Red Thunder (51 page)

It took me three minutes to cross, but in only one minute I
experienced what Travis had talked about. At first I was scared. Dear
Lord, it was empty out there! Just two little specks tied by a thin
cord, and me in the middle. But very quickly I experienced something
like rapture. Somehow, in all this vastness, my fear was so
insignificant, so primitive and unworthy an emotion for this starry
cathedral, that it just went away. So be it, I thought. Amen. This
place is inimical to life, tries every second to snuff it out... and I
didn't mind. Oh, I wasn't eager to die, but for the first time I could
remember, I wasn't afraid to die, either. I smiled, then I laughed.

"Manny? Problem?" It was Travis.

"None, Trav. Kelly, did I tell you I love you?"

"Not today," she laughed, "but it's been a busy day."

"I love you. Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes, Manny, I will."

"Duly witnessed and recorded," Travis said. "Dak, have a cigar." I
could hear Dak laughing in the background. I drifted along the rope and
into Kelly's arms. You can't kiss in a space suit, and even hugs leave
a lot to be desired, but we did the best we could.

AFTER WE'D CYCLED Jubal's and Dak's suits through the
lock Kelly got in and I shoved everything else in with her. She knocked
on the wall with a wrench and the barrel of the lock began to turn. She
smiled and waved at me, then she was gone, and the cracked window
rotated into my view. I could see why they were worried. What Alicia
had described as little icicles had grown into white starbursts a foot
long, what I guess you'd call free-fall icicles. I had to knock them
away with my glove before I could get to work.

Anybody in Florida knows what to do when there's a hurricane alert.
I'd lived through two near misses. Each time Mom and Maria and me had
taped up the windows. This won't stop them from breaking, but it stops
them from shattering in such a spectacular way. This window was about
to get a total taping with our alternative patching material, duct tape.

We'd tested, and found that ordinary gray duct tape stood up to cold
and vacuum for something between six and eight hours, after which it
could turn brittle and lose its gumminess, or adhesive qualities,
whatever you want to call it. I had a big roll of it tied to my belt. I
started peeling off three-foot strips and pasting them over the window.

Not a fun job. If you've ever been frustrated trying to lift up the
end of a roll of sticky tape, try it wearing mittens. If I ever order
another space suit, I'll be sure it has something that can be used as a
thumbnail.

I struggled for ten minutes, strips of crumpled duct tape clinging
to my suit, feeling like Br'er Rabbit fighting with the Tar Baby. I
covered the whole surface of the window with long strips, much longer
than needed to cover the one-foot diameter circle. Then I put on
another layer, at right angles to the first, and for good measure, a
third layer, diagonally. Then I knocked on the metal of the hull and
the lock rotated. I got in, and repeated the process on the inside of
the window. When I was satisfied I knocked again, and the inner lock
door was opened by Kelly. She had her helmet off and her nose was red
and dripping a little, and she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen.

I got quick introductions to Holly and Cliff. Both were shivering
uncontrollably, though wrapped in layers of cloth. I had brought a
couple of big fluorescent camp lanterns, which we switched on. They
gave out a ghastly light, making our skin look like sour milk, except
Cliff's, whose dark skin looked almost bluish.

First order of business, get them into suits.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all space suit, but the
Russians had come about as close as possible. The torso can be expanded
and the arms and legs lengthened or shortened a full six inches. This
was accomplished with a design a lot like those bendable plastic soda
straws, a bellows arrangement. We figured to fit Captain Aquino into
Jubal's suit, as he was a short man, like Jubal, though not nearly so
bulky.

Captain Aquino almost proved to be my undoing. I guess I hadn't
realized that "compound fracture" meant a sharp point of bloody white
bone sticking right out of the meat of his thigh. I felt sick, quickly
removed my helmet just in case... and the cold slapped me in the face
so hard I was shocked right out of my nausea.

I was breathing hard, and so was everyone else. The air felt thin
and sour. But I'd brought an alarm that would scream if the oxygen
content fell to dangerous levels, and so far it was silent.

You don't really know what chaos can be until you've seen it in free
fall. Things were drifting around, things as small as tiny frozen
droplets of water and blood, and as large as tables and chairs. You
could shove them into a corner but they'd just drift right back out
again. One of the things that kept floating about and getting in the
way was the body of Dr. Brin Marston. Aside from some blood coming from
her mouth she seemed almost unhurt. She did seem to be bent backwards
more than normal.

"She died peacefully," Holly said to me. "She never woke up. After an hour she stopped breathing."

Holly Oakley was in shock, like Alicia had said. I had to stifle a
laugh that would have been horribly inappropriate. But think about it.
She's sitting in total darkness, she and Cliff. They know they are
doomed. They know the air is going to kill them in a few hours, the
only question is how. By getting too cold, too thin, or too
oxygen-poor? Then there's a knock on the door, and who is it but your
ex-husband, the one your lawyer screwed so badly in the property
settlement, the alimony, and the child support.

For the record, Travis said the property settlement had been more
than fair, she had never asked for alimony, and he'd never begrudged a
nickel of the child support.

Now she seemed to be only partially aware of what was going on.
Kelly was helping her into the suit Alicia had brought in, the one that
had been on the rack beside Vasarov's corpse, and it was like dressing
a toddler. Holly's attention wandered, often to the body of Dr. Marston.

"Manny, can you do something with her?" Kelly asked, jerking her
head toward Marston. I shoved the body against a wall, then tied one of
her legs to a stanchion. I tried to close her partially opened eyes.
Big mistake. Her eyelids were frozen in that position.

Cliff had managed to struggle into Dak's suit. He was about the same
height as Dak, but quite a bit huskier. "It's going to cut off the
circulation in my legs," he said, teeth chattering, "but I can handle
that if I have to."

"It'll only take ten, fifteen minutes," I told him. I showed him how
to adjust the systems on the Russian suit. He sighed as the heating
elements warmed up.

"God, I hate being cold," he said. Then we both went to help Alicia.

I really had to hand it to Alicia. Liquids won't drip in free fall,
so how do you make an I.V. work? She had brought some broad rubber
bands. By winding them a few times around one of the bags of type B
positive blood I'd brought over, she could produce enough pressure to
force the blood into Captain Aquino's veins. But that was about all she
could do for him until we got him over to
Red Thunder.

"Setting the bone will be easier once we're under way," she decided.
"Right now, I want to disturb that wound as little as possible, or
he'll start bleeding again." She got a big pad of sterile gauze and
packed the wound, then wrapped it tightly in sterile tape. The gauze
turned red almost immediately.

"Let's get him in the suit, pronto," she said.

We got the body of the suit on him, the I.V. tube nestled against
his chest. Got the arms and gloves on, then one leg. Then, very
gingerly, eased the other leg over the wound. Aquino began moaning and
tossing his head, so Alicia jabbed him with more morphine. We got his
helmet on and turned on all suit systems. All lights were green.

But not on Holly's suit. No sooner had we buttoned her down and
turned the suit on than we got a big red light for pressurization. A
quick inspection found two holes one inch across in the right lower
leg. Something had passed right through the tough fabric.

"Okay," Alicia said. "We'll get Cliff and the captain across, then
I'll come back with Kelly's suit. It should be a pretty good fit."

"No!"
Holly grabbed my arm and squeezed hard. Her eyes were wild. "I can't stay here in the dark, alone. Please don't make me do it."

"It won't be dark," Alicia soothed.

"I can't do it."

"I'm not sure this place will stay pressurized much longer," I said.

"You're right. Okay. Do you think we can patch it so it will hold?"

"Yes." I sounded surer than I felt... but the duct tape hadn't failed us so far.

So we wrapped tape, round and round and round some more. We used the
rest of my roll, making a thick, tight band from her knee to her ankle.

It should hold, I thought. It
had
to hold. We couldn't bring her dead body to Travis after coming so close.

I'm not a praying man, but I prayed.
Please, just ten minutes. Let it hold for ten minutes.

SINCE AQUINO SEEMED to be more or less stabilized, we
moved Holly up to priority one. I crowded into the air lock with her
and I pressed the button... and nothing happened.

"Please don't tell me it's stopped working
now!
" I shouted.

"Calm down, Manny," Kelly said over the suit radio. "It only works on manual now. Alicia is cranking it... there it goes."

It seemed slower than it had when I entered the ship, a thousand years before, but it was turning.

We had worked it all out before we got into the lock. As soon as
there was enough space, I squeezed through the door and snapped onto
the lifeline attached to
Red Thunder.
No time for any rapture
during this crossing. I pulled myself along, talking on the radio the
whole way, alerting Dak and Travis that we would be in a hurry when
Holly came over. I only started slowing myself when I was twenty feet
from the ship. I soaked up my momentum with my legs, got turned around
just in time to catch Holly as she came speeding along the line. I
quickly unsnapped us from the crossing line and attached us to the line
leading back to
Red Thunder's
air lock. Hand over hand, with me in the lead, we made our way around the ship.

I got her in the lock and started it cycling. Elapsed time: five minutes flat.
Okay, God, we didn't need the whole ten minutes, so hang on to the surplus and let me use them for the rest of this stunt.

I looked back at the wreck and saw Alicia starting across, hauling
Aquino at the end of a short rope. Trying to hurry slowly, I pulled
myself back to the crossing rope and waited for her.
You go back for the fox, row him across the river, bring back the goose...

When she was safely on her way to the lock I pulled myself across
the gap once more. The lock was just finishing its rotation, bringing
the taped-over window into view again. I didn't like the looks of it, I
thought it might be bulging. It stopped. Cliff would be letting it
flood with stale
Ares Seven
air. It bulged even more. Nothing I could do about it, it would hold or it would not.

Then I thought about it some more. I pictured it...

"Kelly! You and Cliff get away from the door, it might—"

That's when Cliff pulled the inner door open, and the patch gave
way, the tape-wrapped circular window hitting me square in the
faceplate. Some of the remaining adhesive glued the patch in front of
my face for a second, until I yanked it away.

It all lasted only a few seconds, with small objects being shot
through the hole by the escaping air like weird grapeshot. I stayed off
to the side until the eruption died down. I pulled myself around to
look through the hole, but something was blocking it.

Somebody's spacesuit backpack.

Cliff was breathing hard. "Manny, Kelly got sucked into the air
lock. There's a bunch of junk jammed in there with her. I'm clearing it
away as fast as I can, one minute, I think. Two minutes, tops."

I couldn't see anything but the red fabric covering Kelly's backpack. But then some snow began to drift out of the hole.

"Something hit me pretty hard in the side," Kelly said. "I'm trying
to get my hand around to it... there's a clear fluid leaking, Manny.
Not blood. Clear. I'm... I'm scared, Manny. I feel like I'm buried
alive."

There she was, inches away from me, and there was nothing I could do.

"We'll have you out in just a minute, honey," I said.

"I'm starting to feel... kind of cold. It's suit coolant leaking, isn't it, Manny?"

"It must be. Even if you lose it all, you can't freeze that quick,
babe. I'm going to set a new Olympic hauling record. I'll have you back
safe and sound in Big Red before you know it." But was her voice
fainter? And if it was, was it because she was speaking softer... or
because the air was getting thin?

"I've got it cleared, Manny," Cliff said. I could see Kelly's
backpack move away from the empty porthole. "I'll squeeze in here, and
you crank us around."

"Me... crank what?"

"The manual lock turner," Cliff said, a little impatiently.

"What... where is it?"

"To your left... are you oriented with your feet aft?"

"Yes."

"To your left, two feet away, a red arrow should be pointing to the hatch cover for the manual control."

"Got it." I grabbed the hatch cover handle and pulled. And I pulled
myself right off the ship. In free fall nothing can be pulled, twisted,
raised, or lowered unless you are tied to or braced against something
that will give you leverage.

I planted my feet against the side of the ship, reached down, and pulled. And pulled, and again, and again.