Airlock (6 page)

Suddenly, George let out a cry. “That's it!” He leapt up. “I know what we can do! I know how we can use that engine housing to survive! And you will come back, Mr Snodbury, we all will.”

“Well, we'd better do it quick,” said Amira, pointing to her mini-screen. “I've done a few more calculations. It isn't only our lives at stake now. When the station breaks up, it will be directly over northern Europe. When that engine hits the ground, it's going to smash right into the centre of CentralCity. It could even hit the district where we live!”

The remains of the space station fell towards Earth, faster and faster. The nine survivors inside were shaken and buffeted until they thought their teeth would fall out. A howling whine was steadily rising all around them, as the air outside screeched against the station's hull.

“Parker!” called George above the din. “Can you and the two technicians undo every bolt that holds the main engine compartment in place?”

“Yes, but – ?”

“Just do it, I'll explain later! Everyone else, listen! Collect up anything you can that's soft. Cushions, blankets, anything at all. Get moving, we've only got a few minutes!”

The crew cabins were quickly stripped of pillows and bedclothes. Parker and the technicians hurried to the engine room and loosened everything that held the main engine in place.

The engine housing was about the size of a small school bus, cylindrical in shape and covered in a network of pipes, dials and screens. Two-thirds of the cylinder, from which jutted a series of stubby tubes, was the engine itself. The other third was a chamber in which there was a complex system for keeping the engine running at the correct speed and temperature. There was a hatch at the end of the cylinder, through which technicians would regularly crawl to carry out checks and maintenance.

“We need to pad out the maintenance chamber as much as we can,” said George. “We'll get bashed around against all the equipment in there if there isn't anything to cushion us.”

“What's the point of being cushioned against all the bashing about we'll get on the way down,” said Josh, throwing some pillows in through the hatch, “if we're just going to hit the ground with a huge splat?”

The engine's maintenance chamber was a tight squeeze for five adults and four kids. George found
himself squashed tightly beside a small porthole, wedged between Mr Snodbury and Amira. The hatch was pulled shut with a clang and sealed by turning a metal wheel at its centre.

Inside, the noise of the rapidly crumbling station was dulled, but the shuddering tremor of the falling station felt even worse in this confined space.

“Now we wait for the station to break up,” said Parker. “Any minute now. George, you'd better tell everyone what you've told me. Your idea for saving our lives.”

“This engine housing is much heavier at one end,” said George. “The end with the actual engine in it. So we know it will fall engine-first, right?”

“Right,” said Amira.

“Remember what Parker told us a while ago? That there's still some power left in the engine. Not very much, but some.”

“There's nowhere near enough power to let us fly this thing to the ground, if that's what you're thinking,” said the Commander.

“I know,” said George, “but when Mr Snodbury mentioned the old Apollo space missions, way back in the twentieth century, it reminded me how they
managed to survive a fall through the atmosphere. On the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, the three astronauts only had a tiny pod in which to return to Earth. It fell through the atmosphere, very fast, heating up like mad. Just like this engine housing is going to do. Then, when they were a few thousand metres above the ground, three parachutes opened which slowed their fall. They splashed down safely in the sea.”

“We don't have parachutes,” said Josh.

“But we have enough power for one good burst from the engine,” said George. “Instead of having parachutes reduce our speed, we wait until we're approaching the ground, then blast every last bit of power we've got left out of the engine. The downward push should slow us enough. We'll still hit the ground with a big bump, but in theory, we'll survive. Well, we should survive. Well, we might survive.”

“You've got to admit, sir,” said Parker to the Commander, “it's a genius idea. I'd never have thought of it.”

“It's crackpot,” muttered the Commander. “A dozen things could go wrong. We could start spinning out of control. We could fire the engine too late. Or too early. We could – ”

“But it's a chance,” said Parker. “It alters our chances from zero to, well, OK, only about twenty per cent, but it's better than nothing.”

“This is a twin-pulsed ion thruster,” said the Commander. He twisted his head to look at a screen close to his jaw. “At… two point four per cent power, you'll have less than seven seconds of kick.”

Suddenly, the engine rocked wildly. The sounds of twisting metal made George's stomach lurch. Light shone through the porthole beside him. He could see large sections of the station drifting away. Each broken section was wrapped in searing white flame, trailing smoke and debris.

Behind them, George could see the graceful curve of the Earth, the horizon gradually flattening as they fell closer and closer to the surface. He felt terrified.

He turned to look at the others. A couple of them had their eyes screwed up tightly. Dwayne pulled his snuggly from his pocket, looked at it for a moment, then tucked it behind him to add to the padding of pillows and blankets. He looked up at George and gave him a feeble smile. George gave him a thumbs-up.

Parker was tapping at Amira's mini-screen. “About three minutes to impact,” she said. “We'll have to boot the engine manually. George, you see that little black and yellow plastic cover, just above you?”

“Yes?”

“Flick it up, but don't press the switch beneath. That fires the power cells.”

George did as he was told. The switch was small. It seemed so unimportant. But all their lives rested on it. And possibly the lives of many people down in CentralCity too.

“Two minutes forty seconds,” said Parker. “We fire at five kilometres from ground level. You got that?”

“Yes,” nodded George.

“I'll count you down.”

The engine housing dropped through the sky like a stone. By now, it too was shedding flames. The occupants were rattled from side to side. All around them was the howling roar of the air, like a screaming dragon diving to its death.

“One minute fifty.”

Through the porthole, George could see coastlines and ocean, just as he had from the shuttle that morning. They grew closer every second. He felt as if his heart would leap from his throat.

“One minute ten. Get ready!”

Mr Snodbury had the back of his head pressed against a cushion, and his fists clenched so tight that his knuckles were white. Josh and Amira kept their gaze fixed on the porthole, their faces grim and blanched. The Commander held his hand across his chest.

“Ten kilometres above target height …” yelled Parker above the roar. “Nine… eight… stand by to fire, George… seven… six …”

George looked up at the switch.

“Five… four …”

He raised his hand. It juddered as the engine rocked.

“Three …”

The ground was shooting up towards them.

“Two… one …”

George's finger hovered unsteadily above his head.

“Fire!”

He flicked the switch. Instantly, the engine housing bucked as the machinery underneath burst into life. The sudden braking effect pressed them all painfully into whatever was below them. The engine flared with a throbbing WHOOSH. Bright greeny-blue light washed around the porthole.

George thought he would be crushed to death. His whole body felt as if it weighed tonnes. The pulsing of the engine filled the air with static, and there was a sharp smell of electricity.

Then it cut out. Suddenly there was silence.

“Power gone,” gasped Parker. “Thirty metres off the ground! Brace yourselves!”

George felt a yawning sensation, like a sudden dip on a rollercoaster.

Then the engine housing, battered, scorched and steaming, hit the ground with a crunching, shattering sound. The jolt made everyone yelp with pain. The engine tottered and rolled, crashing onto its side and scraping along the ground for twenty metres or more. Through the porthole, George could see what looked like the surface of a road.

Everyone groaned and stretched their limbs carefully. The impact had dislocated Parker's shoulder, but apart from that they seemed to have suffered only cuts and bruises.

The Commander reached over and turned the wheel on the hatch. It fell back with a hiss. Cool, clean air flowed into the compartment from outside.

One by one, they crawled out. The engine housing was a crumpled, fire-ravaged piece of junk. Where it had hit the ground was a small crater, and a deep furrow marked where it had skidded.

George, Josh and Amira looked around themselves, feeling dizzy and slightly sick. They were standing
in the middle of an ordinary street. On both sides, people were staring out of windows at them, goggle-eyed. From the distance came the sound of approaching sirens.

Minutes later, the battered engine housing was surrounded by police, ambulance crews and amazed sightseers. The nine survivors of the
Berners-Lee
were sitting on raised stretchers, wrapped in blankets and being attended to by medics.

A van drew up and a TV news team piled out. They barged their way through the crowd of onlookers and approached Commander Ferguson, camera and microphone pointed in his direction.

“Get out of my face!” he growled.

The news team did a smart U-turn and looked for someone else to interview. Mr Snodbury spotted them, and moved aside the nurse who was seeing to the scratches on his forehead.

“Over here!” he called.

The news team descended upon him like a flock of vultures.

“Can you tell us your name?” gushed the reporter, holding a microphone under Mr Snodbury's nose. “How do you feel? What happened on the
Berners-Lee
? How did you feel?”

Mr Snodbury looked over at George and his friends for a moment, then took a deep breath. “My name is Snodbury. What happened was that I deliberately sabotaged the space station. I caused the deaths of most of its crew, and the destruction of the station itself. I did it because MaxiBoost Spaceways paid me to do it. They lied to me about the effect my actions would have. They intended that MegaZone Corporation would lose business as a result.”

For a second or two, the news team were too stunned to speak. They weren't used to someone accepting blame or being honest. Then a dozen people all started to talk at once, and Mr Snodbury was lost in a jostle of legs and voices.

George saw Commander Ferguson approaching him, and felt a fresh wave of nerves. The Commander sat down beside him.

“I want a word with you, George,” he said.

“Oh yes?” gulped George.

The Commander glanced around, taking in the scene. “There's going to be a lot of fallout from today. MaxiBoost will be in big trouble. I'll be asked a lot of questions. Before all that happens, there's something I want to say to you.”

“Oh yes?” gulped George.

The Commander reached up to his shoulder, to where his Commander's badge of rank was sewn to his uniform. Taking a firm grip on it, he tore it off.

“You saved nine lives today, boy,” he said. “You're a hero. You kept your head, you took charge, and you got us home by throwing away the rule book. This belongs to you.”

He handed George the badge. It showed a logo of a ship zooming through the stars, and beneath it, in proudly silvery letters, were the words “V.C. Ferguson – COMMANDER – Berners-Lee Orbital Platform.”

“I'm sure you worked very hard to get this,” said George.

“So did you,” said Commander Ferguson.

“Thanks.” George smiled.

The Commander patted him on the back and walked away. George waited until the Commander was out of sight before he let his face show how much that pat had hurt his aching, battered muscles.