After fifteen minutes, sweat was dripping down his back, even though his body-cooling system was running at full blast. He passed a camera and waved.
“Are you doing okay?” JR asked over the radio.
“Super. It’s good to step outside for some fresh air every now and then.”
He needed to live up to his reputation, after all. Slowly he let himself out on the line back into space. Only one more part, and then he’d pull himself back in. There, finally, he saw the two adjustment nozzles. It must be the pair that he’d sabotaged when he climbed into the side wall.
Michael looked around. There was a camera staring at him, which wasn’t practical. He waved to his colleagues, who—he was sure—were watching him. From now on he’d have to be very careful to always keep his body between the camera and the nozzles, which he planned to adjust to serve his own wishes.
He squatted down in front of them. In comparison to the size of the ship, they were tiny. All they had to do was deliver a small amount of thrust in the correct direction. They were basically little solid-fuel rockets that could be fired repeatedly until their solid propellant was consumed. Then they could be replaced. To make that possible, they were each mounted in a bracket.
Michael made sure that the camera couldn’t see anything that he was doing. He and his teeth had deactivated the y-axis nozzle that rotated the ship about the longitudinal axis. Thus, the x-axis nozzle, which could rotate the ship about its transverse axis, would have to take over the y-axis nozzle’s function.
“What do you see, Mike?” Judith asked.
“The nozzle’s metal is severely discolored,” he lied. “It must’ve been exposed to a huge amount of heat.”
“That shouldn’t matter,” Giordi said. “It’s a kind of rocket, after all.”
“But what about the supply lines? The heat must’ve spread out to the nozzle’s mount. Maybe the supply lines melted.”
“I was thinking along those same lines, too,” Judith said. “And the other nozzle? Does it look any better?”
“Yeah. Maybe it was protected somehow and didn’t heat up so much.”
“We can hope. I didn’t test the x-axis nozzle before. Can you get to it?”
“I think so. Then I could turn the mount so that the x-axis nozzle’s thrust acts in the direction of the longitudinal axis.”
“You’re going to have to align it very precisely. Otherwise you’ll put us all in a pretty wild spin,” François said.
“I know. I took physics too.”
Michael leaned forward. There was also a second risk. If he turned the mount with too much force, the control cable might break loose. That could be repaired, but if someone else did it, his sabotage would be discovered. After this EVA, JR would not assign him the next task.
The mount didn’t budge. He reached into his tool bag on his belt, seeking something to use as a lever. Ah yes, a screwdriver might do the trick. He tried to fit it into an appropriate place, but it slipped and flew from his hand. The tool came quickly toward his helmet. This damn rotational motion! Michael was just able to turn his head to the side. The screwdriver’s handle bounced off the side of his helmet and flew off into space.
“Everything okay? Your pulse rate has increased by 30 percent.”
“Yes, JR, I just lost a screwdriver, and I’m mad at myself about it.”
“Okay, understood. Continue.”
He took out a pipe wrench, jammed it under the mount, and tried to make it move. Slowly the nozzle turned. He needed to adjust it by exactly 90 degrees. Fortunately, there was also a square in the tool bag. He measured the angle, adjusted the nozzle again, and was then satisfied with his work.
“Okay, I did it. We should be able to stop this damn rotation now.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Judith said.
He could hear clapping in his headphones. Involuntarily, he took a bow.
“Now I need you to get back into the airlock,” Judith said. “Then, we’ll stop this rotation.”
“You mean after I get out of the airlock and back into the ship, right?”
“No, I’ll need you again right after the rotation stops. If we don’t have any x-axis nozzles anymore, that means we can’t turn the ship into a braking position.”
“That’s too bad, but what can we do? Repairs would take too long,” he said. What is JR up to now? She hasn’t seen through my plan, has she?
“I left a fire extinguisher in the airlock for you,” Judith said. “If you point it exactly against the transverse axis, it should work just as well as our nozzles. It should be enough to turn us by 180 degrees once.”
“Oh, what a great idea,” Michael said, but he was unable to believably feign any enthusiasm.
“You sound exhausted,” Judith said.
“That’s true.” He was more tired than he’d ever been before, except for maybe the time period after his wife had died from breast cancer shortly after their wedding. He couldn’t even describe how he felt. He was too tired to think.
“Only one more task, and then you can rest for a few weeks until we arrive at our lunar orbit.”
He’d lost. 1-0 for the captain, he thought. Then he let go of the safety rope and fell away into the blackest night.
January 16, 2035 – Mars Ship ARES
The ship was no longer rotating. His efforts had apparently been successful. Michael kept his eyes closed and tried to pay attention to the feelings inside his body. There was a force. It was his weight, the load of his own body. Either they were back on Earth, which was impossible, or they were braking or accelerating. Had JR perhaps come to her senses and decided to leave all the misery behind?
He opened his eyes. He was in the medical station. The blue and red pipes on the ceiling told him his legs were pointing toward the rear of the ship. And his weight was also forcing him in that direction. Stupid physics. He still couldn’t tell if they were braking or accelerating. Had he won after all, or had he lost? He tried to think it through. The commander was one of those people who always did the right thing, morally speaking, even if it would endanger the survival of the whole human species. He was sure they were not flying toward Mars.
“There you are again, finally,” Giordi said. “You had us really worried.”
“What happened to me?”
“You’re the doctor, but I think you must’ve completely blacked out. François pulled you in from the end of the safety line.”
At least JR hadn’t saved him. If he owed his life to her, it would’ve been harder to thwart her strategy in the future. He was reminded of the song from ‘The Boy’s Magic Horn,’ which Mahler had set to music in the fifth movement of his third symphony.
“And should I not weep, kind God?
I have violated the ten commandments!
I wander and weep bitterly!
O come and take pity on me!”
Was now the time he’d have to account for his sins? The moment had to come sometime. He looked inward, briefly but yet intensely. He found nothing. His conscience was clear—he’d only done what he’d felt he had to do.
“What was wrong with the nozzles?” he asked.
“We still don’t know,” Giordano answered. “But as long as the main engine is firing, we can’t go outside to look. Otherwise we’d have the same problem you did yesterday during your EVA.”
“What problem did I have?”
“As I said, you’re the doctor. The computer thinks you might’ve been physically exhausted and passed out. There weren’t any other symptoms. We also did an EEG, but everything looked normal.”
Fortunately, the computer couldn’t detect his disappointment about his failed sabotage. And luckily, the EEG program couldn’t read his thoughts.
“So, can I get up?”
“Sure, if you feel up to it.”
Michael sat up. He felt better than he had since they left Earth. How long had he been out? He looked at the watch on his wrist—almost 14 hours. Maybe his body had simply needed the rest. “Al
l good,” he said. “Thanks, Giordi.”
“No problem.”
“Ah, and the fire extinguisher? I guess I’m still supposed to do something with that?”
“François already took care of it. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’re braking. Due to the little mishap, we’ve pushed back our expected arrival at the moon by three days.”
“We’ll have to bake them a cake later to make up for it,” Michael tried to joke.
But Giordano didn’t laugh.
January 19, 2035 – Moon Base Unity
“How are you sleeping?” Jonathan asked.
“Good. My dreams have gotten really intense,” Kenjiro answered, “but I’ve been able to sleep through them.”
“That’s good. If that changes, I can give you something to help you sleep.”
“Okay, thanks, Jon.” Kenjiro swung his legs off the medical procedure chair and stood up. He made a move to shake Jonathan’s hand.
Jonathan waved him away, indicating his medical gloves. “You’re welcome, Ken. Can you send Yue to me now?”
“I’ll do that.” Kenjiro left the medical station.
Jonathan sat in the empty chair and lowered the backrest to a relaxing angle. Yue was always busy, so it would be a while until she appeared. The crew had been coping very well with the reduced-calorie diet phase, but the fact that the ARES was now going to need three more days to arrive made him worried. There were 1,300 calories available for each of them per day. They were supplementing vitamins and trace elements from his medical supplies. Fortunately, there was plenty of drinking water.
At first, they had considered adjusting the number of calories each consumed to their own basal metabolic rates. But nobody had wanted to be eating more than anyone else. Jonathan even recognized the typical signs of malnutrition in himself. He became exhausted quickly, and he always had a headache. Even now his eyes wanted to close. He gave in to the impulse.
Someone touched his upper arm. Jonathan startled awake.
“It’s just me,” Yue said. “Should I come back later?”
“No, no, I’m glad you’re here.”
She smiled at him. Sometimes he thought that she smiled at him more often than at their other colleagues. But he was too shy to try anything based on this observation. His cheeks immediately started feeling warm. That must be due to the hunger, he thought.
Jonathan stood up, went to his doctor’s chair, and sat down again. “Please have a seat,” he said and pointed to the chair. “I’ll need to draw some blood.”
“Okay.” She walked past him and sat down.
He took her left hand and held it for maybe just a little too long.
She looked at him.
He cleared his throat and then moved his hands up to her elbow and began massaging the inner bend of her elbow. Her veins were easy to find. “Excellent,” he said. “Can I see your right arm too?”
Yue turned toward him and extended her other hand. She smelled like lilac. Her right arm had good veins for collecting blood, too. Yue was lucky.
He let go of her arm.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
Since she was sitting with her left side facing him, he decided to draw the blood from her left arm. He put the tourniquet around the upper part of her arm and tightened it while he felt for her arterial pulse. All good so far. Then he looked at her veins again and found the spot that he thought would be best. He disinfected the area.
“You’ll feel a little pinch.” He punctured the vein with the needle.
Yue didn’t say a thing. She had her eyes closed.
“Very nice.” He placed the collection tube on the end of the needle and pulled up on the plunger. The negative pressure helped to draw the blood out of the vein. “Perfect,” he said.
The tube filled with blood. In less than a minute he removed the tube from the needle, set the plunger, and swished the tube so that the blood would mix with the anticoagulants. Then he set the tube to one side and loosened the tourniquet.
“Now I’ll pull out the needle.” He took a gauze pad and pressed it against the puncture site as he pulled out the needle. “That’s it. Now just a Band-Aid.”
“Is that necessary? My skin often has an allergic reaction.”
“I don’t want it to get infected. I’ve got hypoallergenic Band-Aids here too.” He opened a drawer in the storage unit and took out a special Band-Aid. “Can you please hold the gauze for a second?”
Yue pressed down on the gauze with the fingers of her right hand. He peeled off the protective strip from the Band-Aid. Then he paused. Yue had beautiful fingers. He had never noticed before. They were long and skinny but healthy-looking, not like ‘spider fingers,’ which he often thought of when he saw such long fingers.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“No, no, it’s nothing. Sorry.” He pressed on the compress and touched her finger. A shock of electricity ran through him. “Just static electricity,” he said.
“What?”
“Uh, nothing.” He took away the compress and put the Band-Aid over the puncture spot. “So, that’s it.”
“You did that all very well,” Yue said.
“Thanks.” He started to blush again.
“Do you need anything else from me?”
“Has anything changed since we went on the reduced-calorie diet? Pain in your abdomen, sleeping problems?”
“Not so far.”
“That’s good. Don’t be surprised if your menstrual cycle is delayed or doesn’t happen at all. That can happen if you’re malnourished.”
“Good to know. Am I then not fertile, either?” Yue smiled at him. No, it wasn’t a smile. It was more like a seductive look.
“You mean, uh, during sex? You can’t get pregnant without ovulation.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning on it, but you never know.”
“Well, now you know. I’ll contact you later with the results from your bloodwork.”
“Today?”
“Sure. It doesn’t take very long.”
“Tonight, after your shift, then?”
Man, now he was really turning red. “Yes, okay, gladly,” he said.
Yue went to leave the room. She turned around at the door, smiled, and waved. Had they just set up a date? Jonathan couldn’t quite understand what had just happened. He hadn’t had a date of any sort for at least ten years.
A moon base is not a romantic location. And it wasn’t like he could just invite Yue out to dinner. The workshop stunk like oil, and Atiya was sitting in the command center and analyzing telescope images. Inviting Yue back to his cabin was strictly forbidden. So, after a short walk through the base, they found themselves back in the medical station. Yue made herself comfortable on the medical procedure chair, and he sat, leaning forward, on his doctor’s chair. Anyone who happened to enter the room would see a doctor treating a patient. All that was missing was the white lab coat.
“The things I miss most are just normal, everyday conversations,” Yue said. “You know, when people don’t talk about their jobs, but life, politics, movies, the royal babies of British princesses.”
It was true, he realized. Topics like that didn’t even seem to exist at that moment. “I think it’s difficult to detach oneself mentally from all this misery here. If my stomach is grumbling, how am I supposed to think about Vincent van Gogh?”
“Oh, do you like him too?”
“Who, van Gogh?”
“Yes. He’s apparently the first name that comes to your mind when you think of painters.”
“You’re a good listener, Yue.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s true. I do like him. He was driven to paint. Nothing was going to stop him. He wasn’t like some businessman who had his whole career planned out in advance.”
“You like him because you’d like to be like that too, but you can’t.”
“I... maybe so. I was always very focused.”
“We always look for role models and partne
rs who can give us something that we lack. My boyfriend on Earth is a singer in a rock band. Can you just imagine? He’s loud and wild.”
He didn’t want to imagine Yue’s boyfriend right now. What did it mean that she brought him up?
“Does that mean you want to be loud and wild, too?” he asked.
Yue laughed. “No, that wouldn’t fit me at all. I’m simply not made that way. In school, the teachers always said to me, ‘Speak louder, Yue. I can’t understand you.’ I think that’s the sentence I’ve heard most in my life. Have you heard the story of the round beings that we once supposedly were?”
“That we’re always looking for our matching counterpart, so that we can be whole and round again?” Yes, his ex-wife had told him that theory after she thought she had finally found her true counterpart. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“Me neither. I think we can have many matching counterparts. One of them for me is loud and wild.”
“Mine would have to be sensitive. She could glean the true meaning from what was said. She’d understand everything on four different levels at once and not nit-pick on one thing. One wouldn’t have to watch what one was saying when talking with her.”
“With her?”
‘With you,’ he could’ve said. But he didn’t want to be that direct. Some things were better left unsaid. Yue had a boyfriend back on Earth, after all.
“So, do you want to know the results from your bloodwork?”
She looked at him for a long time. A bit strict and intense, he thought. What am I supposed to read as the meaning of that look?
“Okay, then,” she said finally.
“Blood sugar 4.4 millimoles per liter. That’s a little low. Ammonia and uric acid levels are slightly elevated. That’s also to be expected. Your vitamin levels are excellent. You appear to be taking the pills I prescribed to you.”
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 12