Anywhere but Here

19

They popped open the latches on their upper door seals, and what little air was left in the cab roared out into space. The pickup tilted downward in front, so Trent hit the maneuvering jets to bring it back up. He had to do it a second time before all the air was vented out of the cab, but Donna needed the pickup steady when she jumped.

He opened the door. His suit had stiffened up again, but he managed to stick his legs outside and grab the tire with one hand while he steadied himself against the door with his other.

The tire wouldn’t budge. Of course not; it was seat-belted down. And the buckle was on Donna’s side.

“Unbuckle it!” he said, knowing full well she couldn’t hear him. He reached around the tire as far as he could and pointed, and she understood. She pushed the release button and the tire suddenly came free, and he backed out into space with it in his arms. Then he noticed everything else coming out behind it: their coats, the binoculars, the lug wrench, his hat. Donna grabbed the coats and binoculars, and the lug wrench was tied to him, but his hat kept coming, wobbling like a black flying saucer as it made its getaway out the door.

His reaction was pure cowboy instinct: he let go of the tire and grabbed his hat. The tire instantly started drifting upward, so he flipped the hat into the cab like a Frisbee and made a grab for the tire, but he misjudged his motion in the stiff pressure suit and hit the sidewall with his hand. The tire flipped over and clipped the top of the cab, rebounded and hit him on the head, then bounced away as if it were rocket propelled. He made another lunge for it, but it was already out of reach, and there was no way he was going to leap into space after it, not even with a rope tied around his waist.

“Screw it,” he muttered. He could do without a spare, especially since the truck was probably never going to move again once they landed, but he had damn well better not lose the next tire.

Which one should he take? He decided on the left rear; that would be the easiest one to get into the cab, because he wouldn’t have to swing it around the door or over the whole pickup from the other side.

He looked in at Donna for a second. She was gripping his hat hard enough to crush the brim, but it didn’t look like she even knew she was holding it. Her mouth was wide open, and so were her eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said, knowing she couldn’t hear that, either. He gave her a thumbs-up with his right hand, and mouthed, I love you in exaggerated words.

I love you, too, she mouthed back. Be careful!

“I will,” he said, nodding. “Find a landing site!” He pointed at the planet, now a bright wall of clouds and continents and oceans directly in front of them, then he reached for the side of the pickups bed and pulled himself hand over hand back to the rear tire. He didn’t need the lug wrench, which was a good thing, because it was all he could do to hold himself in place with one hand while he spun the already-loosened lug nut off with his other. The fingers of his suit wanted to splay out like a Mickey Mouse glove, and he had to fight hard to grip the tiny nut. Plus the pickup itself kept moving around; not much, but every time he pushed himself one way, it moved a little bit the other, so he was constantly misjudging distances.

The tire immediately tried to get away when the lug nut came loose, so he flipped the nut toward the door, hoping it would bounce inside and Donna would catch it, but it ricocheted off the armrest and flew away like a tiny chrome star. To hell with it. If he ever mounted this tire again, he would make do with four nuts. He grabbed the tire by one of the slots in the rim and steadied himself against the side of the truck, which set it bobbing around until they both settled down, then he pulled himself and the tire back toward the door.

He was panting like crazy. He probably needed a shot of fresh air, but he would need another hand to do that. He had to get the tire inside first.

He grabbed the open door like a shipwrecked sailor grabs the side of a lifeboat. There was a bad moment when he thought the tire wouldn’t fit inside, but Donna grabbed it and pulled while he pushed one-handed, and it slipped in, compressing the seat and scraping along the roof as it went.

Trent was seeing stars now, the loopy kind inside his helmet. He cracked open his air tank and let it refill his suit with fresh oxygen, then shut it off again and tried to climb into the cab, but the tire was right where he needed to go. He gave it a little shove, and Donna scooted out of the way as best she could, but the tire was so fat that she couldn’t fit between it and the windshield, and there wasn’t room for both her and Trent and the tire to sit side-by-side on the seat. This one couldn’t be turned around to fit the narrow way like the spare had, either.

“Jesus Christ, now what?” Trent growled. There was plenty of air in the tire, but no way to put that air in the cab without leaving the tire there, too. He grabbed the door frame and tried climbing in overhead, but there wasn’t room for that, either. The pickup bobbed around while he pulled and pushed, trying everything he could think of, but there wasn’t room in the footwell, nor between the steering wheel and the windshield. He was screwed.

His rope trailed away toward the planet, writhing like a snake on a hot road. So close. The pickup had fallen considerably farther in the last minute or two. It looked like he could just reach out and touch the surface now. Donna might get that chance, but unless Trent could hang on outside through the entire vector translation and the parachute descent, breathing his own carbon dioxide the whole way, it looked like he would only wind up touching the inside of a grave.

The rope slid back toward him, looping around his body. He felt it tugging on him, then realized it wasn’t the rope. Something was pushing on him.

Air. They were hitting the top of the atmosphere. It wasn’t thick enough for friction to melt anything yet, but at the speed they were moving they were about five seconds away from becoming a big meteor.

He looked in at Donna and pointed frantically at the planet, mouthing the word jump! over and over.

She could barely reach the computer. The tire was leaning forward against it now that the pickup was being pushed backward by the onrushing air. She had to shoulder it aside, then it took her another couple of seconds to lock in her landing site and hit the button. Trent felt himself slip around until he was hanging by the door frame, and the door banged him on the knuckles, but he held on, and a second later the planet vanished.

The wind ceased in the same instant. He rebounded into the edge of the door, bounced off it like the balloon he was, then finally wedged himself between door and frame. The pickup wobbled in reaction, but he hung on until it steadied out. Below his feet he saw a big black hole in space with a crescent of sunlit planet capping it at a jaunty angle.

He looked inside. Donna held up her hands, all five fingers splayed out on her right, and three fingers extended on her left. Eight minutes. Plus some more under the parachute. Might as well be forever. He didn’t have that much air left in his Ziptite.

Now she was pointing frantically toward the back of the pickup. What else was the matter? He looked over his shoulder, but the camper looked the same as always, its aluminum sides reflecting the starlight and the little bit of sunlit planet.

The camper. He whacked himself on the forehead, his gloved hand bouncing off with a hollow boing. He could throw another tire in the camper and wait out the landing in there. Donna would have to do the whole thing herself, but she knew how.

He nodded and said “Okay!” with exaggerated lip motion, then grabbed the roll bar and pulled himself over to the other rear tire. If they were going to land with two tires missing, they should be on opposite sides, and on the same end. Then he realized that he had better open the camper door first, because he couldn’t very well do that with a tire in his hands.

He crawled over the top of the camper, never letting go with one hand until he was sure the other was gripping something solid, until he was upside-down next to the door handle. He’d designed the door to open inward, so air pressure would seal it tight when they were in space and none of their food or anything would be exposed to vacuum. He had never figured on having to open it in space, but he had wondered what he would do if they landed somewhere where the air pressure was lower than where they started. Even half a pound per square inch added up to a lot of force on something the size of a door; he would need a crowbar to pry it open.

Fortunately, he had thought of that, and had put a valve on it just like the one in the driver’s door. With the spigot on the outside, of course. He cracked it open and was relieved to see fog shoot out of it. The camper’s seals were still tight, anyway.

It was a regular water faucet, with the spigot aimed downward. That wouldn’t have been a problem on the ground, but in space it worked just as well as the maneuvering jets in the bumper. The pickup started to nose over under the thrust. Trent tried to twist the spigot around, but it was screwed in tight, so he did the only other thing he could think of: he cupped his hand underneath it and let the air blow against his hand.

That seemed to work. He felt the pressure pushing against him, and he had to hang on tight with his other hand, but the reaction pulled the back of the pickup down again.

Trouble was, the air was cold! It felt like he was sticking his hand in the blast from a fire extinguisher. He held it there as long as he could stand it, then shut off the valve for a second and shook his hand to get some warm blood flowing into it. He took the opportunity to give himself a fresh shot of air in his pressure suit, then went back to venting the camper, first shooting air straight out of the spigot, then cupping his hand underneath it and reversing the thrust.

It took four times, alternating hands, before the air was all gone and he could open the door. He left it just slightly ajar so nothing could get out, then pulled himself around to the right rear tire, careful to make sure he had a good grip with his nearly numb hands, and started spinning off the lug nut. It was tough to do with stiff fingers and stiff gloves. He got it partway off, but the last few turns were being a bugger. He couldn’t get a good enough grip on the nut, and every time he did, his whole body wanted to twist clockwise when he tried to unscrew it.

He finally realized it wasn’t just his clumsiness. The nut was stuck. He reeled in the lug wrench and fitted it to the nut, then managed to spin the nut off with one good flip of the wrench. The pickup started to spin the other way, but much more slowly. He hung on tight, and when he stopped the wrench, the pickup stopped, too. He didn’t even try to save the nut; just let it float away. Four nuts would have to do on this wheel, too, if he ever remounted it.

The tire came free on its own, and he made a grab for the slot in the wheel before it could get away, then he pulled himself around by the bumper until he could shove the tire into the camper. He closed the door on it so it couldn’t get away, then worked his way back around to the cab to untie his rope.

Donna was wrestling with her tire, tugging it around a few inches at a time as if she could roll it farther into the cab and make room for him. “It’s not going to go, babe,” he said softly, and a moment later he was glad she couldn’t hear him, because he figured out what she was doing. She was trying to bring the valve stem around to a point where she could reach it.

He grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and helped her rotate the tire until the stem was on top, then he got the can opener out of the seat pocket—careful not to let it slip out of his hand—and passed it over to her.

“How much time left?” he asked, tapping his wrist in case she couldn’t read his lips.

She checked the computer, then held up three fingers. He had to move.

“I’ll see you on the ground. I love you, baby.” He reached forward with his free hand. She reached around the tire and grasped his hand in hers, and they just looked at one another for a moment through their foggy, condensation-streaked bubble helmets. He never wanted to let go, but he had to, and they both knew it. Without a word, they gave each other one final squeeze, then he backed up and untied the rope from the steering wheel.

He kept a death grip on the door frame until he looped the rope around the roll bar, then he wrapped the end around his hand a couple of times. If he slipped, at least he could reel himself back to the roll bar.

He grabbed the door in his left hand and the roll bar in his right and slammed the door, nearly knocking himself loose in the process. The pickup wobbled like crazy, but he held on and watched Donna reach over and snap the latches from inside.

He felt a moment of unreasoning panic at the sight. Locked out of his pickup in deep space! He knew this was their only hope of survival, but still.

He probably had less than two minutes before the computer took them back to the other side of the planet. With a final wave to Donna, he pulled himself hand over hand around the side of the pickup to the camper, opened the door, and pulled himself inside. The tire took up most of the space, but he had room enough to slide in below it. Wedging his feet against the sides of the cabinets so he couldn’t slip back outside, he let go of the free end of the rope and pulled on the end tied to his waist, pulling it free of the roll bar and piling it all up in a writhing wad behind him.

He swung the door closed before anything could fly back out. It was pitch black inside now. He almost turned on the light, but stopped himself when he remembered that the camper drew its power from the same batteries that the hyperdrive did. Lights didn’t draw much juice, but the batteries were down to so little that he was afraid even a minute’s worth of light would put them below the critical level for their last jump. He felt around the door frame to make sure it was closed tight and the rope wasn’t in the way of the seals, then turned to the tire and felt for the valve stem, took the cap off, and realized he didn’t have anything ready to hold the valve open with.

There were a million pointy objects in the camper. Forks, toothpicks, paring knives, even can openers if he could just find them in the dark. He felt for the sink, finally found it up by his shoulders and realized he was upside down, then he patted his way along the cabinets until he found the silverware drawer, unlatched it, and reached in for a fork. Everything was jumbled up, and he couldn’t tell a fork from a spoon in his pressure suit.

He had to have some light. The drawer below the silverware had a flashlight in it, if he could recognize that by feel.

Actually, he was already seeing light, and not the good kind. He reached to his waist and opened the air tank, and it hissed for another few seconds before falling silent. Empty. Okay, he had about two minutes left now.

Flashlight first. He opened the drawer, felt for anything cylindrical, found it next to something soft, and slid his hand up the side until he hit the switch. Light!

Three pot holders, a roll of duct tape, and a pair of scissors tumbled into the air, bouncing off the counters and ricocheting across the camper. There were already half a dozen forks and spoons and butter knives floating free, too, from the other drawer. Plus the lug nuts he had tossed in on the ground, and the parachute, drifting like a jellyfish behind the tire. The flashlight cast stark shadows as he waved it around. It was eerie; everything looked alive the way it moved so smoothly, yet none of it made a sound in the vacuum.

To hell with a fork. He let the flashlight go and grabbed the scissors, then turned to the tire, found the valve, and jabbed the pointed end of the blades against the tiny button, smiling at the jet of fog that rushed out around his hand.

There was no pressure gauge in the camper. He wondered how he would know when there was enough air to breathe, but then he slowly became aware of a faint hissing noise, and the soft tink of silverware and lug nuts bouncing off the cabinets. Yeah. The thicker the air was, the more sound it transmitted. There was more than one way to skin a cat.

He kept letting air out of the tire, occasionally slapping his hand against the sidewall and listening to the whack. When it sounded about as loud as he remembered similar sounds before with his suit sealed, he reached up to the top of his helmet and opened it.

There was a little puff of air out of the suit. He took a cautious breath. The air in the camper stank just as bad as the air from the spare, maybe even worse, but he could breathe it.

Or could he? He felt a moment of disorientation, almost as if he were going to pass out, but it was gone just as quickly. He took another couple of breaths, waiting for the swirling vision that would mean he was out of oxygen, but it didn’t come. What had happened?

Then he realized what it was: the hyperdrive jump back over their landing site. He had maybe thirty seconds before Donna opened the parachute, and the air was full of utensils.

He could never gather it all up in time. The only thing he could do was grab the tire and hold it to the floor so he wouldn’t wind up under it when the jolt came, and try to hold himself down against the floor as well.

The seconds seemed to take forever. A hundred heartbeats, anyway, but that probably didn’t mean much. He was probably thumping away at two hundred or so a minute. He couldn’t remember it ever beating this hard. It’d be just his luck to have a heart attack now that he’d saved his ass again for. what, the third or fourth time today.

He heard the faint hiss of the air jets in the bumper, transmitted through the frame of the pickup. That would be Donna leveling out their approach into the atmosphere. Then he heard the bang of the parachute pod opening. He risked a glance upward. No knives overhead, but the flashlight was right there, ready to klonk him. No time to grab it; he just tucked his head down and made sure his butt was tight against the floor.

The jolt felt like a giant kicking the pickup upward, hard. Silverware rained down all around him, the lug wrench hit beside him with a loud clang, and the flashlight bounced off his head to skitter across to the door, throwing wild shadows everywhere as it spun. The camper floor had no give to it at all, but the tire did: it bounced up and smashed into the ceiling, broke off a couple of drawer handles on the way back down, and would have crushed Trent’s knees if it hadn’t flipped sideways off the drawers and smashed the table instead.

Then the camper was silent. Gravity kept everything on the floor. The parachute was holding.

There was more than enough air in the tire to keep him breathing all the way to the ground. Donna would have enough in front even with the leak. Now all they had to do was survive the landing. And hope that this planet’s air was better than the last one’s.

Hell, that was the distant future, Trent thought. He didn’t have to worry about dying for at least fifteen minutes or so. He leaned back against the cabinet and took a deep breath.