Glass Sky

by Niko Perren

  “Here’s the situation,” said Sharon. “Our main computer is soaked, but I think I got the backup into the cargo dome in time. It’s damp, but it should survive. Assuming we restore power. Rajit?”

  “Water shorted the circuit box,” said Rajit. “I replaced the breakers, which should have fixed it. But our outside electrical supply is dead for some reason.”

  “How does upstream electrical system work?” asked Jie.

  “That’s what we’re going to figure out.” Rajit traced a line to the edge of the blueprint. “Sharon, do we have the solar array schematic?”

  Sharon searched through the remaining map tubes. “No. Sorry. And without power, we can’t ask Earthcon.”

  “Could we raise Earthcon on the suit radios?” asked Sally. “The antenna is on the summit. It could be on the other side of the problem.”

  Sharon looked up at Sally. “Great idea!”

  They descended into the hive. The emergency lights cast long, red-tinted shadows, restoring the industrial facility ambience that previous teams had worked so hard to soften. The banner Cheng’s classmates had sent lay in a soggy pile, the letters smeared by moisture.

  The four of them filed to the airlock. Sharon powered up her suit radio. “Earthcon, are you there?”

  One… two… three …

  A drop of water detached from the ceiling and drifted to the ground. It landed with a musical tinkle.

  Four… five… six…

  No answer.

  “We’re under too much insulation,” said Rajit. “We’ll have to go outside.”

  “How can we do that?” Jie asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “There is no power for the airlock. And we can’t force door open against air pressure. Isabel already tried…”

  Fear clawed at him. I’m trapped in the habitat. Without power. No! Not like this! Not with so many people counting on us. Not without saying goodbye to Cheng.

  “Let’s go back to the greenhouse,” said Sharon. Her shirt clung to her chest, dampened by a mixture of sweat and moisture from the walls. Her short gray hair stuck in all directions. Yet she radiated calm authority. Jie was only too happy to follow her up the ladder.

  They gathered around the schematics. Sharon opened her scroll to full size and placed it between them. “We have half a million liters of air per dome. Each of us breathes ten liters a minute.” She brought up a calculator. “Forty into…”

  “Seventeen days,” said Rajit.

  Sharon looked at her scroll, then at Rajit, as if deciding whether to finish the calculation.

  “Make it fourteen,” said Sally. “The greenhouse solar concentrators have stopped rotating. When we go dark, the plants will off-gas CO2.”

  Jie squinted up at the ceiling. The light seemed dimmer already. “Two weeks is enough time for rescue mission, right?”

  “Any situation bad enough to knock us offline is too risky for a rescue crew,” said Sharon. “Best case they send a robot to look. We need to fix this ourselves.”

  “Could four of us overpower airlock?” asked Jie.

  “The small door is about 1.5 square meters,” said Sharon. “Air pressure is one kilogram per square centimeter…”

  “Fifteen tons,” said Rajit.

  Jie wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Wisps of steam rose from the greenhouse floor, fogging his sunglasses, condensing on the plants. Already their fragile climate was drifting out of equilibrium.

  “And there is no bleed valve?” asked Jie.

  “There’s a bleed valve to get us into the habitat,” said Sharon. “But none on the exterior.”

  “Then we need to make a valve,” said Sally. She looked around. “Unless somebody has a better idea?”

  ***

  They chose the cargo dome airlock, since it was larger and there was more room to maneuver. Rajit clambered inside, picked a spot in the center of the outer door, and applied the drill. The reinforced carbon of the door proved a worthy adversary for the diamond-tipped bit. The battery died. Tā naǐ naǐ dè! How thick is this door? Two months ago, Isabel had died trying to get into an airlock. And now they couldn’t get out.

  Rajit connected the spare battery and restarted. His arms trembled as he leaned into the drill. Slowly the bit sunk deeper in.

  “Got it!” he cried. The drill punched through to the outside, and the hole started shrieking like an angry kettle. Rajit wiggled the drill free and slapped his hand over the opening. “Yaaarrrggghhhh. It’s got me, it’s got me.” He rolled his eyes back into his head, twitching as if his arm were being sucked outside.

  Sharon tossed him a plastic plug. “Stuff it,” she said. “Besides, if this were movie physics, I’d be younger and wearing less clothes.” She turned to Sally. “Sally, I’d like you to stay in here. We may need somebody inside. Jie, Rajit, get suited.”

  “What? Me?” asked Jie. “I’m the last person you want outside.”

  “You can troubleshoot machinery,” said Sharon. “And your nanolab is a potential source of spare parts.”

  Sally smiled sympathetically. “You did great when you helped us unload. You’ll be fine.”

  They’re not leaving me much choice.

  They spent several minutes gathering any spare parts they might potentially need and piling them in the airlock. Then Jie changed into his space suit. He crowded into the airlock with Sharon and Rajit, half-sitting on the pile of supplies. His helmet bubble jammed against the “Fit for Life” logo on Rajit’s suit. Sally pushed the door closed, trapping them in blackness until Sharon flicked on her suit lamp. It lit her face from underneath, like a jack-o-lantern.

  “Ready?”

  She removed the plug and air started venting out of their improvised valve with a high-pitched squeal. Jie’s suit fabric swelled. The sound faded as the air thinned. When the noise had all but stopped, Sharon tugged the outer door, working against the residual air pressure, forcing Jie flat against the wall to make room. With a pop of depressurization, light flooded through the gap.

  Sharon stepped outside. Jie followed her into the dust, and stood, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Earth hung in its usual spot, nearly full, so bright that it seemed like all the color had been sucked out of the moon’s monochrome landscape and rolled up into a ball. Life. Teeming in the seas, and the forests, the deserts and the clouds. I want to be back there. Away from this terrible place. To swim in the ocean. To see wind in Cheng’s hair. I don’t want to die.

  “Earthcon, this is Sharon.”

  One. Two. Jie held his breath. Three. Four. Five.

  “Sharon, this… Ear… con. We’re tunin… ignal… Hawaiian deep… antenna array. It’ll take us …ond to adjust our transmission. Can you hear us now?”

  “You’re coming in five by five,” said Sharon. “We have a code one emergency. We’ve lost our upstream power. Can you advise?”

  While the engineers earthside reviewed the situation, Sharon, Jie, and Rajit climbed into the rover and drove up the ridge towards the summit solar array. Jie stared ahead as they passed the place where Isabel had been buried. Not a reminder I need right now.

  At the edge of the solar collectors they set off on foot. Hundreds of new panels had been added since Jie had been out for the funeral, in preparation for the power demands of the mass driver. They walked between the enormous rectangles of suspended solar fabric. The 30-meter high panels hung like sails from rotating masts no thicker than a tentpole.

  Inhale. Hissss. Exhale. Huussss. Surprisingly, Jie wasn’t as frightened as he’d been the last time. The gravity felt natural now, his movements less alien. Sharon stopped at a utility box perched on a crossroads of wiring. Two thick black cables ran towards the habitats. Thinner blue ones, too many to count, led to the solar collectors.

  Jie and Rajit pried off the plastic access panel that protected the utility box’s interior from sunlight. Jie peered inside. Tā naǐ naǐ dè. One of the circuits had fused into a block of slagged metal. Rajit panned his wrist camera over the
scene for the engineers.

  Jie listened to his heart beat as they waited for an assessment. It would sure be nice to have an Earth return vehicle right now.

  “That’s the current regulator,” Earthcon reported. “We show two spares in the cargo dome. Assuming that’s the only problem, you should be back up in a few hours.”

  Jie nearly leapt into the air in celebration.

  “I remember putting one of the spares in the parts pile,” said Sharon. “I’ll fetch it. Jie and Rajit, you can start removing the old one.”

  Rajit disconnected the solar array under Earthcon’s watchful tutelage. Then Jie cut the interior wires loose and tried to pull out the ruined circuit board. He stuck his head and arms inside the cramped box to get a good grasp with the pliers, but try as he might he could only wiggle the board back and forth. His shoulder ached where he’d jammed it scrambling out of bed.

  “Tā naǐ naǐ dè, this is very stuck! Pass me the vice grips, Rajit. I don’t want to cut myself on a wire.”

  “Take your time,” cautioned Earthcon.

  Jie clamped the vice grips onto the circuit board’s thickest part. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, harder, wiggling the vice grips up and down. A hint of movement. Snap! His elbow slammed into metal, firing new agony up his arm.

  “Wǒ cào! Bèn dàn,” Jie scrambled back, checking his suit for holes. “Chǔn huò. Bái chī.” He rubbed his elbow and winced in pain. His whole body trembled.

  “You all right, Jie?” Sharon’s voice echoed inside his helmet. “I’m not sure what all that Chinese means, but it’s making my toes curl.”

  “He called himself an idiot,” said Rajit. “Nǐ zěn mè yàng?”

  Jie almost dropped the vice grips. “Nǐ shuō pǔ tōng huà ma?”

  “Shì de,” said Rajit. ‹I study talk Chinese in university.›

  ‹Why did you never mention it?›

  “Your English is better,” said Rajit. “Now hand me the vice grips before you kill yourself.”

  Rajit clamped the vice grips onto the circuit board, then knelt down, bracing himself with his knees. One of the problems with low gravity was the lack of leverage. A screw was as likely to rotate an astronaut as the other way around. Rajit wiggled the board, muttering in irritation. He sat back, one foot on either side of the opening, squatting to get more power, circuit clamped between his legs.

  “Rajit. Is that a good idea?”

  “Just… about… got…”

  The board sprung loose, tumbling Rajit backwards, jagged metal in hand. “Pop.” An innocuous sound, like a balloon bursting, but to Jie it felt as if an icicle had stabbed his chest. Rajit hit the ground in a cloud of dust. He started thrashing, clutching his leg. Escaping air sprayed a fountain of sparkling ice crystals into the sunlight.

  “Help me,” Rajit gasped, his voice fading as his lungs emptied.

  “Sharon! Emergency!” Jie shouted. “Breach! Breach!”

  He tore the emergency patch kit off his belt. He thought he heard Sharon say “I’m on my way.”

  Rajit clenched his hands around his upper leg in a vain attempt to stop the airflow. Jie couldn’t see past the mirrored glass of Rajit’s helmet, but the external status light blinked an ominous red. Full depressurization. Fluorescent self-repair glue leaked from the edges of the gash, but the cut was too wide. Bare skin bulged out of the jagged hole; blood trickled out, freezing into glimmering rubies as it hit the vacuum.

  “Jie, this is Earthcon, can you describe…?”

  Jie snapped off the transmission. No time for distractions. His fingers scrabbled at the patch kit’s lid. It burst open, spilling its contents onto the ground in agonizing slow motion. Wasted moments. Jie caught the largest patch in midair, fumbling with the pull-tabs. Don’t glue it to myself!

  Rajit slumped, dropping to the ground like a corpse.

  Stay calm. Unconsciousness is normal. I’ve got sixty seconds.

  He examined the hole. No point trying to pull the edges of the suit fabric together. I’d need three hands for that. They’d skipped a lot of lessons, but suit breaches had been drilled into him. Start at the top. Patch the hole. He flattened the patch with his glove to make a good bond with the suit material. A startling amount of blood had escaped from Rajit’s leg now. I’m amazed this glue even sticks to this mess. Jie repeated the process with a second patch, overlapping the first by a few centimeters. Once more should do it.

  He pulled the tabs off the third patch, but as he reached for Rajit’s knee, Rajit convulsed. Jie dove on top of him, grabbing the injured leg with his free hand. Rajit bucked in the low gravity, forcing Jie to hold the patch at arm’s length, like a flag, so that it wouldn’t fold onto itself. How long do I have? Rajit sagged. Quick! Jie slapped on the patch. Pressed the emergency air button on the outside of Rajit’s helmet. Vapor plumed from the repair.

  ‹Son of a turtle. Don’t you dare leak.› Jie pushed with his hand. The flow stopped. The suit light returned to green.

  “Rajit? Can you hear me? Your suit is fixed. You are going to be fine.”

  No response. Rajit’s head hung at an unnatural angle.

  “Rajit?”

  Breathe. Please breathe. The solar panel sentinels faced the sun, catching the rain of photons, undisturbed by the drama unfolding below them.

  ***

  Sharon raced up a few minutes later, her bounding ten-meter strides carrying her so fast that she needed three stutter-steps to slow to a halt. She bent over Rajit. “He’s breathing,” she panted. “See, his oxygen levels are moving. Help me get him to the rover.”

  They lifted Rajit together, Sharon at the head, Jie at the feet. “Careful,” said Jie. “The patches are not sticking well to the blood.” Rajit sagged like a bag of rice. He weighed surprisingly little in the low gravity, more awkward than heavy.

  They stepped forward, synchronizing their movements to make up for their tenuous connection to the ground. It took several tries before they found a comfortable rhythm. “Left, right, left, right.” Sharon called it like a drill sergeant. When they reached the rover, they placed Rajit on the bench seat. Jie sat next to him, gripping Rajit’s slumped body to make sure he didn’t bounce out. Sharon drove the rover like an airplane, soaring over bumps, the ground merely a launch point between flights. Jie nearly screamed as they kamikazied towards the airlock, but Sharon slammed the brakes and turned the vehicle sharply, somehow finding enough traction to swerve to a halt.

  They swept the spare parts out of the airlock and lay Rajit on the floor.

  “I’ll run the lock,” said Sharon. “You stay outside and finish the repairs.”

  “By myself?” No. How can I? Not after what had just happened.

  “You have more engineering experience than I do,” said Sharon. “Earthcon will help.”

  I’m glad she can’t see how scared I am. A trillion neurons shouted at him to flee. Then the door closed on the only bubble of safety for a half million kilometers. The moon stretched away. Empty. Deadly. I’m completely alone out here. No backup. No margin for error.

  ‹Jie, we’ll walk you through this.› The voice from Earth had changed. It was a woman now, with a calm, reassuring voice, speaking Chinese instead of the usual English. ‹Your first step is to find the replacement circuit board.› A picture appeared in his helmet display.

  Focus on the task. Jie searched the gear strewn in the rocky ground around the airlock. Please, let it be here. Without power, he had no way to call inside for parts. It would be terrible if, after all this, he couldn’t find a piece.

  ‹It’s at 2:00, Jie.› His helmet display lit the location, and he dug the board out of the dust. He stowed the board, sat down at the driver’s seat of the buggy, and stared at the unfamiliar controls. Nobody had expected him to drive on the moon, so they’d had him try the simulator just once. For ten minutes.

  He’d rolled the rover and killed everyone.

  ‹The left pedal controls acceleration, right?›

  ‹No!› came
a panicked voice. ‹The right pedal controls acceleration. The left one brakes. Take it slow, Jie.›

  He pivoted his foot, easing the right pedal towards the floor. The vehicle crawled forward. I could walk faster than this. He pushed a little harder, struggling to sense the pressure through his thick boots. The vehicle lurched. He stomped on the brake pedal with his other foot, throwing himself into the steering wheel. As soon as he lifted his foot off the brake, he leapt forward again.

  ‹Use the same foot for both pedals!› yelled Earthcon. ‹That way you won’t accelerate and decelerate at the same time.›

  Wǒ cào! Jie stopped the rover until the adrenaline drained out of his bloodstream. It must have been carnage before self-driving cars. He tried again, more controlled this time, and started up the hill. The rover jounced, jostling his legs and changing the pressure on the pedals, weird oscillations that were hard to dampen. The learning curve was short, though. By the time he summited, he was starting to get a feel for the controls.

  He returned to the junction box, his sense of isolation like a hunger that increased with distance from the airlock. The damaged circuit board lay in a black pool of frozen blood, still clasped in the vice grip’s jaws. Jie placed it on top of the power controller so that he wouldn’t step on it by accident.

  ‹Jie, find the blue-handled cutters. Trim the remaining lead wires.› The woman from Earth directed him like a puppet, with a constant stream of commands that allowed no time for worry. ‹Point the camera slightly left. Attach the red wire to the coupling.›

  The thick, insulated gloves made the smallest manipulations maddeningly difficult. ‹Good. Now twist the two red wires together.›

  He had no idea how long he had been out. Minutes? Hours?

  ‹That’s the last one, Jie. Congratulations. Turn the power on. It’s the red switch on the earthward side of the exterior.›

  Jie’s neck and shoulders ached, and his elbow felt as if it were broken. This had better work. He put his hand on the switch and pushed, then stood motionless in the pale earthlight. The story would be all over the news by now. Are Cheng and Zhenzhen awake, hanging on every update? What about Rajit’s family? He had a nephew and niece with his sister in Delhi. She was a math teacher.