by Dan Eaton
Sam wished me luck and then walked me down the long hallway until we hit the hall that ran along the Northern edge of the Habitat. We turned right and walked past the entrance to Mussconny Machine and entered the Habitat Maintenance space. I had been in here before delivering things for Sandy yet never spent much time in the room. This was where Sandy spent most of his time on his “day” job working for the Habitat and he gave me a wave when he saw me, then went on about his business. Sam led me over to an alcove jutting out from the north wall. Here were racks of suits used by anyone at the Habitat who need to work in a vacuum. Many of them were the third type of suit, ones that not only supported you in a vacuum, but also provided protection against sharp objects while working on the lunar surface and were extremely flexible to let you work comfortably.
Sam pulled out two of the standard suits. These were typically worn inside vehicles or ships and would protect you in a vacuum while still allowing you to do repair work if needed inside a protected environment. I had to break the suit she handed me down into the component pieces and then inspect each piece to make sure it was safe to use. Meanwhile, Sam was asking me what I was looking at and what I expected to see for each piece. I found an unacceptable worn gasket on one of the arm pieces and a bad valve in the backpack assembly that held the suit’s air tanks.
“If that was your suit, you’d be expected to replace the gasket. The faulty valve is something Habitat maintenance should take care of.”
She attached a red defect tag with a description of the failure to the backpack assembly and then handed me a replacement.
“Okay, go ahead and suit up and then we’ll go for a little walk, hey.”
I started pulling on the suit pieces, checking everything as I went along. Sam took apart the second suit she had pulled out, disassembled it and inspected it, and then put it on by the time I was ready to pull my helmet on. Once I had the helmet in place with the face shield up, she did a careful inspection of my suit and then had me do the same to her. The suits had the option of hooking to external air or running on the internal suit tanks and she handed me an airline to hook into. I had to hook up to external air and adjust the suit to provide the proper air flow. I also had to adjust the suit cooling since it started getting pretty warm standing there. Sam checked me over again and then pulled the external air hose so that I was running on the internal tanks. I carefully checked everything over and made some minor adjustments before Sam performed a final check.
She fiddled with her suit controls and then did a radio check to make sure we could hear each other before she had me do a final check of her suit. I thought that would be the end of the test when she started walking and said over the suit radio, “Come along, hey.”
She led me out of the Maintenance bay, through the number one auxiliary air lock and out into the vehicle bay. When we were standing in front of the airlock door that led to the surface, Sam radioed Habitat Control and asked that the airlock door be opened. The doors swung wide and we walked into the airlock chamber. She looked over at me and her voice came through the helmet speakers asking me if I was still good. I checked all of the suit controls before answering, “Yes.”
She got back on the channel with Habitat Control and asked that the door be closed and the chamber pumped down.
The doors swung shut with a final bang and then the pumps started drawing down the atmosphere in the room. It took a couple of minutes and I could feel my suit stiffening around me and any external noises vanished along with the air. Sam was standing in front of me. I couldn’t see her face due to the shaded screen, she had down over her faceplate, yet I knew she must be seeing the smile I had on my face through the clear visor on my suit. I had passed the practical part of the test and now I was standing in a suit on my own in a vacuum. I felt pretty good about things until, suddenly, there was a burst of static from the radio. I tried asking Sam about it, however, I didn’t seem to be getting through to her.
I had just realized that something must have gone wrong with my suit radio when the overhead lights went out and we were plunged into darkness. Before I could hit the switch to turn on my suit lights, I felt Sam grab my hand briefly before releasing it. When she let go, I could hear the unmistakable whistle of air escaping my suit. Without thinking, before I did anything else I grabbed a patch out of the dispenser on my right arm with my left hand and then wrapped it around the leaking glove finger on my right hand. I checked the suit controls to make sure the leak had stopped and then flipped on the suit lights so I could see my surroundings. Sam was still standing in front of me with her shaded visor still in place. I still couldn’t reach her on the radio so I leaned towards her until our helmets touched and said, “Sam, my radio is out and my glove had a leak. Was that part of the test?”
“Hang on a second,”
I could hear her asking Habitat Control to re-pressurize the chamber and open the doors. As the door started to open, Sam popped open her visor and I could see she had on night vision goggles that her dark visor had kept hidden.
She reached up and pulled the goggles off and said, “Yes, it was a test. I needed you disorientated and presented with a real emergency to see how you’d handle yourself. There are people who can pass book tests all day long, and then they freeze up in a real emergency. Christine and your parents wanted to know what kind of person you were, so they had me take the test a little further than normal. You did good, hey.”
I floated through the rest of the day. I still had to do the second piece of the practical, but that was a breeze. I managed to get Miss Gayle dressed into her travel suit and hooked up to a portable air supply with no problems. I thought I’d be nervous doing it in front of the two classes, although I was okay with it. Everybody freaked a little when Sam had me run through the steps I would have to take if Miss Gayle had vomited in her helmet in a vacuum. I quickly followed the procedure which was to turn off the feed air valve, open the air bleed valve to ease the internal pressure, open the helmet visor exposing Miss Gayle to vacuum. Then, as quickly as I could, I used a rag to quickly wipe out all the vomit from her face, inside the helmet, and on the inside of the visor. The final steps were to reseal the visor, open the air feed and close the air bleed valves while monitoring the victim to make sure they had survived the procedure. Sam had timed the exposure to vacuum and I had managed to get the helmet cleaned out and air flooding back in within eleven seconds.
Evelina, from the freshman class, took exception to the whole procedure and asked, “Kind of a radical thing to do to a person just because they threw up isn’t it?”
Sam took the question and said, “In a zero-g environment, vomiting in your helmet opens you up to possibly drowning in your own vomit or inhaling vomit down into your lungs which can cause aspiration pneumonia. Being exposed very briefly, to a vacuum, on the other hand, won’t result in any permanent damage, so the idea is to quickly clean the helmet out before the person has a chance to drown or inhale the vomit. Yeah, it’s kind of radical. Drowning in vomit is radical, too, hey?”
Friday night, Christine and Sandy joined us for supper to celebrate me completing the suit orientation class and gaining my suit certification. After we had all sat down, Christine said, “Good job with getting your certification, Bryce. You have my permission to follow Sandy off on this adventure. Just don’t have too exciting of an adventure.”
We all laughed at that.
I asked Sandy, “So when do we leave?”
Sandy finished taking a drink and said, “The next supply ship is due in on the 29th. Unloading, loading, refueling, and a couple of days rest for the crew will take around three days, so we’ll probably leave on the second.”
After studying so hard to pass the suit certification, it felt anti-climactic to be going back to school next week for a normal week before leaving. On the other hand, Miss Gayle had already assigned me plenty of homework for the time I had missed this week so getting to hold her off on any more additional homework for a week helped ease th
e disappointment of not leaving sooner. Launch day would come soon enough.
I got up early and went down to the cafeteria with Mom and Dad to meet Sandy for breakfast. Sandy and I had visited Habitat Maintenance yesterday and carefully packed away the suits we would be using so they could be transferred over to the CLT30 that was sitting on pad one. When I got home, Mom had closely supervised me packing a bag for my trip and that had also already gone out to the CLT30. For breakfast, I had decided on just having some scrambled eggs and toast. Since the CLT30 had brought a load of supplies in, I had a small glass of Coke to go along with it.
Mom looked at my plate and said, “You’re eating kind of light this morning. You nervous?”
I poked at the scrambled eggs, that until recently had resided in a large box marked “Powdered Eggs”, and said, “I’ll be going into zero-g for the first time in a year and this time I won’t be drugged up sleeping. What if I get space sick?”
Sandy paused between shoveling another mouthful of 3D printed breakfast sausage into his mouth and said, “About half the people that travel in zero-g develop some degree of space sickness as they adapt to zero-g. Half of those people just have mild symptoms. It’ll go away on its own, however, if it’s bad enough, we’ll just slap an anti-nausea patch on you. Just keep a barf bag handy, and you’ll do fine.”
We made it through breakfast. Mom had kept up a steady flow of small talk designed I think to soothe her nerves. Sandy had chatted with her like he hadn’t a care in the world. Eventually, it was time to leave so we got up and slowly made our way over to the Vehicle Bay. Mom and Dad gave me hugs at the lock door. They wouldn’t embarrass me by walking me all the way out to the transport like I was some little kid. Sandy gave my mom a hug and then shook Dad’s hand. His last words to them were, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep a close eye on Bryce.” With that, we went through the bay door and walked on out to the transport.
When we boarded the transport, we found there were four people I didn’t know already on-board. I assumed these must be the team from Sunshine, on the other hand, Sandy had told me there would be five of them so one was missing. We said “Hi,” and then sat down to wait with them for their lost sheep. It wasn’t too long before a woman came bounding up the steps onto the transport. She looked at the four who were on-board when we arrived and said, “Hey, gang.”
She looked over at me and Sandy and said, “Hi Sandy, who’s the young man with you?”
“Hi Arwen, this is my apprentice machinist, Bryce Burns. Bryce, this is Arwen Micimackó, Sunshine’s project engineer for the heliostat project.”
I reached out and shook Arwen’s hand. She was a medium sized woman with brown hair cropped close to her head, which was a characteristic I’d seen in a lot of people who spent much time in pressure suits. She seemed friendly enough as she sat down with the rest of her team and the transport operator started sealing up the transport for our trip out to the launch pad.
With the transport sealed up, the operator moved us out through the airlocks and up the ramp that led to the road over to the pads. Standing in the center of the first pad was the gleaming white CLT30. The transport gingerly backed up to the lower external hatch, raised up the cabin to align the locks, and then closed the remaining space until the hatch faces mated with a reassuring thunk. We heard noises coming from the CLT30 as someone inside started undogging the lock hatch from that side before starting in on our hatch. When the hatch finally opened, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mission Specialist Peters. Yukiko Peters and Commander Davies had been in command of the Lunar Shuttle that had brought my classmates and me, along with our parents, to the Moon. I and the others had mostly slept through the journey, yet I had pleasant memories of Yukiko and was glad to see that she and Commander Davies had made the transition over to the CLT30 liners.
Waiting inside the main cabin for us was Commander Davies. She welcomed us all aboard and said, “We’ve got clearance to launch at the top of the hour. I’d like you all seated and strapped in fifteen minutes prior to that. If there’s no further questions, I’ll let Yukiko get you squared away.”
Looking around the cabin, I found a section of seats had been removed on opposite sides of the central column and in that space sitting next to the column on either side were two pallets. The pallets and their loads were firmly attached to the floor. Despite the protective wrappings, I recognized the canister I had worked on sitting on the closest pallet. The far pallet held a tightly sealed cylindrical case with labels that proclaimed that it was a maneuvering unit along with several warning labels. I wasn’t sure what that was about. When I tried to ask Sandy questions about the mission for the past two weeks, Sandy had always been busy and said there would be plenty of time to talk about it on the voyage out to LL1. Now, I hope, I’d finally get some answers.
Sandy and I had selected a pair of seats that gave a view out the window towards the west. Beyond the berm marking the extent of the pad, you could see the lights marking the top of the ramp that led down into the Habitat, and out beyond that there was the round cylinder rising up that marked the viewing chamber. It was far enough, that it was difficult to be certain, nevertheless, I was pretty sure there were a group of people standing there in the chamber waiting to see the CLT30 lift off. I wondered if my mom and dad were up there. I’d just settled down in the seat, all strapped in, and was getting ready to ask Sandy my first question when I realized I needed to do something with a much higher priority. We’d be under zero-g shortly, so now was the time for one last visit to the bathroom while the lunar gravity made things much easier to accomplish the task.
They’d been strapped in and the seats reclined into launch position for a while. When I had left Earth, the stress of the trip and then boredom of being sealed into the Dragon III had conspired against me and I had fallen asleep, only to wake up as the rocket motors had started up. This time I was more relaxed and I had chatted with Sandy while the minutes ticked down. Finally, Commander Davies’ voice came through the speakers scattered across the cabin and started the final countdown. Shortly before zero, I felt the CLT30’s twelve powerful engines come alive and the view out the window showed we were rapidly rising above the lunar surface. Our course took us up over the pole and down across the face of the near side of the Moon. We could see a portion of it out our window and then above the window was mounted a monitor that showed the lunar surface directly below the CLT30’s course. Commander Davies had briefed us on our flight plan and the CLT30 would make one full orbit of the Moon before she adjusted our course to head to Earth-Moon Lagrange point one, or LL1, as it was usually called. I had felt cheated when we landed in the Lunar Shuttle. The views I was seeing out the windows of the CLT30 now were doing a lot to make up for the earlier disappointment.
I yawned again as we made our way past the entertainment district of the Grand and into one of the residential sections. Nina and I both enjoyed loping along the one point one kilometer long path that threaded through the many sections of the Grand. Doing so meant waking early because the only time it was relatively traffic free was early in the morning so we got up at 05:30 to get our loping in before the habitat started waking up and the path got busy. We’d been loping for over an hour and things were feeling pretty relaxed so I looked over at Nina and said, “So, are you going to do it?”
She looked back at me with a sour look on her face and said “No. I’m not into boys.”
“Yuck,” I kidded her, “after all those times we changed together, now you tell me this?”
Nina gave me a frosty look and said, “Ananyu, you know I’m not into girls either.”
“Yeah. I know a lot of things about you.”
I looked over at my friend and thought about how we’d met. The first time was very briefly before the interview in Houston. I would have liked to have got a run in that morning to burn off the nerves I was feeling, however, Papa wouldn’t let me go for a run by myself. As we were returning from breakfast, we ran into this pretty blond and
her father in the lobby who obviously had just come back from a run. I said, “Hi,” to her and her father and then turned to Papa and said, “See Papa, all you have to do is run with me and then you wouldn’t have to worry about me running alone.”
Papa grabbed his chest like he was having a heart attack and said, “You want to kill me?”
Nina laughed at Papa’s antics and said, “Maybe next time you can run with me.”
We each went our ways and we didn’t see each other again until we were all called back to Houston for the Selection meeting. Our families had both decided to stay over Friday night and I was swimming laps in the pool after dinner when a familiar golden-haired girl came in. We got to talking which lead to me joining her and her dad for a run in the morning. We started exchanging emails and our friendship grew from that. Nina reminded me a lot of my favorite cousin Prisha. Prisha and Nina were alike in that both were pretty, yet behind the pretty face was a very sharp mind. The kind of mind that was very good with numbers and logic and a little challenged when dealing with people, especially, now that we were older, boy type people. Prisha, prodded along by me and our other cousins, was slowly learning to deal with this new world, one boy at a time. Nina on the other hand, had a plan with a very steady eye on the goal, and no time at all to deal with foolish things like boys. She’d put that off until after she reached her goal. I thought her plan had some serious holes in it.
I looked over at Nina and said, “So, are you going to do it?”
“Argh,” she said as she gave me an exasperated look. She said, “You know I have a plan. I—”
I broke in with, “You have a plan and it’s a nice one. I’m just suggesting that someone that commands a ship needs more than just understanding the technology that runs the ship. You need to understand the people that make the ship come alive. You want to hide away in your scholarly tower of solitude and then maybe try to figure out people later. I’m just suggesting that instead of putting things off until when the price of mistakes can be very high, you do a little fieldwork now while mistakes are cheap.”