Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  I jam the thruster controls on the stick. My thumb is aching now, throbbing with pain, but I feel the kick at the base of my spine.

  My eyes are drawn to a green bar, positioned alongside the thruster display in my helmet. It’s filled to about two-thirds, and, as I look at it, it ticks down another measure.

  As if my fuel is being used up. Or my oxygen.

  Will I have enough to make it to the Shinso? No way to tell. It doesn’t even feel like I’m getting any closer. I breathe as slowly as I can, taking small sips of air, trying with every ounce of will I have to control the frustration. If I was on Outer Earth, I could run this distance in minutes, just sprint across the gap.

  I grit my teeth, keeping my thumb pressed down on the controls, ignoring the pain.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the ship creeps closer. Details start to resolve, shadows becoming clear on the surface.

  There’s a crackle over the radio. “—ley, come in! Do you hear me?”

  “I’m here.”

  My words come out in a rough whisper. I clear my throat, and try again.

  “Gods, I thought you were … Listen, don’t come in too fast. You won’t be able to stop in time.”

  I’m almost on top of the ship now, its hull swelling beneath me.

  I see him. He’s got his back to the ship, as if he’s lying prone below me. Incredibly, he manages to wave: a single movement, long and languorous.

  “We don’t have much time left,” he says. “I don’t know how much juice you’ve got in your thrusters, but I’ve burned half of mine.”

  We glide above the surface of the ship. I can only see the edge of it, peeking over the bottom of my helmet.

  “Shit,” Carver says.

  “What?”

  “How are we going to get inside?”

  “We go in the airlock,” I say, confused.

  “And how do we get them to open it for us?”

  I open my mouth to reply – then stop. How could we be so stupid? The sensation in my mouth has got worse. When I lick my lips, my tongue is utterly dry.

  “How are you doing for fuel?” I ask, stealing a glance at mine. One-third left, assuming it is fuel, and not my air supply.

  “Almost out,” he says, his voice steady. “Can you see their tug?”

  “Where?”

  “Down there, near the front of the ship.”

  I tweak the stick, just a little, and spot the tug even before he’s finishing speaking. It’s docked with the ship, clinging onto it like a bug. Its front end points outward; the ramp at the back must be connected to an airlock.

  Relief floods through me – Prakesh made it. He’s alive.

  I push down harder on the button on my stick. We move towards the Shinso in slow motion, and I want to curse with frustration.

  I don’t. It would just waste air.

  “It’s stopped rotating,” Carver says, puzzled.

  “Let’s go for the tug,” I hear myself say. “Maybe we can get inside it.”

  We keep moving, pointing ourselves towards the front of the craft. We’re almost there, the tug looming large in front of us, when the white cone in Carver’s thruster sputters and dies.

  “No juice. I’ve got no juice,” he says. I can hear him trying to keep the panic out of his voice. He’s a little ahead of me, to the left.

  “Hang on,” I say, angling myself towards him. I have to slow myself down. If I overshoot and have to come back for him, I’ll run out of fuel myself.

  Almost there.

  Almost …

  I slam into Carver, taking him around the waist, pulling him along with me. My meter has started to blink red, a flashing beacon at the edge of my vision.

  I can only just see past Carver’s torso. His hand floats in front of my face, and just beyond it I can see the surface of the tug.

  “Steady,” says Carver.

  “You need to guide me. I can’t—”

  “Riley, reverse! Reverse thruster!”

  We’re skidding above the tug’s surface – too far above it. If I don’t stop now, we’re going to overshoot. I lift my finger – slowly, so slowly – and force it down on the second stick button. I feel a juddering in my chest, and Carver’s body, pressed close to it, is pushed upwards. He grabs my hand, stretched out above me, and I can hear his breathing in my helmet. It sounds like water rushing through a pipe.

  We come to a halt.

  When I look down, I see that my foot has caught on a cable that stretches along the outside of the tug’s body. If it hadn’t been there …

  Slowly, my muscles aching with the effort, I pull Carver down, onto the surface of the tug. Soon we’re both kneeling on it, hooked onto the cable. There’s almost no fuel left in my tank.

  “Shit,” Carver says again. This time, it comes out in a long, slow exhalation.

  “Too close.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we disconnect the tug? Go in through that airlock?”

  “No good. It’d take too long. Let’s see if we can go round to the other side.”

  I was hoping he wouldn’t say that. I steel myself, getting ready to pull Carver close to me and inch along the tug’s body.

  There’s a sudden pressure in the small of my back. “I’ve got one of your thrusters,” Carver says. “I’ll hold, you pull.”

  “Letting me do the heavy lifting, huh?”

  “Yeah, well, you can handle it.”

  There’s another handhold a little further along: another cable, lifted slightly off the surface. I reach for it, using tiny taps of my shoulder thrusters to keep me steady. When I manage to get a grip on the cable, the sweat on my face is so thick that it’s started to float off, coating my helmet. I can barely see out of the smeared surface.

  “Keep going,” Carver says.

  But when I look up, I see there are no more cables. Nothing to hold onto. The back of the tug sweeps away from me, and I know that if I try to climb down it with Carver in tow I’ll drift away. Beyond the tug’s body, there’s nothing but space.

  “It’s no good,” I say. “We’re out of holds.”

  “We can’t be out. Keep looking.”

  “Carver, I’m telling you, we need to find another—”

  I stop. As I speak, my free hand – the left one, the one not gripping the cable – drifts into view, and with it the wrist control. There’s one button I hadn’t noticed before. The writing on it reads: PLSM.

  “These are construction suits, right?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Is there something you can grab onto?”

  “Hold on.”

  The pressure in the back of my suit takes an age to fall away. I force myself to stay still.

  “OK, I’m holding onto the tug’s body.”

  My right hand sweeps towards my wrist control, and thumbs the PLSM button. Another display pops up in my helmet: another bar crossing horizontally across the bottom. Words flash beneath it: Plasma cutter arming.

  At almost the same instant, there’s a flash of blue on the back of my left wrist. A nozzle has appeared; it flicked up from the suit with a tiny rumble of motors that I can feel in my chest. The light sparks, vanishes, then appears again: a thin streak of blue-white flame, reaching out beyond my hand. There’s no sound at all.

  Plasma cutter ready.

  Carver whoops with joy. “Easy,” I say, wincing at the burst of noise

  “Sorry,” he says, at a more manageable volume. “Good thinking.”

  I bring the flame down towards the surface of the tug. My wrist has locked in position – a safety measure, presumably, to stop me from bending it and cutting through my own suit. When the flame makes contact with the metal, there’s a silent spray of sparks, drifting upwards and winking out instantly.

  “I just tried my own cutter,” Carver says. “Not getting anything. Keep going.”

  The metal has started to glow – first red, then white. I’ve been holding my breath, and let it out in a thin whis
tle.

  “You holding on to something?’ says Carver. “There’s going to be a pressure blowback when we cut through, so we’d better—”

  A section of the metal suddenly pops outwards like it’s been hit by stinger fire. I’m still caught on the cable, but for a moment the whoosh of pressure knocks me off balance. The flame lifts off the metal, traces an arc through the vacuum—

  —And cuts across Carver’s chest.

  Neither of us speak. I can see his eyes, wide with confusion, then horror. I’ve stopped breathing again. There’s a burn mark on his suit, slicing across the middle of the letters SCC.

  I hear him breathe over the radio. “I’m OK,” he says. It’s more question than statement. “Just … I’m OK. There wasn’t much contact.”

  Slowly, I bring the flame back around. I start cutting again, trying not to look at the readouts in my helmet, stopping every so often to adjust my hold on the cable. My hands are impossibly numb. I cut in a rough rectangle, big enough for us to slip through in our bulky suits. The initial rush of air has stopped; the inner airlock door must have sealed. The inside of the tug is starting to become visible, awash with red light.

  My gauge is only a quarter full now. I’m about to start cutting the final side of the rectangle, already thinking about how I’ll push the cut panel away from us, when Carver says, “Riley, there’s something wrong.”

  I force myself to keep the torch in contact with the metal. “What is it?”

  “I’m getting a warning. On my suit display,” he says. The words come out in chunks, like he can’t put them all together. Or like he’s finding it difficult to breathe. “Some kind of … oh gods, Riley, it’s a pressure warning.”

  The plasma cutter. The burn mark on his chest.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, not daring to look at him, moving the cutter as fast as I can. “We’ll be inside soon, OK? Just hold on for me.”

  “Lot of warnings popping up here, Riley.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Eight inches to go. Seven. I try not to think of what we were taught about the physics of space. And what happens to the human body in a vacuum.

  “My tongue. I can feel it on my tongue.”

  Five inches. “Carver, we’re nearly there.” Four.

  Suddenly he’s screaming in my ears. “It hurts, Riley, make it stop, make it stop!”

  96

  Riley

  The next few moments are a confused blur.

  I cut through the final edge and grab hold of Carver’s suit, only just remembering to shut off my plasma cutter before I do. Carver has stopped screaming.

  The chunk of metal that I cut out of the tug’s body drifts away. Somehow, I manage to haul Carver through the opening. I’m fighting against the lack of gravity now, forgetting that I have to control my movements. But then we’re inside the tug, drifting in the red-washed interior. I’m yelling Carver’s name, and getting nothing, nothing but the crackle of the radio back.

  I manage to get us over to the ramp, which leads down to the airlock. The thought occurs to me that there might be a welcoming party on the other side, but there’s no way I’m staying in this vacuum a second longer than I have to. Not with Carver passed out, the pressure being sucked from his suit. I might be too late.

  Don’t you think that.

  I hammer on the release, and pull Carver through into the airlock space – he feels light, like there’s nothing inside the suit. The outer door closes. I hear the hiss of the airlock pressurising, and then the second one opens and we’re moving through.

  I grab at Carver’s wrist panel, fumbling with it, and when his helmet shoots back into the suit I see that his face is almost drained of blood. His lips are a horrific shade of purple.

  I shout his name, loud enough that it hurts my ears inside my own helmet.

  I stab at my wrist, retracting the helmet, not caring about the change in pressure. It’s like someone is jabbing hot needles into my ears. The familiar nausea is back. I groan with pain, but somehow I manage to keep my eyes locked on Carver.

  I reach out, pushing past the pain, my suited hand finding Carver’s face.

  He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak, or open his eyes.

  I’m trying to form words, but they don’t quite make it out of my throat. I try to slap him, but in the low gravity I can’t get enough force. My hand just taps his cheek. I bite my lower lip hard enough to bring a trickle of blood, tasting the coppery tang of it, the sting taking attention from the horrible feeling in my ears and stomach.

  “Carver,” I say through gritted teeth. “Wake up. Please, Carver, wake up.”

  I take in a huge breath – the air tastes stale here, and dry – and scream into his face. “Carver, don’t leave me!”

  At first, I think I’ve imagined it. But then his lips move again, very slightly. I hold the movement in my mind as I would a very fragile piece of glass in my hand.

  Carver coughs, then sucks in a huge whoop of air. He does it again and again.

  “Riley…” he says, his voice barely a whisper. And then I’m burying my face in his chest, pushing us right into the wall.

  “I think you can start calling me Aaron now,” he says.

  I can feel my tears falling away from my face, drifting past us. His arms go around my body, and although they don’t pull me close, I can feel them there.

  Good enough.

  After a few moments, he whispers, “You need to let go.”

  “Not ever.”

  “No, you really do.” He pushes me away, turns to the side and throws up.

  I try not to look at the vomit; the slick globules hang in the air, splitting and turning, as if they’re floating in a glass of water. The pain in my ears and stomach has dropped a little. Now that I have a chance to actually look at the surroundings, I can see we’re at the end of a long passage. It’s smaller and more cramped than the corridors on Outer Earth. There are banks of bright white lights in long lines across the ceiling. Somewhere, very faint, there’s a buzzing sound, like a machine starting up.

  “How you holding up?” I ask Carver, as I pull him along.

  “Feels like someone hit me in the stomach with a steel pole,” he says. “Eyes, too.”

  “Try swallowing. It helps a little.”

  “I can barely talk, you want me to swallow?”

  “Make an effort.”

  He smiles a little, then groans in pain. I’m worried he’s going to throw up again, but he gets it under control.

  “Come on,” I say. “We’ve got an Earth trip to cancel.”

  “You need to—” he stops, steeling himself. “You need to go on ahead.”

  I stare at him, confused. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I can barely move two feet without wanting to spill my guts. I’ll just slow you down.”

  “Aaron…”

  But I see his hand gripped tight to the wall hold, and I know he’s serious. I swim back towards him and hug him again, resting my head on his shoulder. “Promise me you’ll try to get somewhere safe?” I say.

  “Not a chance. I’ll be right behind you, soon as my stomach stops trying to crawl out of my mouth.”

  I kiss his cheek – his skin is like ice. Then I’m gone, moving away before I have a chance to think about it.

  97

  Prakesh

  Prakesh has never been on the bridge of an asteroid catcher.

  It’s enormous, far bigger than he would have expected for a crew of six. It’s arranged like an amphitheatre, with three tiered levels. The captain’s chair is right in the middle of the bridge, tilted slightly back. Workstations surround it, and there are dozens of other screens positioned around the walls, Prakesh can only guess at some of their readouts. He’s floating near the back wall, doing what he can to keep the contents of his stomach in place.

  What captures his attention is the front of the bridge. It’s taken up by a huge viewport: a curving, rectangular sheet of toughened glass. Through it, Prakesh ca
n just see the edge of the Earth.

  What’s down there? What have the Earthers found that makes them think they can survive?

  The bridge is packed. The two remaining crew members have been pushed down into their seats, each of them surrounded by a group of Earthers. Okwembu is bent over one of them, her body twisting as she floats in mid-air, clutching her tab screen. Prakesh catches snippets of conversation, and realises they’re trying to restart the ship’s thrusters, get it spinning so that they can get the gravity back. He hears them talking about their course – they’re going to put the ship into orbit around the Earth, plan their next move.

  He feels someone slide in behind him, and then Mikhail is whispering in his ear. “Don’t even think about it,” he says, his breath hot and dank on Prakesh’s skin.

  Anger floods through him, but it’s a weary anger. He turns himself around to face Mikahil, putting his hand on the wall to steady his body. “Think about what?”

  “Doing anything stupid.” Mikhail’s eyes bore into his. “You think I don’t know who you are?”

  For a horrible moment, Prakesh is sure that Mikhail knows about Resin – that he’ll tell everyone. But instead, the Earther leader says, “You fought against us, back in the dock. You try and get in the way here, and I’ll break both your arms.”

  Prakesh almost laughs. What is he possibly going to do? Take out a bridge full of armed Earthers by himself? Even if he enlists Syria – currently against the back wall, fighting against the nauseating effects of the lack of gravity – he’d end up dead.

  “Get the hell away from me,” he says.

  “You just—”

  “I said, get away from me.” He shoves Mikhail in the chest. They fly apart, Prakesh bumping into the ceiling. A couple of the Earthers cry out in alarm. Before they can jump in, Prakesh raises his hands, meeting Mikhail’s thunderous gaze. “I’m not going to do anything. Just leave me be.”