Red Thunder

30

IT WASN’T UNTIL the next morning, Day M5, that we realized Travis hadn’t meant to include himself in the buddy system rotation.

“I can handle it, don’t worry about me,” he said.

Debate was allowed aboard Red Thunder until Travis cut it off. So we were still arguing about it when somebody knocked on the door. Whoever it was must have been pounding on the side of the ship with a wrench or something.

“I wonder who that could be?” Kelly asked.

“Marvin the Martian?” I suggested.

It was still half an hour until the Chinese were due to join us for another day of exploration. Travis frowned and looked at his watch. Alicia tapped a few keys on her board and we saw a view from one of our outside cameras. There was a single Chinese standing on our threshold platform. We could see the Chinese rover parked a few feet from the ramp, and no one else was in it.

“Who’s that knocking at our door?” Dak asked.

“Captain Xu, Mr. Sinclair. Captain, may I come in? This is an emergency.”

We all looked at each other, then Travis shrugged and made his way [357] down to the air lock. We heard it cycle, then voices too indistinct to hear. Travis shouted, “No!” and the rest of us scrambled for the ladder.

“It happened about eight hours ago,” Xu was saying. Travis looked at us.

“Xu says the Ares Seven blew up.”

Though the news was not entirely unexpected, it was still shocking to hear it.

“Apparently the crew had some warning,” Xu went on. “They declared an emergency and within two minutes telemetry ceased. But Ms. Oakley had indicated that at least three of the cosmonauts were still alive.”

“Holly’s alive,” Travis breathed.

“Well… that no longer seems likely.”

“Likely or not, we’re going after them,” Travis said.

This time it was Xu’s turn to be shocked. Red Thunder could fool longtime astronauts that way, at first. It could take them a while to realize, on a gut level, just how much Jubal’s baby had changed all the rules of space travel.

“Yes… yes, of course. If there is anything, that is, if I can help in-”

“Do you have any kind of maneuvering unit, a suit jet or a low-powered rocket unit we could use for an EVA if we can find-”

“Pardon me… what is this EVA?”

“Extra-Vehicular Activity-one of those NASA jawbreakers, this one means stepping outside the ship for a bit.”

“Yes, we have such a device, and I would be happy to give you one.”

“Can we go get it? Now? Time is critical.”

“Certainly.”

“Crew, I hope to lift from here in no more than one hour. Batten down all the hatches, secure everything, you know the drill. Captain Xu, let’s go.”

“I can get Blue Thunder stowed away in about an hour, Cap…” Dak saw the sad look on Travis’s face, and the air went out of him. “Sorry, Captain, I wasn’t thinking. I just hate to abandon her. Captain Xu, you’re welcome to use her when we’ve left.”

“Drive it about half a mile away and leave the keys in it, Dak,” Travis [358] said. He was kidding about the keys. “We’ll come back in a few months and pick her up.”

Dak brightened at that thought, and joined Travis and Xu on the way to the lock.

DAK CAME BACK in a foul mood.

“One of the electric blanket connections was loose,” he said. “One of the tires turned into black confetti. She’s not going to be any use to Captain Xu or anybody else, and I didn’t bring a spare.” He kicked a chair in his frustration.

Travis and Xu came back with the space propulsion device.

“Somebody at NASA or some branch of government figured out we were the only possible hope for the Ares Seven,” he said. “So they sent the last telemetry from the ship to Captain Xu. It’ll give me a pretty good idea where to look for them.” He held up a silvery DVD. “Thanks, Captain.”

“I was glad to help. But I must mention another problem.” It took him a while to get going, and I could only imagine how much this was costing him in face.

“Comrade Chun has… has suffered a mental breakdown. We received orders not to pass this information on to you. I felt the origin of the orders was dubious, not through the proper chain of command of the space agency. Chun ordered me to… to destroy your ship, or disable it in some way. He became violent, and had to be restrained.”

He looked down at his feet for a long time, and none of us said anything. Destroy our ship? Had they brought explosives along? Then I remembered that part of that day’s agenda was to set off charges and study the seismic vibrations, like wildcatters did when searching for oil. Red Thunder was tough, probably tougher than those Chinese murderers back in Beijing realized, but like any ship there were vulnerable places, and it wouldn’t take much of a charge to weaken or destroy them. That son of a bitch!

“We face a very long sojourn here on Mars,” Xu finally went on. “I was wondering if it was at all possible… to… for you to carry [359] Comrade Chun back with you and hand him over to the authorities, or to your Chinese embassy. I… I don’t know how we are going to guard him and restrain him during all that time. And since you will be back on Earth in just a few days…” He seemed unable to go on.

Travis put his hand on Xu’s shoulder, looked into his eyes, and shook his head.

“Can’t do it, friend. I’m not going to have my people guard him twenty-four hours a day, no matter how short the trip is.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sure I’d feel the same way. Then, failing that… do you have anything aboard ship that would be helpful in restraining him? It appears that we left Earth without a single pair of handcuffs.” His small smile was ironic.

“That, we can do. Though we somehow forgot the handcuffs, too.”

We gave him half a dozen rolls of duct tape and a spare coil of poly rope. They hadn’t brought any duct tape, believe it or not. One good rule for living, in my opinion, is to never go beyond the city limits of your hometown without a roll of duct tape in the trunk and a Swiss Army knife in the glove box.

“I don’t think you’ll have to sweat out the whole time here, though,” Travis said. “Plenty of others ought to show up in the coming months. Hell, I’ll come back and get you myself if no one else will.” He paused a moment. “I don’t know how much hot water you’re going to be in over this business, Captain Xu, but if I come get you, I’ll take you back to wherever you want to go on Earth. You know what I’m saying? Anywhere.”

Xu smiled. “I understand perfectly, and thank you. Unfortunately, I have a very large family, many relatives, and could not go abroad without them. And, I must say, I love my country, though not always those who govern it.”

“Well said. I’ve enjoyed knowing you. Give my love to Mei-Ling and Dr. Li.”

We all seconded that, and shook his hand.

Fifteen minutes later, just long enough for Xu to get out of the way, we raised ship for an unknown destination.

[360] WE BOOSTED FOR about four hours. Turnaround-and, hallelujah! I didn’t feel half bad-then boost again for another four hours. Then weightlessness.

Dak was still sick. I wasn’t tempted to giggle, not even for a second.

I don’t know how to describe the problem Travis had to solve for us to have any hope of finding the Ares Seven.

Up until she blew, she was continuously sending back information as to her position, and we had the last seconds of that. She had slowed down below solar escape velocity so, undisturbed, she would swing way, way out into the cometary zone and return to the inner solar system in about a thousand years.

But the explosion itself would certainly have provided enough energy to alter her course. All Travis could do was to try to bring Red Thunder to rest in the area where she should be if we extended her orbital parameters from the time of the explosion.

We had good orbital mechanics software. We had middling-to-poor navigation optics to tell us our precise position. We had good data from Earth. We had poor-to-bad radar for the final stage of the intercept. Good news, bad news, good news, bad news.

But in the good news column I would put the fact that Travis Broussard had proved himself to be the best seat-of-the-pants spaceship pilot in the history of man in space. If anyone could get us there, if anyone could find that ship, I was betting on Travis.

He brought us to what seemed the most likely area and velocity. We set up, and we waited, like a traffic cop waiting for a speeder to come by. But we couldn’t wait for too long, the situation was too dynamic.

Casting around for a sighting involved a lot of starting and stopping. As time wore on Travis grew less gentle with us, going from weightlessness to three gees, the maximum Travis felt he dared subject Red Thunder to. It got to where I was looking forward to free fall, at least it afforded ten minutes of stability. Dak was still very sick, trying to ignore it, and even Kelly started to look a little green.

We did this for two hours. Travis seemed ready to go on with it until [361] hell froze over or we ran out of gas. The rest of us grew increasingly discouraged. We realized Travis was, too, when he started shouting down to us, asking if we saw anything, when he had to know that if we did we’d shout it out instantly.

Normally I was in charge of the radar. I still was, but we had the radar display up on all four of our screens. What else was there to do? We stared at our screens until our eyes hurt, and saw nothing at all.

Then, on the thirteenth stop, just as Travis was about to boost again, I thought I caught a flicker on the edge of my screen, from the corner of my eye. Could it have been the ship, or a piece of it, drawing the shallowest possible chord through the spherical volume of space we were searching?

“Did anybody else see that?” I asked.

“See what?” Travis bellowed from above.

“I thought there was a flicker,” I said. “Nobody else saw it.”

“Heading! Give me a heading!”

I gave it to him, and instantly the ship started turning to point to it. Then three gees smashed into us again. Dak groaned, and couldn’t get the barf bag to his mouth with arms suddenly turned to lead, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t have anything to bring up.

“I see it again!” I sang out. There it was, flickering… and another, and another.

“Four… no, five blips.”

“I see seven,” Alicia called out.

“It’s the debris field,” Travis shouted down to us. “Now we have to figure out which ones are worthless.”

We wanted to find big chunks, but the biggest might not be the prize we were looking for. It all depended on the size and shape of the explosion, and where people were when it happened. The first three objects we found turned out to be heavy parts of the engine.

“Stands to reason those would be thrown the farthest, right?” Travis said. Nobody responded. “Well, anybody have any better theory?”

“Sounds good to me, Captain,” I said. I was staring at a screen with maybe a hundred twinkling blips, some of them flashing every second or two, some waxing and waning over a period of minutes as they [362] rotated. Red Thunder was drifting through the debris field. It was dangerous to go through it any other way. Already we’d heard two loud clangs as fist-sized hunks of stuff hit us.

After spotting and rejecting a few dozen objects Travis was getting frustrated again. “Can anybody help me out here? Anybody got any ideas? Crazy ideas, stupid ideas, out-of-left-field ideas… any idea at all. I promise I won’t laugh.”

Nobody had one. But I was studying one blip we were slowly moving away from. Actually, I was wondering if it might be more than one blip, connected in some way, from the way the reflection changed. Stupid idea? Well, he asked for it.

“Travis, I’ve got something interesting,” I said, and gave him the position of the triad of blips. Instantly Red Thunder began to rotate again.

“I don’t see it,” Kelly said, softly enough that Travis wouldn’t hear. I moved the cursor over the trio and highlighted it in red. Kelly chewed her lip. “Might be something. Can’t hurt to go look.”

“Bingo!” Travis called out two minutes later. “Manny, come look.”

I unbuckled and floated up to the cockpit. Out the window I could see the object, about three miles away. Actually, three objects of various sizes, all rotating around a common center of gravity. I couldn’t see what was holding them together.

“Wires,” Travis said, reading my mind. “Unless I’m mistaken, two of those- chunks are parts of the living quarters. Those two are worth a look, don’t you think?”

“Sure do.”

“Okay, go below and strap in again, I’m going to get us to about a hundred yards, more or less. Take me about five minutes.”

I knew that was headlong speed in space, where it typically took a VStar several hours to close the last few hundred yards with a space station. I also knew Red Thunder was not famous for fine control. The Squeezer engines were great for raw power, but it was hard to release just enough energy to get you where you’re going without getting yourself into trouble. But once again, I’d bet on Travis.

And because I knew Travis all too well by this time, the first thing I did when I got to the control deck, even before strapping in, was to [363] incite the crew to mutiny. I quickly determined they were all with me, so I strapped in and sat tight.

As soon as we were where Travis wanted us to be, he called out.

“Dak, I flipped a coin and you’re it, in control until I get back.”

“I don’t think so, Captain,” he said. Travis stuck his head down through the access hole and frowned at Dak.

“What’s the problem?”

“This isn’t right, Travis,” I said. “You shouldn’t be going over there.”

“I’ve got more suit hours than-”

“We know that. And if something happened to you, we might as well just open the hatches and suck vacuum,” Dak said. “You’re the only one can fly this thing, probably, and the only one who can land her, for sure.”

“What is this? Are you saying you won’t take control?”

“If you order me to, I will. But we want you to see you shouldn’t give the order.”

“This is what you all think?” He got nods from all four of us. For just a moment I thought he was going to dig in his heels, but then he swung himself down to the control deck and hung there, and rubbed his face with his hands. He was probably feeling as tired as I was, and I was exhausted.

“All right, I’m trapped. I think I’d rather cut off my right arm than send one of you kids out there to handle this… but I guess it’s what I signed up for when I raised ship without a trained copilot aboard. Alicia, you suit up, the sooner the better.”

“Right, Captain,” she said, and started unbuckling.

“Hey, wait a-”

“Sorry, Dak, you asked for it. You’re still far too sick to go, under any circumstances. My intention was to have Alicia go with me. Whatever we decide, Alicia has to go. It’s what she trained for. If anybody’s hurt over there, there’s not much I can do for them. But Alicia can. And because of the buddy system we started this morning, Kelly goes with her.”

Kelly was way ahead of him, already unbuckling. And now it was my turn to squawk. Travis cut me off just as abruptly.

“I probably like it even less than you guys do. My generation, we [364] were taught that it’s always a man who goes into the dangerous situation. You mean to tell me. twenty-first-century men are still over-protective of their women?”

Neither of us had anything to say in our defense. Yes, I did feel protective of Kelly, and Alicia too, for that matter. But Travis had us trapped. It was true, Alicia had to go. It was true, Kelly was the only possible buddy, as Dak and I were still far from sure of our ability to do the job without filling our helmets with vomit, though I was doing a lot better than Dak was by then.

We all followed the girls onto the suit deck. Dak and I helped them get suited up, Travis carefully keeping his back to us. He was putting together a tool kit with some of the things they might need, just a heavy-duty canvas bag with a drawstring.

“For once in my life, I’m not sure I want to be a feminist,” Kelly whispered. “Manny, I’m real scared.”

“Just say the word, and you don’t have to go,” I said, meaning it. I’d fight Travis with my fists, if I had to.

“You wouldn’t say the word, would you? Be honest.”

“No. No I wouldn’t.”

“And you’d probably be almost as scared as I am.”

“Probably more.”

I noticed that Travis was suiting up, too. He smiled at me.

“Somebody has to go outside to help them with the crossing,” he said, “and I don’t figure that’ll be too dangerous. But I want both of you to suit up, too, all but the helmets, and keep those with you. Should have thought of it before, there’s too much stuff flying around out there, we could get a puncture.”

And with that, the three of them put on their helmets-a last kiss from me to Kelly-and entered the air lock.

Dak and I watched it cycle as we suited up, then hurried up to the cockpit. We got there in time to see the three of them float up to the portholes, tethered together and also tied to a safety line that was attached to one of many hooks welded to Red Thunder’s side for that very purpose.

[365] “Kelly, you go first. I’m going to be here to belay you when you get there. You see that shred of aluminum about twenty feet from the biggest piece?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That looks like the center of gravity. You get to that, you can hook your line and not start spinning. Then I’ll send Alicia over. Now, this dingus right here.”

He was holding the Space Maneuvering Unit Captain Xu had loaned us. It looked like bicycle handlebars with a big thermos attached.

“You’re going to start off with just a simple kick against the side of the ship. You hold the SMU like this. See? Over your head. Hang on to it, but do not use it to speed up or slow down. Use it for course corrections only. You hit this button with your thumb. Don’t hold it down, or I’ll reel you back in and have you do it again. Okay?”

Kelly nodded. I figured she was too scared to talk.

Travis tied the SMU to Kelly’s suit so it wouldn’t be lost, tied the tool kit around her waist, then he picked her up and swung her into a position about six feet from the side of the ship. She flailed around in panic for a second and my heart leaped into my throat. Then she settled down, facing Travis, and he put her through a series of familiarization drills. At first she held the control down too long and shot out to the length of her safety tether, which was about twenty feet long. Travis pulled her back, talking softly and calmly the whole time, and positioned her again. She quickly learned how to point the thing to get to where she wanted to go.

“I never felt so useless, man,” Dak said, and I could only agree. How did this happen? Kelly and Alicia had never dreamed of space, like Dak and I had. So why were our girlfriends out there, and us in here?

After about twenty minutes of drills, Travis judged Kelly as ready as she’d ever be. So he positioned her with her feet against the side of Red Thunder and told her to jump. She jumped.

At first it looked good, she seemed to be headed right toward the center of gravity of the Ares Seven wreckage. But Travis, who had a better line of sight, told her she was bearing off to her right, and Kelly [366] tried to correct. She held the button down too long, and it looked like it twisted in her hands. Whatever happened, she lost the SMU and began flailing around again.

“Oh God, oh God,” she was whispering.

“Kelly, get the SMU back. Just pull in your left arm. That’s right. Now you’ve got it. Now aim it directly away from your chest and just touch the button.”

She was still swinging out in such a way that she’d eventually wrap herself all around Red Thunder, but more slowly.

“Do that again. That’s right. And again. Once more.”

Now she hovered motionless at the end of her tether. I checked something I hadn’t remembered up to now, which was the telemetry from her suit. Her heart and breathing rates were way up. The heart rate slowed some as Travis pulled her slowly back to us. I could hear her sigh as her boots touched the hull again.

“Not bad,” Travis said. “I never expected we’d get it on the first try. You want to wait a bit, catch your breath?”

“No, let’s get it over with.”

She jumped again. This time she looked off course right from the start… but this time she did a lot better with the SMU, got herself almost lined up, overcorrected, corrected again, and with about ten feet to go was only a few feet off the optimal location. Travis snubbed her safety rope and then coached her through the last feet with tiny bursts from the SMU. It took her a full minute to cross that last few feet, but when she finally was able to reach out and grab that collection of tight cables I heard her laugh, sweet music to my ears.

“Good. Hook your second safety rope to something… that’s good. Now unhook the first line and clip it to the wires right in front of you. Got it.”

Travis pulled that line almost taut, and clipped his end to a ring.

“Now Alicia’s coming over.”

It was easier, because all Alicia had to do was clip her line to the first rope with a snap ring, and pull herself across.

“Just pull a few times,” Travis told her. “It should take you a full five minutes to get across. Okay?”

[367] “Got it.”

One hand on the rope and one carrying her pressurized “black bag” of medical supplies and instruments, she shoved off.

“Oh, man, I don’t like this, I don’t like this.”

“Closing your eyes might help,” Dak told her.

“Dak, stay off the line, please.”

“Let him talk, Captain? It helps me, some.”

“Right. Sorry, guys.”

“No problem.”

“Dak, could you just talk to me?”

Dak hurried down to the control deck, talking all the way, and came back again in a few seconds with a CD. He stuck it in the player and soon one of Alicia’s favorite songs was filling our ears. I heard Alicia laugh, then she started singing along.

“Open your eyes now, Alicia,” Travis said when she was almost there. “Got it? Just tighten your grip on the rope, that should do it.” It did, and in a few seconds Kelly had grabbed Alicia’s hand and they were securing themselves.

“Now what?”

“What looks promising?” Travis asked. There was a long pause.

“Nothing,” Kelly admitted. “I don’t see any lights, or anything like that.”

“That’s okay. Keep looking.”

“It’s pretty dark.”

“Turn on your headlight.”

“My… oh, well, duuuh! Forgot all about it.” All the suits had krypton lights mounted over the faceplates, not that different from automobile headlights, though when one proved to be defective we had to order a new one from Russia.

We saw the lights go on from both their suits.

“I think I know where you are,” Travis said. “Dak, Manny, bring up that schematic on the Ares Seven. Check me, but doesn’t it look like they might be where C deck used to be?”

We brought it up on Travis’s screen, twisted it a few times, and then [368] it fell into place. Dak pointed to a large oxygen cylinder on the schematic, then to a big tank just above Alicia’s and Kelly’s heads.

“I think you’re right, Captain. Kelly, Alicia, if we’ve got you located right, the main air lock ought to be on the side facing away from Red Thunder. Turn to your left a little, Kelly… a little more… there. What you’re lighting up now looks like it might be the descent ladder and what’s left of a landing strut. See it?”

“Yes. But… there’s a lot of wire here, it’s a real rat’s nest.”

“Don’t get caught up in the wires,” Travis said.

“I’m staying clear. But that puts the air-lock door on the other side of all that wiring. I don’t think we can get through unless we cut some of it.”

“Don’t!” we all three shouted at once. Kelly laughed.

“We’re not making a move until we’ve discussed it, don’t worry.”

“Ideas?” Travis called out.

“Get them back, circle around the ship, send ’em over again,” Dak said.

“Cut some wires, see if we can get through that way,” Alicia said.

There was a long silence.

“I’ve gotta go with Dak,” Travis said. “Come back to the tether rope and I’ll haul you back.”

“That’s going to take hours,” Kelly said. “If anybody’s in there, they could be running out of time.”

“If nobody’s in there,” Travis said, “you’re risking your lives for nothing.”

“I think somebody’s in there,” Alicia said.

“Me, too. And don’t call it female intuition. Somebody’s in there.”

There was another long silence. Travis sighed.

“One wire at a time. That’s a terribly dynamic situation you’ve got over there. Cut the wrong wire, it could all go flying apart.”

“Then you’ll just come and get us, right?”

A pause. “Sure. Just take it slow, okay?”

“Got it. Now, where are those wire cutters? Oh, Alicia, can you… I just lost that hammer with the red handle, Travis. Sorry, it just floated up… let me see if I-”

[369] “Let it go!” Travis snapped. Then he muttered, “I should have tied the damn things together… Kelly, don’t worry about it. Worse comes to worst, you can use just about anything as a hammer.”

“I’ve got the wire cutters. I’m tying them to my suit… closing the tool bag. Now, Alicia, which one should we cut first?”

“That one right there.”

“Cutting a thick, green wire… now… Well, that worked out okay. Pull it to one side, Alicia… there. Now, cutting a thick, gold wire… There.”

She cut six wires and pulled them out of the way before she got the wrong one. As soon as she snipped it everything started to move.

“Move back, Alicia!” Kelly warned, and they moved… and the smallest of the three orbiting pieces of the Ares Seven pulled itself free and began to spin off into oblivion. It all happened soundlessly, but my mind supplied the shriek of straining metal and the sound of snapping guitar strings as smaller wires, unable to take up the burden once borne by three or four wires, snapped and popped like cracking whips. Kelly and Alicia turned their backs to the mayhem. I saw one snapping wire slap itself across Kelly’s backpack. Then the two remaining pieces of the ship parted company and began drifting apart… and the safety tether was tied to the wrong piece.

Travis took it in, saw the wayward hunk of junk about to pull the line taut, and he reached down and pulled the free end of the rope, which he had tied in a slipknot in case of this very situation. The rope whipped through the eyebolt and was gone.

“Had to do that,” Travis said. “Had to do that, it was about to get pulled into a spiral… it would have-”

“Wrapped itself around Red Thunder,” I said, “and crashed into us.”

“Too right. Kelly, check your suit systems, right now!”

“… five by five, Travis.” They were still tied to the big piece, and now they could see themselves drifting away from us. “You’ll come get us, right? I mean… soon? I don’t like this very much.”

“I’m coming in right now,” Travis assured her, and he had already moved out of my range of vision. We heard the lock cycling, and Travis [370] made it to the bridge in record time, frost forming on the very cold surface of his suit.

Dak and I went below and strapped in. We felt a few gentle shoves as Travis turned the ship, using the small thrusters not very different from the SMU. Then a mild kick in the pants as he fired the main drive. Two minutes later, another firing of the main drive, then the slightest burp, and when Dak and I scrambled up into the cockpit we could see he had brought Red Thunder motionless with respect to the wreck and the girls, an incredible piece of computerless flying that proved once more that nothing would ever substitute for a skilled pilot at the con, no matter what the Chinese said.

“All right, guys,” Travis said wearily. “Your point has been proven. I have to stay here at the controls. Manny, I want you to-”

“We see two space suits!” Kelly said. Travis was instantly at the porthole beside us. From where we sat, the girls seemed to have moved to the other side of the ship. We could see their lights from the reflections on shiny surfaces, but not the lights themselves.

“Didn’t I tell you not to move around?”

“Actually, you didn’t, Travis, but we didn’t move much. This hunk of junk has picked up a rotation. We’ve turned away from you. I’m approaching one of the-”

“Please stay put, Kelly.”

“I’m barely moving. I… oh my God. Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick.”

“Captain, there’s somebody in the suit,” Alicia said. “Don’t look at him, Kelly.”

“I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“The… ah, one arm is torn off at the elbow. Hard to tell if he died of loss of blood or freezing or anoxia.”

“Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick…”

“Can you tell who it is?” Travis said softly.

“Captain, the face is… it’s not pretty. I’m not even sure if it’s a man.”

“Roger.”

Kelly seemed to have controlled her stomach. As the wreckage [371] slowly turned toward us again, rotating at about one turn in three minutes, we could see them again.

“The air-lock door is free now, Captain,” Kelly said. “Can you see it?”

“We see it. I’m sending Manny out to throw you another line.”

“Captain,” Alicia said, “I suggest you wait on that. You’re not going anywhere, right? I mean, now that you’re with us again.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, when Kelly lost the hammer I got to wondering what we might need that we didn’t bring with us. Why don’t we wait until we’ve looked at everything? I don’t think we want to make that crossing any more than we have to.”

“I concur, Alicia, now that you mention it. Good thinking.”

“We’re approaching the air-lock door now.”

There was silence for a while. Travis put his hand over the microphone.

“Boys, you’re never going to find women with more courage than those two. And they’re smart and beautiful, into the bargain. You better marry them.”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” I said, and Dak grinned.

THEY MADE THEIR way to the air lock. There was a small window set into the door at head height, and it was cracked but not exploded.

“Look at this,” Kelly said.

“What?” Travis, Dak, and I said at the same time.

“Frost, Captain. Even a couple little icicles.”

“Condensation,” Travis said, excited.

“Gotta be,” Alicia said. “I think there’s still air in there.”

“If we can get the door open,” Kelly said. “I’m punching the button… nothing. Trying again. Nothing. Should we whack it upside the head, guys?”

“Always worked for me,” Dak said.

“Whacking… nothing. Whacking again. Nothing. Alicia, can you get that torqueless power wrench out of my bag? Don’t let anything float away. Damn, what we need for this job is that eight-dollar [372] hammer I lost, not this four-hundred-dollar piece of NASA surplus. Isn’t that always the way?”

She was talking a lot, not only to calm her own nerves but because we’d asked her to. Describe everything, Travis had said. In great detail.

“No action on the door, Captain.”

“Kelly, hit it again, then put your helmet in contact with the door.”

“Why, Captain?”

“Sound can carry through metal but not through vacuum. It’s possible somebody in there hears you knocking on the door.”

Any science-fiction reader would have known that, and once again it came to me, hard, that space was my dream, Dak’s dream, not theirs. We should be over there, risking our lives. Why is the universe so unfair, so perverse?

“Yikes, that really rang my bell,” Kelly said.

“What happened?”

“Had my helmet against the door when I whanged on it, like a dummy. Hitting again, three times.” A short pause. “Yes! Yes, I heard three taps! There’s somebody in there! But how are we… wait a minute, what’s this?”

“Tell us, Kelly, tell us!”

“The door is rotating. It’s half open… three-quarters open… stopped.”

“I can feel somebody pounding on the door,” Alicia said. “Put your hand on it. Feel it? Somebody’s in there for sure, Captain. And it looks like the door cycling switch works from their side.”

“Alicia, don’t go in, we don’t know if-”

“Sorry, Captain, I’ve got to go in.”

“Me, too,” Kelly said.

“We’re both inside the lock now.”

“Kelly, Alicia, I want you out of there in no more than five minutes, with a situation report. I doubt we’ll be able to hear you once you get inside. Five minutes! Got it? Or all three of us come looking for you.”

“Got it, Captain. The cycling button in here works. The lock is rotating…”

And then there was silence.