Oxygen Series Box Set: A Science Fiction Suspense Box Set

by John Olson

  Was she just toying with him? Trying to make him suffer? He had known girls like that in high school. Rough girls from the public schools. Shouting lewd comments. Flirting with every uniformed boy they saw. He had known they were just teasing him, but secretly he liked it anyway. Before he’d met Sarah, those suggestive jokes and shouted taunts were as close to a social life as he had ever come.

  But now ... he wasn’t a schoolboy now. He could keep pushing her away until she got the message. But Kennedy was another matter. If she kept it up with the Hampster ... well, she was flirting with trouble.

  Big time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thursday, April 3, Year Three, 9:30 P.M.

  Valkerie

  VALKERIE’S FEET POUNDED SILENTLY AGAINST the treadmill. Her hips chafed under the tug of the four large elastic bands that pulled her down against the belt. She let go of the handrails and swiped a towel across her face. The Hab was stifling—seven degrees above normal. Only fifty-five minutes and already her legs felt like kinked garden hoses. She dialed in a higher speed and pushed through the pain to keep up. Heat or no heat, she wasn’t going to lose bone mass without a fight.

  Valkerie swung her left arm in a sweeping arc, pulling against the bungee cords built into her penguin suit. She punched with her right—a jab for Bob with his haunting eyes and silent disdain. A left, a right. Kennedy with his sugary politeness and wandering eyes. Why did he have to be the only one who ever talked to her? An uppercut—maybe that would get Lex talking. A right, a left, a right. Perez, Harrington—Josh. Another right. Josh had said he would be there for her. A left. She heard his voice, but it was all NASA-speak. Words beamed twenty million miles through dark, cold space—but saying nothing.

  The timer buzzed and Valkerie jogged the machine to a standstill. She unbuckled the strap that held the elastic bands to her waist and pushed off for her room, careful not to dislodge the sheet of sweat that clung to her back. She was too tired. The last thing she wanted was to chase blobs of sweat around the cabin with a towel.

  Grabbing clean clothes from her room, Valkerie circled around the central stairway to the thirty-by-thirty-inch shower compartment built into the wall next to the toilet ORU. The unit was barely big enough for her to maneuver in. How did Bob manage? Probably didn’t even notice. Valkerie slammed the shower door shut. These days all Bob seemed to think about was repairing the ship. She couldn’t believe he’d just walked away and left her to fend off Kennedy by herself.

  Valkerie squirmed out of her sweaty clothes and pulled the handheld shower nozzle out from the wall. She wet her clothes with a tiny blob of water and rubbed soap into them until they were a ball of floating suds. Then she sprayed herself gently, letting the water encase her body in a thin, shimmering sheet. The water was much warmer than usual. It felt nice, but the warmth wouldn’t last. She lathered herself quickly, using her soapy clothes as a washcloth. When she was done, she used the vacuum hose to suck off all the soapy water. After vacuuming the last film of water from the sides of the shower, she rinsed herself with a clean spray of water and vacuumed herself and the shower walls dry. Ah ... it wasn’t exactly relaxing, but at least she was clean.

  Valkerie dried off quickly and got dressed. She and Bob were scheduled for a break, but what could she do? Kennedy and Lex were both asleep, and Bob had made it abundantly clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Sixty-eight days into the mission, and already she was sick to death of life on the Ares 10. How could she hold out for two and a half years? What had she been thinking? She’d be thirty-five before the mission ended. Thirty-six or thirty-seven before life was back to normal—assuming it ever went back to normal. Her dad’s last message said he’d received over two hundred e-mails from men wanting to communicate with her. One even asked him for her hand in marriage. What kind of man would do that? Had she thrown away her only chance at a normal life? What about friends, marriage—a family?

  Valkerie pushed off for the stairs. Maybe if she just talked to Bob ... if she could find out what was bugging him, maybe they could patch things up. It was worth a try. Things couldn’t continue as they were. Not with Kennedy getting more familiar by the day. Something about him made her uneasy—not to mention all those stories she’d heard in Houston. She pulled herself down the stairwell and wriggled through the door.

  Bob lay stretched out against the back wall of the lower deck, examining the pipes behind the wall panel that Kennedy had spilled his “juice” on.

  “Bob? Could we talk?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.” Bob didn’t turn around.

  “Um ...” Valkerie moved across the room and anchored herself to the floor stay next to Bob. “Have I done something to offend you?”

  “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

  “A couple of hours ago with Kennedy. You didn’t seem that eager to ... talk.”

  “As I said, I had work to do.” Bob grabbed a flashlight from his belt and thrust it deep inside the wall.

  Valkerie’s stomach churned. “You don’t care about anything but work, do you?”

  Bob pulled his head out of the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I care—”

  “Then why didn’t you help me with Kennedy?” Valkerie demanded. “Is it some kind of a guy thing? A noninterference pact?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bob stuck a long vacuum hose into the wall and turned on the motor. A high-pitched whine filled the chamber.

  “I was practically begging you to stay, but no, you ran back to your tools where it’s warm and safe. You didn’t care whether he … hurt me—”

  “What did Kennedy do?” Bob pushed himself upright and grabbed a ceiling strap with a white-knuckled hand. His eyes smoldered with fury.

  Valkerie backed away. “Nothing … Not yet. But I don’t trust him. Especially not now.”

  Bob’s eyes went wide. “I’m not getting this. After launch you seemed to like him fine enough.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Asking me if he’s ever been married? How he feels about women? And I tried to warn you off, but—”

  “Warn me off?” Valkerie forced a laugh. “You thought I was … interested? In Kennedy? What kind of an idiot do you think I am?”

  Bob’s mouth opened and closed like a gasping fish. His expression would have been funny if it weren’t so heart-rendingly pathetic.

  “Bob, I was trying to figure out why Kennedy was acting so weird—covering up evidence of this coolant leak for one thing. Threatening me with a torch.”

  “He threatened you?” Bob’s jaw tightened. His eyes burned. “What else has he done? Has he … tried anything?”

  Valkerie shook her head. “Nothing specific, but … listen, I just don’t feel safe around him. You’ve heard the rumors.”

  “They’re not rumors. Kennedy’s a slimeball.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t like him looking at me like that. Or coming on to me the way he was before you came in. I told him three times to stop, and he just ignored me. I was desperate for you to make him leave me alone, but you just …”

  Bob’s face softened. “I’m sorry, Valkerie. I’m not very good at reading social situations. I thought … well, never mind what I thought. But it’s not going to happen again. Not without consequences. I promise you that.” Bob turned and started to push off for the hatch, but Valkerie grabbed him by the arm.

  “Bob, wait!”

  Bob turned slowly. She could feel his fury trembling through the muscles of his arm.

  “I don’t want trouble. Kennedy’s not ... right. Maybe we should let Josh and Nate handle it.”

  Bob shook his head. “They’re not here. And Kennedy knows he doesn’t have to face them for another thirty months. By then it’ll be ancient history. I’ll handle it.”

  “Just be careful. Okay?”

  “Careful?” Bob stared at her for what seemed a frozen eternity and then turned back toward the stairwell.

  She watched as he floated
across the corridor and pulled himself through the hatch. There were a million things she’d wanted to say to him. Why couldn’t she make any of them come out?

  A leaden weight settled into her stomach as she stared at the empty hatch. If Kennedy was in one of his moods … If Bob said even the tiniest thing wrong …

  She shouldn’t have said anything.

  Things had been bad before, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get a whole lot worse.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, April 4, Year Three, 4:00 P.M.

  Bob

  BOB PULLED ON HIS GLOVES and locked the wrist connectors onto the sleeves of his EVA suit. He’d come down pretty hard on Kennedy, but the Hampster wasn’t giving anything away. It could have been worse, of course. Bob had half expected things would come to blows. But Kennedy’s innocence act introduced its own set of complications.

  “Hampster, are you sure you didn’t do anything to spook Valkerie? A crude remark? A joke she might have taken the wrong way?” Bob took another breath of pure oxygen and looked at his watch. They still had another five minutes of prebreathing to go.

  “No way! She came to me—not the other way around. I didn’t do a thing. I think she’s making things up. You must have noticed she’s been off her game ever since launch. If you ask me, a couple of screws might have shook loose on takeoff.”

  Bob half-closed his eyes and tried another tack. “Now you’re saying she’s unstable? Because she’s on point while we’re doing the walk. If she goes hinky on us—”

  “Hey, Valkerie!” Kennedy said in a jovial voice, his eyes looking past Bob. “Are you ready to ride herd on us?”

  Bob turned to see Valkerie emerge from the stairwell, moving slowly because of her EVA suit. Had she heard their conversation?

  She looked a little apologetic. “Sorry for the wait, guys. I was just upstairs helping Lex on the console. Ready to turn on comm?”

  Bob set the frequency on his comm link and flicked it on. “Bob, comm check, over.”

  Lex’s voice floated in through his headset. “Bob, this is Lex. I read you loud and clear. Hampster?”

  “CDR, comm check.”

  “Loud and clear,” said Lex. “Houston, this is Lex. We are go for the spacewalk. I’m at the console, Valkerie is suited and manning the CamBot, Kennedy and Bob are wrapping up their prebreathing.”

  Bob felt a little nervous about this EVA. Nobody had ever done one like this in interplanetary space, millions of miles from Earth. If anything went wrong, they’d be a long way from the nearest gas station.

  “Okay, crew, let’s do it.” Kennedy gave Valkerie a thumbs-up and pointed to the CamBot she’d be operating remotely. “Take some great shots for the kids back home, okay, Big V?”

  She looked mildly irritated at this new nickname. Bob felt his hackles rising. Great. Out we go, and you’ve just annoyed the person who has to let us back in. Nice move, Hampster.

  Kennedy unlocked the hatch to the airlock and stepped inside. Bob followed him in. They sealed the hatch and pressed the button to pump air back into the Hab.

  When the pressure got down to a few millibars, Bob flicked another switch, and they evacuated the remaining air into space. Amazingly, the airlock didn’t have a safety mechanism. He turned the handle and the outer hatch popped ajar.

  “This is CDR,” Kennedy said. “We are egressing the Hab now.” He pulled himself out.

  “MS2 following,” Bob said on his way out.

  Quarks and bosons! Nothing in the world prepared you for a spacewalk. It was just plain weird to be out in space, with nothing holding you to civilization but a thin little tether. The EVA suit’s bulk made your legs pretty much useless. You moved by grabbing and pulling. And you tried not to look down—whatever “down” meant. And don’t even think about the fact that a good shove and a broken tether would send you tumbling away from the ship on a nice elliptical orbit around the sun. And you’d just keep going for a billion years or whatever, until the sun swelled up and fried you.

  Bob was hyperventilating. Stop it! Don’t think about it.

  It was a head thing—a lot like walking on one of those four-by-four beams in a kiddie playground. If the thing was six inches off the ground, you could walk it with no sweat. But raise the bar a hundred feet up and try walking that same beam. Most adults couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it.

  Now raise the bar twenty-five million miles, put on a hundred-pound EVA suit, and bring along some tools so you can do repairs.

  And make it look easy for the kids back home. Bob’s heart was hammering in his chest. He could do this. Had to do this. Was going to do this.

  Kennedy looked back. “How you doing, Kaggo? Need a hand?”

  “Just getting my bearings.”

  They had egressed near the aft section of the Hab, at the opposite end from the antenna. Bob pulled himself awkwardly along. He noticed the CamBot tracking him, its red LED lit. He stopped and waved to the camera.

  “Looking good, Bob,” said Valkerie. “Hey, Kennedy, what’s that?”

  Bob turned to look. Kennedy hovered inches from the Hab, peering intently at something.

  Bob pulled himself over to have a look. “What’s up, Hampster?”

  “Nothing major,” Kennedy said. “Looks like we’ve already absorbed a kinetic energy event.”

  Bob examined the hole. It was small and jagged and showed a carbon streak on the white exterior of the Hab. The Hab was covered with a synthetic, multilayered foam construction, designed to absorb the impacts of space debris in low-earth orbit and micrometeorites in deep space. A pebble moving at ten kilometers per second had more energy than a rifle bullet. “Looks pretty energetic,” he said. “Probably went in several centimeters.”

  Kennedy pushed his index finger into the ragged wound. “Three or four inches, at least.”

  Valkerie’s voice broke in. “Kennedy, remember to decontaminate that glove after ingress. Just in case of organics.”

  Bob smiled. Like there was any chance of catching a virus hitchhiking on a micrometeorite. But procedures were procedures.

  Kennedy pulled his finger out. “Roger that, Valkerie. We are now continuing on to the antenna.”

  They traveled the length of the ship, moving slowly and carefully. When they reached the antenna, Kennedy took his position on the far side. Bob moved in on the near side. Both of them attached short secondary tethers to the ship.

  Bob studied the antenna. The servo motor was shot, just like the CamBot had shown. He reached into the web bag strapped to his side, pulled out the spare, and handed it to Kennedy. A couple of minutes’ work with the wrench and the bad servo came out.

  He guided the new one into position, tightened it down with a wrench, and connected the power cable. No big deal.

  “Smile for the cameras, Kaggo,” said Kennedy.

  Bob looked up in time to see the CamBot propelling itself carefully into place. “Show them the old piece, Hampster.”

  “Good work on the repair, Kaggo,” said Lex. “Step back, boys. I’m going to test the motor.”

  Bob and Kennedy unlatched their secondary tethers and eased backward.

  “Testing on my mark,” said Lex. “Three, two, one, mark!”

  The servo began turning and the antenna tilted.

  “Way to go, guys!” Valkerie said.

  “I’m all set to activate the antenna and try a transmission,” Lex said.

  “Don’t turn on the juice until we get away from this antenna,” Kennedy said. “I don’t want to get my brains fried. By the way, I think we should do a quick visual inspection of the solar panels. What do you think, Kaggo? Maybe we can fix the panels?”

  Right. Fat chance of that.

  “Bob, this is Lex. Do you concur?”

  Bob hesitated. He was feeling queasy, but he couldn’t say no. This would probably be Kennedy’s last spacewalk ever. “Affirm on that, Lex,” Bob said. “Let’s do a quick visual on both panels.”

  Solar Panel A was a paper-
thin collapsible structure about two meters wide and extending fifty meters straight out from the ship.

  “Lex, this is Bob. Solar Panel A has good structural integrity for about the first twenty-five meters. Beyond that, there’s a complete disconnect.”

  “Roger, Bob,” said Lex. “Does it appear to be repairable?”

  “Negative.”

  “I concur on that,” said Kennedy. “Proceeding to Solar Panel B.”

  When he reached the other panel, Bob was beginning to feel fatigued. The pressure inside the EVA suit made it hard to bend his arms and legs. NASA had never yet solved the flexibility problem. EVAs were exhausting.

  Panel B looked a little dinged up near the base. Bob inspected it all the way around, then clipped his secondary tether to the side of the Hab. “Valkerie, bring the CamBot around and photograph this. It appears that we had some mechanical torsion on the panel during deployment, with associated scraping on one side. I am observing several exposed wires with heavily abraded insulation. Kennedy, what do you make of these?”

  Kennedy was breathing hard in his helmet mike. The sound made Bob nervous. “Lex, I concur with Bob’s assessment. There appears to be some mechanical deformation at the base of Panel B, with collateral electrical damage.”

  The CamBot arrived. Valkerie quickly targeted the bot’s powerful light on the wires.

  “Okay, guys, good news,” Lex said. “I activated the Ku antenna and have been transmitting the CamBot feed to Earth. They’ve acquired signal and the engineers are looking at the video now. We’ve got a long radio delay, but maybe they can give us some advice.”

  Bob reached in alongside the CamBot and pointed to the wires. “These red wires are for carrying current from the solar panel. What’s this green one? It appears to have come disconnected from something. The end is free and exposed. Is that for control? Or sensors? I don’t recognize it.” Which made Bob nervous. There shouldn’t be a single piece of this craft that he didn’t know inside out. He ought to know what the wire did, but it was ... totally new to him.