earth he needed to call. I’ll let him make a call to his mom and dad in Washington, D.C., Hooker decided. That’ll make up for…

  There was suddenly a roar from far behind him, like a shotgun blast—a thin, reedy whistle that sounded like someone trying to play a broken flute, and, moments later, the electronic warbling sound of an alarm going off. He instinctively convulsed in midair like a man trying to duck a gunshot; his head banged against the side of the sleeve and he saw stars for an instant.

  He then realized that the roar had come from behind, from the other whiteroom, adjacent to the one he had just left. The alarm that was warbling was one he had heard only once before during his duty tour, during an instruction drill when he had first come aboard. He twisted around, performing a cramped somersault within the sleeve, and caught a glimpse of a miniature cyclone ripping through the compartment he had just vacated. Logbook pages, loose pens, overgarment segments and other loose items were being caught by the wind and being thrown around in the unnatural gale. He saw the emergency hatch seal on the hatch on the other side of the whiteroom iris shut like a closing sphincter.

  “Blowout!” he heard Mike Webb scream. “It’s a blowout!”

  But if it was only the far whiteroom which had been affected, then where was that high, reedy whine coming from? Something else was wrong….

  Julian Price floated past the sleeve hatch, his back turned to Hooker, his hands flailing as he tried to grab hold of something the way Webb and Honeyman had, grasping suit racks against the gale raging inside the compartment. Without really thinking about it. Hooker reached through the hatch and grabbed Price’s ankle just above the top of one of his sneakers. The kid yelled as Hooker yanked him into the sleeve as hard as he could; he bounced off Hooker as both of them were crammed into the narrow space, slamming Hooker against the side of the sleeve.

  At that moment the emergency hatches on either side of the sleeve irised shut, trapping the two men inside. It was suddenly quiet, except for the dull sound of the emergency Klaxon from the whiteroom. A single, recessed bulb by Hooker’s left shoulder threw an amber glow across their faces.

  Julian Price forced his right forearm up between him and Hooker; the two men were squeezed together as tight as if they were both lying in the same sleeping bag. There was an intercom unit strapped to Price’s wrist, and he clumsily jabbed at the TALK button with his chin. “Mayday! Mayday!” he yelled into his headset mike, which miraculously had not been torn off during the decompression hurricane. “Price to Control, blowout in Modules One and Two!”

  Sammy Orlando’s voice came through the headset earphone; Hooker could hear it tinnily. We’re aware of that, damn it! Get off the line! There’s nothing…

  It was replaced by Luton’s voice. How’d you get out of there? There’s total decompression in both compartments! Everyone who was in them are dead already!

  “Bullshit!” Price yelled back. “I just got out of Number Two! There’s two men trapped in there; you gotta get ’em out!”

  Our instruments tell us it’s total decompression… something pierced both those hotdogs. There should be no one left alive in either one!

  “And I’m telling you, man, there’s two men stuck in Number Two!” Price hollered. “I dunno about Hotdog One, but Webb and Honeyman are still in Two! They’ve just got a slow leak in there or something, but they’re still alive, you gotta—!”

  “I’m wearing a spacesuit, Julian!” Hooker shouted. “I can get ’em out! Tell ’em to open the hatch!”

  “Hank, Hooker’s wearing a suit and he says…”

  Are you wearing a suit, Price?

  “Negative, Control.”

  Then forget it. You two just sit tight. Luton paused. I don’t want to risk one man because the other might have a chance. Those guys only have a few minutes. I don’t want the body count to go up any more than it has. Where’re you two, in a sleeve?

  “Roger!”

  Then just stay there. We’ll get someone to get you out soon. Forget those guys, son. I hate to say it, but they’re dead men.

  “Screw you, asshole!” Price screamed. “Open the goddamn hatch!”

  “Zulu Tango to Vulcan Command, do you copy!”

  He waited a moment, then tried it again: “Zulu Tango to Vulcan, do you read, dammit!”

  Virgin Bruce didn’t know if anyone had even heard him. The main comlink channel was a confusion of voices; most of the other channels he had scanned were similarly garbled. Whatever had happened at the shack, it had occurred so quickly that no one seemed to know exactly what the nature of the emergency was, or what they were supposed to do.

  Command, something’s blown in Hotdog Two, I’m seeing oxygen vapor coming from—!

  Repair shifts to Hotdogs One and Two! This is Command, repair crews on shift to Hotdogs—.’

  Holy shit, there’s a body out there! We need a medic at the shack!

  Vulcan, this is pod Romeo Virginia. I’ve had an explosion on my aft side fuel cell. I have loss of control and I’m in tumble. Repeat, Vulcan, this is Romeo Virginia, I’ve got a problem…

  Romeo Virginia, what the hell are you…?

  Goddammit, Hank, get that fucking hatch open or I’ll…

  Where’s the damn repair crew!

  This is Romeo Virginia! I’ve got one of the kits!

  Romeo, get to the hotdogs! There’s been a blowout on One and Two! One’s lost, get Two!

  For the love of Pete, Luton, open the fucking hatch and I can get…

  Squelch Hooker, Sammy. Romeo, get to—!

  Negative, Hank, I got no control! My fuel cell blew up and…

  Oh, my God, that’s Luke, that’s Luke’s who’s—!

  Everybody, goddammit SHUT UP! Who’s got the repair kits! Who’s on the shift—!

  Virgin Bruce sank back into his couch, staring straight ahead. Now, in the gleam of the shack’s navigational lights a mile and a half away, he could see a phosphorescent, tiny white cloud of water and oxygen forming near Module Alpha. Something had blown out one of the hotdogs; two, if what he had heard was right. He didn’t want to think what the larger objects he could pick out dimly in the tiny cloud might be.

  Command, this is the main bay, we’ve got stress on the beam-builder assembly! The whole shack’s shaking—!

  This is Caldwell, Command! I’ve got the other kit, but I’m way out on the powersat on tether, repeat, I don’t have a pack…

/>   What the hell are you doing without… never mind, who’s got a sealkit!

  Jesus! How could have he forgotten! Virgin Bruce craned his neck back and checked the ceiling space above and behind his head. Strapped to the bulkhead, next to the first-aid kit, was the sealkit, a compression tank with a foam nozzle. He had been issued an emergency kit last time around, but had forgotten to turn that kit over to another pod pilot; he had been too pissed off about the elevator music.

  Sammy, turn off the damn alarm!

  Command, I’m too far out here, I can’t…

  Abruptly, the emergency horn ceased to split his ears. Eerily, things suddenly seemed as if they had gone back to normal, except for the yelling on the main channel.

  Medic, we need a medical crew…

  Screw it, George, they’re dead! Hank Luton said harshly. Who the hell has a—!

  Bruce stabbed at the switches on his communications board, bringing himself back on line. “Hank, this is Zulu Tango! I’ve got a kit and I’m going in!”

  Oh, for Christ’s… Bruce, you don’t know what the hell you’re…

  “Hey, fuck you, Hank! I got a sealer, so get off my back and lemme get those guys…

  Bruce, you only got a couple of minutes maybe! This was Sammy Orlando’s voice now. Haul ass, man!

  “Right, Vulcan,” he snapped. Hell, if Luton wanted to play games while men were dying, he’d take Sammy’s word as the go-ahead. “Get a fix on me and clear the traffic on a line between me and it. I’m comin’ through!”

  Neiman? Hank Luton’s voice again. You’ve got the go-ahead. But if you fuck this up, pal, I’ll…

  “Get outta my ear and lemme work, Hank!” Bruce yelled into his mike as he switched off the autopilot. “You just tell me where to go, I’ll do the rest!”

  You got maybe three minutes, Neiman, maybe not that. Make it count, you son of a bitch.

  “Sammy, kill the rest of the bells, will ya? I don’t need to be reminded how bad the situation is.”