by John Varley
“Not bad,” Travis said. “I never expected we’d get it on the first try. You want to wait a bit, catch your breath?”
“No, let’s get it over with.”
She jumped again. This time she looked off course right from the start… but this time she did a lot better with the SMU, got herself almost lined up, overcorrected, corrected again, and with about ten feet to go was only a few feet off the optimal location. Travis snubbed her safety rope and then coached her through the last feet with tiny bursts from the SMU. It took her a full minute to cross that last few feet, but when she finally was able to reach out and grab that collection of tight cables I heard her laugh, sweet music to my ears.
“Good. Hook your second safety rope to something… that’s good. Now unhook the first line and clip it to the wires right in front of you. Got it.”
Travis pulled that line almost taut, and clipped his end to a ring.
“Now Alicia’s coming over.”
It was easier, because all Alicia had to do was clip her line to the first rope with a snap ring, and pull herself across.
“Just pull a few times,” Travis told her. “It should take you a full five minutes to get across. Okay?”
[367] “Got it.”
One hand on the rope and one carrying her pressurized “black bag” of medical supplies and instruments, she shoved off.
“Oh, man, I don’t like this, I don’t like this.”
“Closing your eyes might help,” Dak told her.
“Dak, stay off the line, please.”
“Let him talk, Captain? It helps me, some.”
“Right. Sorry, guys.”
“No problem.”
“Dak, could you just talk to me?”
Dak hurried down to the control deck, talking all the way, and came back again in a few seconds with a CD. He stuck it in the player and soon one of Alicia’s favorite songs was filling our ears. I heard Alicia laugh, then she started singing along.
“Open your eyes now, Alicia,” Travis said when she was almost there. “Got it? Just tighten your grip on the rope, that should do it.” It did, and in a few seconds Kelly had grabbed Alicia’s hand and they were securing themselves.
“Now what?”
“What looks promising?” Travis asked. There was a long pause.
“Nothing,” Kelly admitted. “I don’t see any lights, or anything like that.”
“That’s okay. Keep looking.”
“It’s pretty dark.”
“Turn on your headlight.”
“My… oh, well, duuuh! Forgot all about it.” All the suits had krypton lights mounted over the faceplates, not that different from automobile headlights, though when one proved to be defective we had to order a new one from Russia.
We saw the lights go on from both their suits.
“I think I know where you are,” Travis said. “Dak, Manny, bring up that schematic on the Ares Seven. Check me, but doesn’t it look like they might be where C deck used to be?”
We brought it up on Travis’s screen, twisted it a few times, and then [368] it fell into place. Dak pointed to a large oxygen cylinder on the schematic, then to a big tank just above Alicia’s and Kelly’s heads.
“I think you’re right, Captain. Kelly, Alicia, if we’ve got you located right, the main air lock ought to be on the side facing away from Red Thunder. Turn to your left a little, Kelly… a little more… there. What you’re lighting up now looks like it might be the descent ladder and what’s left of a landing strut. See it?”
“Yes. But… there’s a lot of wire here, it’s a real rat’s nest.”
“Don’t get caught up in the wires,” Travis said.
“I’m staying clear. But that puts the air-lock door on the other side of all that wiring. I don’t think we can get through unless we cut some of it.”
“Don’t!” we all three shouted at once. Kelly laughed.
“We’re not making a move until we’ve discussed it, don’t worry.”
“Ideas?” Travis called out.
“Get them back, circle around the ship, send ’em over again,” Dak said.
“Cut some wires, see if we can get through that way,” Alicia said.
There was a long silence.
“I’ve gotta go with Dak,” Travis said. “Come back to the tether rope and I’ll haul you back.”
“That’s going to take hours,” Kelly said. “If anybody’s in there, they could be running out of time.”
“If nobody’s in there,” Travis said, “you’re risking your lives for nothing.”
“I think somebody’s in there,” Alicia said.
“Me, too. And don’t call it female intuition. Somebody’s in there.”
There was another long silence. Travis sighed.
“One wire at a time. That’s a terribly dynamic situation you’ve got over there. Cut the wrong wire, it could all go flying apart.”
“Then you’ll just come and get us, right?”
A pause. “Sure. Just take it slow, okay?”
“Got it. Now, where are those wire cutters? Oh, Alicia, can you… I just lost that hammer with the red handle, Travis. Sorry, it just floated up… let me see if I-”
[369] “Let it go!” Travis snapped. Then he muttered, “I should have tied the damn things together… Kelly, don’t worry about it. Worse comes to worst, you can use just about anything as a hammer.”
“I’ve got the wire cutters. I’m tying them to my suit… closing the tool bag. Now, Alicia, which one should we cut first?”
“That one right there.”
“Cutting a thick, green wire… now… Well, that worked out okay. Pull it to one side, Alicia… there. Now, cutting a thick, gold wire… There.”
She cut six wires and pulled them out of the way before she got the wrong one. As soon as she snipped it everything started to move.
“Move back, Alicia!” Kelly warned, and they moved… and the smallest of the three orbiting pieces of the Ares Seven pulled itself free and began to spin off into oblivion. It all happened soundlessly, but my mind supplied the shriek of straining metal and the sound of snapping guitar strings as smaller wires, unable to take up the burden once borne by three or four wires, snapped and popped like cracking whips. Kelly and Alicia turned their backs to the mayhem. I saw one snapping wire slap itself across Kelly’s backpack. Then the two remaining pieces of the ship parted company and began drifting apart… and the safety tether was tied to the wrong piece.
Travis took it in, saw the wayward hunk of junk about to pull the line taut, and he reached down and pulled the free end of the rope, which he had tied in a slipknot in case of this very situation. The rope whipped through the eyebolt and was gone.
“Had to do that,” Travis said. “Had to do that, it was about to get pulled into a spiral… it would have-”
“Wrapped itself around Red Thunder,” I said, “and crashed into us.”
“Too right. Kelly, check your suit systems, right now!”
“… five by five, Travis.” They were still tied to the big piece, and now they could see themselves drifting away from us. “You’ll come get us, right? I mean… soon? I don’t like this very much.”
“I’m coming in right now,” Travis assured her, and he had already moved out of my range of vision. We heard the lock cycling, and Travis [370] made it to the bridge in record time, frost forming on the very cold surface of his suit.
Dak and I went below and strapped in. We felt a few gentle shoves as Travis turned the ship, using the small thrusters not very different from the SMU. Then a mild kick in the pants as he fired the main drive. Two minutes later, another firing of the main drive, then the slightest burp, and when Dak and I scrambled up into the cockpit we could see he had brought Red Thunder motionless with respect to the wreck and the girls, an incredible piece of computerless flying that proved once more that nothing would ever substitute for a skilled pilot at the con, no matter what the Chinese said.
“All right, guys,”
Travis said wearily. “Your point has been proven. I have to stay here at the controls. Manny, I want you to-”
“We see two space suits!” Kelly said. Travis was instantly at the porthole beside us. From where we sat, the girls seemed to have moved to the other side of the ship. We could see their lights from the reflections on shiny surfaces, but not the lights themselves.
“Didn’t I tell you not to move around?”
“Actually, you didn’t, Travis, but we didn’t move much. This hunk of junk has picked up a rotation. We’ve turned away from you. I’m approaching one of the-”
“Please stay put, Kelly.”
“I’m barely moving. I… oh my God. Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick.”
“Captain, there’s somebody in the suit,” Alicia said. “Don’t look at him, Kelly.”
“I’m okay. I’m okay.”
“The… ah, one arm is torn off at the elbow. Hard to tell if he died of loss of blood or freezing or anoxia.”
“Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick…”
“Can you tell who it is?” Travis said softly.
“Captain, the face is… it’s not pretty. I’m not even sure if it’s a man.”
“Roger.”
Kelly seemed to have controlled her stomach. As the wreckage [371] slowly turned toward us again, rotating at about one turn in three minutes, we could see them again.
“The air-lock door is free now, Captain,” Kelly said. “Can you see it?”
“We see it. I’m sending Manny out to throw you another line.”
“Captain,” Alicia said, “I suggest you wait on that. You’re not going anywhere, right? I mean, now that you’re with us again.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, when Kelly lost the hammer I got to wondering what we might need that we didn’t bring with us. Why don’t we wait until we’ve looked at everything? I don’t think we want to make that crossing any more than we have to.”
“I concur, Alicia, now that you mention it. Good thinking.”
“We’re approaching the air-lock door now.”
There was silence for a while. Travis put his hand over the microphone.
“Boys, you’re never going to find women with more courage than those two. And they’re smart and beautiful, into the bargain. You better marry them.”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” I said, and Dak grinned.
THEY MADE THEIR way to the air lock. There was a small window set into the door at head height, and it was cracked but not exploded.
“Look at this,” Kelly said.
“What?” Travis, Dak, and I said at the same time.
“Frost, Captain. Even a couple little icicles.”
“Condensation,” Travis said, excited.
“Gotta be,” Alicia said. “I think there’s still air in there.”
“If we can get the door open,” Kelly said. “I’m punching the button… nothing. Trying again. Nothing. Should we whack it upside the head, guys?”
“Always worked for me,” Dak said.
“Whacking… nothing. Whacking again. Nothing. Alicia, can you get that torqueless power wrench out of my bag? Don’t let anything float away. Damn, what we need for this job is that eight-dollar [372] hammer I lost, not this four-hundred-dollar piece of NASA surplus. Isn’t that always the way?”
She was talking a lot, not only to calm her own nerves but because we’d asked her to. Describe everything, Travis had said. In great detail.
“No action on the door, Captain.”
“Kelly, hit it again, then put your helmet in contact with the door.”
“Why, Captain?”
“Sound can carry through metal but not through vacuum. It’s possible somebody in there hears you knocking on the door.”
Any science-fiction reader would have known that, and once again it came to me, hard, that space was my dream, Dak’s dream, not theirs. We should be over there, risking our lives. Why is the universe so unfair, so perverse?
“Yikes, that really rang my bell,” Kelly said.
“What happened?”
“Had my helmet against the door when I whanged on it, like a dummy. Hitting again, three times.” A short pause. “Yes! Yes, I heard three taps! There’s somebody in there! But how are we… wait a minute, what’s this?”
“Tell us, Kelly, tell us!”
“The door is rotating. It’s half open… three-quarters open… stopped.”
“I can feel somebody pounding on the door,” Alicia said. “Put your hand on it. Feel it? Somebody’s in there for sure, Captain. And it looks like the door cycling switch works from their side.”
“Alicia, don’t go in, we don’t know if-”
“Sorry, Captain, I’ve got to go in.”
“Me, too,” Kelly said.
“We’re both inside the lock now.”
“Kelly, Alicia, I want you out of there in no more than five minutes, with a situation report. I doubt we’ll be able to hear you once you get inside. Five minutes! Got it? Or all three of us come looking for you.”
“Got it, Captain. The cycling button in here works. The lock is rotating…”
And then there was silence.
31
* * *
THE AIR LOCK on the Ares Seven was a barrel type, maximum capacity: two suited astronauts. There was an inner pressure door which you pulled closed behind you. Then the barrel rotated until the one doorway in it faced the outside. It had been designed for use on Mars, when people would be coming and going frequently.
There was a manual crank to turn it, too, which now jammed when it was almost fully opened. But it still could be cranked, in both directions. We didn’t know that at the time. We thought the lock was still working electrically.
So Alicia and Kelly went inside, and we waited. Five very slow minutes. Then we saw a light from the far side of the ship, which had rotated the lock door away from us.
“Good news first, Travis,” Alicia said. “Holly is alive, and she’s not hurt.”
Travis bit his lip and turned away from us for a moment.
“The guy we found was Dmitri Vasarov. There was an indication of trouble and three people got into suits to check out the engine. That’s when the explosion came. Holly doesn’t know Vasarov was crushed, and we didn’t tell her. She’s… well, she’s sort of in shock. She saw [374] Welles and Smith flying away from the ship after the explosion. Smith was alive. She was struggling… Welles… she’s sure he’s dead. He was almost cut in half.
“About, Smith, Captain. Should Kelly and me come back to the Big Red, and we go looking for her first? If Manny brought over a bottle of air these people in here would be good for another day or two, easy… if it doesn’t blow out.”
“Negative, Alicia,” Travis said. “She’s dead now. Her suit would have run out of air a long time ago.”
“God, that’s awful. What a horrible way to die.”
“Actually, Alicia, a few people have accidentally drifted away from a space station, thought they were dead, then got rescued. All of them said the same thing. After a short time of panic and fear, they achieved a feeling of peace. I wouldn’t know about that, but let’s hope that’s what happened to Smith.”
“Amen.”
“So what’s the situation in there? Four survivors?”
“Three. They have the body of Marston, the M.D. Why couldn’t she have survived? She could have handled this so much better than me.”
“Don’t think that way. So you’ve got injuries?”
“Just minor bruises and abrasions on Holly and Cliff Raddison. Cliff might have a fractured arm. Have to x-ray him to be sure.
“Things are a real mess in there. Captain Aquino smashed his head and got his leg caught somehow. He’s got a compound fracture of the left femur, real bad. He lost a lot of blood. Holly and Cliff stopped the bleeding. He’s delirious most of the time. I only stuck around long enough to give him a shot of morphine-and I’ve g
ot to be sure to thank Salty for getting that for us. Then I came out here so you guys wouldn’t worry.”
“What do you need, Alicia?” Travis asked her.
“Okay. First, space suits. Three of them. I think we can use the empty suit we saw next to Vasarov’s body. But we’ll need two more.”
There was a short silence as the three of us in the ship worked it out. Like that old logic problem: You have a fox and a goose and a bag of grain to get across a river …
[375] “They can have mine,” Dak said bitterly. “All the use I’m getting out of it…”
“We’re short a suit,” Travis said.
“You’re forgetting, Travis. Manny can bring over Dak’s suit… and Jubal’s.”
“Jubal’s suit is aboard?”
“Kelly told me she stowed it in a locker. The problem is… can Jubal’s suit fit on Holly, or Cliff, or Aquino?”
“We’ll make it fit, by God,” Travis said. “Dak, go get it ready.”
“Captain, it’s cold in there,” Alicia said. “About ten below zero, and falling. Is there any way we can heat the place?”
“Is there any power available?”
“That went out completely not long before we arrived. Cliff and Holly have been sitting in there in the dark, wrapped up in what clothes they could salvage. They were conserving the one flashlight they found, using their little bit of power to run a heating element. They’re in danger of frostbite.”
“Just a minute, Alicia. Guys, any ideas?”
I didn’t have one. We’d backed up the heating system on Red Thunder, just like we’d backed up everything. I could have torn out a heater, but there was no power on the wreck to run it. A simple catalytic tent heater would do the job. We hadn’t brought one.
“A long extension cord?” Dak suggested.
“We don’t have anything that long,” I said.
“The only thing we can do is to hurry, then,” Travis said. “But we’ve got to hurry slowly, okay? I mean, think before you move. I’m not going to lose you, any of you, including the Ares survivors.”