by Anthology
"If I could get in there I would," replied the same red-haired tall woman Ida had seen up the ladder in the atrium, stepping out right behind him. "The alarms show a leak inside a duct. None of us will fit. Even then, we probably can’t suit up fast enough and get in there before the air balance tips. The front entry air-chamber already can’t be used until we fix it."
“So, evacuation isn’t an option? Give me some other choice. What about your robot? I thought this was what it was for!”
“In the tunnels. Under the tracks. Not for up ladders and down ducts."
The station-master threw up his hands and turned to stalk back past Ida and Maurice.
Before she lost her nerve, Ida stepped in his path. “I’m small.”
He looked down at Ida, then back at the engineer. "What about this kid? Would she fit?"
“Sure,” the engineer admitted, “She would fit, but then what?”
"I'm sure I could do it." Ida volunteered. “And I have my full air-skin on already.”
The engineer stepped around the station-master to look Ida up and down.
"You can tell her over the radio what to do." The station-master decided. "Let's get her in there. We can't wait any longer or we’re going to have to beg trains to come in for a full evac. It’ll take all night to clean the air. No train is going to want to stop here while our alarms are coded like this." He stalked away to talk to the group of security guards, calling back over his shoulder. "Just fix it. I’ll send someone back with the smallest mask with a radio we can find.” He turned away from them yelling, “Someone turn off the siren." A few moments later, the alarm fell silent, but the amber lights still flashed.
“What about my brother?” Ida gestured to Maurice huddled by the base of the kiosk and holding his mask in place. His hood still flopped on his back, his ash blond curls wild on his head. Ida stepped closer to the woman, speaking under her breath so Maurice wouldn’t hear and get even more scared. “His hood has a tear.”
“Then I guess we better work fast. As long as the warning lights don’t shift to red, he’ll be fine.” Up close, the engineer was even taller than Ida had realized. "I'm Rayna." She offered Ida her hand. "What's your name?"
"Ida." She shook Rayna's hand.
Rayna spotted her necklace, pulling her own out of the neck of her uniform. Hers also had two disks.
“You two on your own?" she jingled her necklace and gestured with her chin at Ida's.
“Yes. Mom three years ago. Dad last month.” Ida looked back at Maurice who started at her with his big blue eyes wide with fear. “We’re alone.”
When Ida looked back at her, Rayna was watching Maurice. “Not now you aren’t.” She shook her head and turned back to Ida. “We need you. I am going to give you the world’s fastest lesson on how to use this air-seal tool." She pulled a strange cylinder from her equipment belt. It looked like a cross between a flashlight and a small hand-drill. "Then you need to go up the ladder and into that duct."
Ida stared up at where Rayna was pointing. Could she back out of this? Maurice would be alone. What if she couldn’t do it? What if she fell?
“The biggest challenge to fixing a breach like this,” Rayna’s voice pulled her attention back, “is the flexibility of the material. You need to fuse the edges of the tear or patch it if the tear is too big. Everything must be tight, no gaps.”
Ida nodded.
“The tool works through a combination of heat and chemical reaction. You have to keep it away from your own air-skin or it will make a new hole where you don’t want one.” Rayna looked back at Maurice. “Get his hood up. It will still help some. One of the staff can keep an eye on him.”
Ida helped Maurice with his hood and told him she would be back soon. A woman sat with Maurice, whispering something that made him smile, still clutching his mask to his face as he held Pig close.
Ida practiced on some air-skin scraps, Rayna hovering over her shoulder giving tips. It was harder than it looked. The sealer felt strange and awkward in her hand, but by the time the radio-mask appeared, Ida felt like she was getting the hang of it.
Rayna had Ida take off her loose clothing, leaving her standing exposed in just the tight protective skin. Rayna dumped everything out of her equipment belt and onto the floor with a huge clatter. She wrapped the belt around Ida’s slim hips, showing her how to stash the tool and the patches.
Ida swapped her mask for the new one. The air in this mask was crisper than in her mask. Maybe drier? She let her thoughts on the texture of the air distract her as they moved to the bottom of the ladder. Rayna held it steady as Ida climbed. Ida heard a train rush through the station without stopping, felt the metal vibrate as it passed somewhere far below.
Ida didn’t look down, just up at the next step on the ladder. The new mask had a headlamp that lit her way as she clambered over the ledge and crawled into the narrow dark channel. It quickly got too small to crawl, forcing her lie flat and pull herself forward with her elbows. Around the first tight turn, the equipment belt got hooked on something. She had to shimmy backwards and roll over to get herself free, before rolling back onto her belly to continue inching forward.
She almost fell over the edge at the far end of the shaft, surprised by the empty space suddenly gaping ahead. Her gasp had Rayna calling through the radio.
“Ida?”
"I found the end of the duct."
"There will be a ladder leading down from that end too."
"I've got it." Ida found the first rung with her right hand. "Wait. How am I going to turn around?" There was a long pause. Ida stared at the ladder leading down into murky shadows. The headlamp made little impact on the inky blackness. No way she was going down head first. “Should I come back and go in feet first?”
"No.” Rayna finally replied. “No. I have an idea. Can you lie on your back and reach up? There should be a ladder leading up, too. You can grab a rung above and pull yourself up enough to get your feet on the ladder going down."
Ida turned over and looked up. The bottom step of another ladder glinted in the beam of her headlamp, leading upwards into more darkness.
“Yes. I see it. Let me try.” She rested her head against the bottom of the tunnel and reached. It was too far away. Ida carefully shifted further forward until her head was no longer supported. She reached up and her hand came close, but not close enough to wrap her fingers around the rung. “I still can’t reach. How did anyone ever do this?”
“They didn’t,” Rayna replied. “Before the underground was sealed, there were easier ways to get to that section from the outside. They were never meant to be accessed from inside the station.”
“Couldn’t I go through the old doors from outside? I have my air-skin.” Ida tipped her head back, letting her headlamp rove the far reaches of the cavernous space. She would have had better luck with her father’s telescope.
“No.” Rayna sighed. “Great idea, only that would contaminate the whole station.”
“Oh.”
“Can you brace your legs and push out further?”
“Umm…” Ida experimented with her legs, trying to figure out a way to keep herself from sliding all the way out of the duct and into the gloom below. “Maybe?”
“Keep trying.” This almost a whisper.
She rolled back onto her stomach to look down the ladder. She could grab the first rung and flip herself over, but she could picture all too easily her back smacking against the ladder, her grip slipping, and falling who knew how far down. She rolled onto her back once more, this time finding some indentations into which she wedged her feet on the sides of the duct.
And then, without thinking about all the ways it could go wrong, Ida pushed herself back and over the edge until her entire torso was out over the emptiness. She quickly sat up and reached as far as she could.
She caught the lowest rung above her with her left hand. For a moment Ida just hung there, breathing. Finally she pulled herself up high enough to grab on with her right
hand as well and pulled her legs out of the duct to put them on the rung below.
“Okay. I’m on the ladder.”
“What?” Rayna barked with a laugh. “How?”
“If I live through this,” Ida laughed back, “I promise I’ll explain. Now what?”
“Down the ladder, across the bottom of the air shaft and then back up the ladder to the right.”
Before Rayna even finished, Ida was moving down the ladder, looking down to shine the headlamp at her feet. She had to jump down to the floor at the bottom. Across the open space she found the ladder on the opposite side easily enough.
“Rayna, the ladder is too high, I can’t reach.” Ida waited. “Rayna?” The radio remained silent. She pointed her headlamp carefully at the floor around her. The space stretched far beyond the beam of light. Ida tried not to think about getting stuck down here with no food or water as everyone else was forced to evacuate the station. She couldn’t think about Maurice alone, angry red burns branching down from his hairline and across his forehead.
Ida put her hand on the wall and began to walk along the edge of the space. She almost tripped on something. It was a broken wooden crate that looked like it had been dropped down the shaft.
It was huge and heavy and awkward as she dragged it into place. Finally she was able to clamber up its side and get onto the ladder.
Halfway to the top, Ida finally heard Rayna’s voice again.
“Ida?” Rayna sounded panicked.
“I’m here.” Ida replied, out of breath from the climb.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. The bottom of the ladder was too high. I had to find something to climb on.” She paused to catch her breath. “Where am I going?”
“At the top of the ladder near the ceiling you should find a small door.” Rayna’s voice hitched, like maybe she had been crying. “Given the distribution of air degradation reported from this shaft’s sensors, the breach has to be in there somewhere.”
Getting the door unlatched was easy. Leaning back far enough to pull it open was hard. Then she was half inside a weird little box and looking for the breach.
It was obvious once she saw it. The panel covering one of the air exchanges with the outside was damaged. The left edge had torn free, the translucent material flapping as air rushed in.
Ida pulled out the tool. It felt cold and heavy in her hand. She had a moment of panic that she would fumble and the tool would fall all the way back to the floor far below, but then she got it turned around and pointed in the right direction.
“Remember, let each inch of re-fused material set for at least 90 seconds. That way it won’t pull out as you go.”
“Okay.” Ida fused the first inch. “Can you keep time for me? I just finished the first inch.”
“Started.”
She took a breath, and after a few beats of silence, “Orion. Cassiopeia. Pegasus.”
“Ida?”
“Sorry. My father and I used to look at constellations together on the roof of our building. He taught me to name as many as I can remember when I needed to stay calm.”
“I haven’t seen the stars in a long time.”
“It was the only time I liked putting on my air-skin.” Ida closed her eyes, remembering. “As more city lights went out, we just could see more and more stars.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“It was.” Ida squeezed her eyes, trying hold the tears in. “It still is.”
“Time’s up. You can do the next inch.”
“Thanks,” she choked out, opening her eyes to a blur of tears. They trailed down her cheeks where she couldn’t reach to wipe them away. They were salty and warm when they reached her tongue. She blinked her eyes clear and fused the next inch. “Restart timer please. Ursa Minor. Ursa Major. Draco. Cygnus…”
When she finished the last inch, the air pressure dropped and Ida slumped against the side of the chamber. She closed her eyes.
“It’s done,” she whispered.
“Good job!” Rayna’s cheerful voice was followed by a flood of shouts. They hurt her ears, but she didn’t care. She had done it. She hadn’t died, Maurice was safe and the station was fixed. Her father would have been so proud.
Getting back out was easier, once she wrangled the broken box across the floor to the first ladder. She took the opportunity at the end of the duct to show Rayna how she had gotten onto the ladder at the other end.
Down on the floor, Rayna pulled her into a quick hug. Then she took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.
“Well done.” She had a huge grin on her face.
“Looks like you might have found someone to train,” said a voice over the radio; Ida thought it might have been the station-master.
“We are planning to relocate,” Ida confessed, “if we can just find a train that will take us out to the West City Dome.”
“I see.” Rayna was interrupted by a long low tone broadcast over the speakers. The amber warning lights went out. She looked up. “That’s the all clear, you don’t need this anymore.” She reached over, pulled off Ida’s mask and handed it back to her.
“Ida!” The next thing Ida knew, Maurice was throwing himself into her arms and she was kissing his smiling face.
After Maurice and Pig peppered Ida with questions about her adventure for a few minutes, Rayna interrupted, a serious tone in her voice. “I understand you have your eyes on the West City Dome, but I would like to propose something different.”
“Okay.” Ida moved to stand beside Maurice, watching Rayna’s face as she held him close.
“I need an assistant. I can pay you with a combination of station scrip and food.”
“I’m hungry.” Maurice volunteered. Rayna and Ida both laughed.
“Someone bring this young man a sandwich.” Rayna called out, to a chorus of more laughter. “Scrip will work at any station and on most trains. If you want to move on in a few months, won’t be anything I can do to stop you.”
“I understand.” Ida nodded. An adult in station gray brought Maurice a sandwich. As he devoured it, Ida swore she could see him grow. “But Maurice needs a new air-skin. We barely got this on him this morning, even before the hood got torn.”
“We can take care of that.” Rayna waited patiently.
“Maurice?” Ida asked, watching him eat. “Should we stay?”
“This sandwich is good,” he replied around a mouthful of food. “Pig likes it here.”
“In that case,” Ida turned back to Rayna, “our answer is yes.”
“One final condition,” replied Rayna, “You owe me some star gazing.”
“Good thing we kept the telescope.”
Someone handed Ida a sandwich. It tasted amazing.
View from Above(Short story)
by Jeanne Kramer-Smyth
originally published in the 2016 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide
Kendree completed the final checklist and pushed the ignition button. It always unnerved her that there was no sound to confirm that the engines were cycled up. The lights on the control panel paraded past agreeably, just as they had every time her father had taken her out for practice. Mother said she was too young. Father said anyone who lived on a spaceship needed to know how to fly a shuttle. In case of an emergency.
This was an emergency.
The spacesuit crinkled as she swiveled to the launch panel on her right, taking deep breaths of the fake lemon-scented air from the refresher. Bracing herself for the alarm that she was 90% sure she had disabled, Kendree flipped the launch trigger. The shuttle lifted gently from the docking bay floor. No bells clanged. The lights outside the cockpit didn’t suddenly flash red and orange. The bay door slid smoothly open, revealing a wide swath of dark space and stars and the edge of the planet below.
Kendree checked the coordinates one more time, then initiated the autopilot. Her heart raced and she held her breath until the small shuttle was clear of the doors and had turned toward the planet. The navig
ation display projected a total travel time of 18 minutes.
She switched the side screen to replay the last few minutes of her friend’s video message. Elissa’s eyes were puffy and red, but she wasn’t crying. Her voice shook a little as she explained that her parents were evacuating her and her sisters. They were being sent to hide out on their family property a few hours away from the city and the battlefields that had formed around it. Elissa looked over her shoulder at some noise outside her door before turning back to say “Sorry, I have to go. I’ll try to send another message soon, but the country house doesn’t have an uplink to the satellite. I’ll miss talking to you.” She ended the transmission before Kendree had even been able to tell her to be safe.
Kendree had been nervous about the war brewing on the surface for weeks. It was all some awful drama left over from when different Earth factions had settled the planet generations ago. Her parents swore her friend would be okay. They kept saying that Elissa’s parents were scientists. They weren’t soldiers. They would evacuate to somewhere safe before it was too late.
She and Elissa had never met in person, but it was lonely up on the spaceship with just her parents. They had been in geostationary orbit over Elissa’s home city for over a year as Kendree’s parents did their Space Archaeology work. Her mother had met Elissa’s mother through the university in the city below and thought the two girls might enjoy meeting each other—at least over the video channel.
It was hard to be alone on the ship for so long with just her parents for company. She and Elissa had rapidly progressed from awkward “my mom says I have to talk to you” acquaintances to best friends who told each other everything. They loved the same books. They played each other their favorite music. Elissa told her that it was the best to have a friend who wasn’t part of the social scene down on the planet—she could tell Kendree anything. And she did.
The idea of not talking to Elissa for more than a day, let alone for some unknown long amount of time, made her heart ache. The idea that her friend might be in danger—that she could be hurt as politicians and their soldiers fought over who was in charge? That made Kendree’s skin crawl.