Down Under Crater Billy

Once again Sorry already had the door open when I reached the outer test chamber. I flung myself inside and tried to get a handle on the situation.

I recognized the testing-tech on duty. It was Gabriel Delaney, a fussy, waspish black number-cruncher I’d worked with several times before. Exarmy and a real stickler for rules, he was about the last person I’d have ever expected to find asleep at his post.

But there he was, suited up without his helmet, sacked out in a chair with his cheek resting on its neck-ring.

The alarms were deafening. I might have tried to wake Gabe, but decided if he could sleep through that racket he could sleep through anything.

“Cut the damn alarms!” I bellowed, whirling around to look at the screen which had been set up so the tech on duty could monitor the reads and observe what was happening in the vacced chamber.

The alarms died.

Something like a small sharp sliver of death pricked my heart at what I saw on the screen.

A small pressuited figure lay facedown on the stone floor near the terminal at the far end, its arms and legs twitching spastically. The helmet’s faceplate was turned away, but it didn’t matter. I could see Jenny’s face all too clearly in my mind.

I wasted a couple precious seconds looking at and thinking about the spare pressuits racked on one wall. There was no way in hell I could get into one in less than a minute.

It was then that I saw the fatal flaw I’d left in the test setup. There was no fast, easy way to manually dump air into the other chamber—at least that I could think of right then. The enties could be reset to let air though, but only slowly. Too slowly. The lock couldn’t be simply shut off while there was a pressure differential on either side. For safety’s sake.

I’d known all along that vacuum was the enemy.

I turned to face the lock, took a deep breath, lowered my head and ran full tilt at the shimmering black wall of the airlock.

“Dave!” I heard Sorry yell. “What are you do—”

I never heard the rest. I remember thinking you got my name right! with a sort of detached amazement, then everything went black as I hit the barrier.

It was like running into a wall of thin glue, that weird feeling of resistance sweeping over me, all the more acute this time because I was stark naked.

Then it sort of gave and I was through.

I came out off-balance, stumbled and fell, landing badly and feeling something give in one leg. I lost half of the air in my lungs to a scream the vacuum ate soundlessly. The next thing I knew I was curled on my side on the floor. I was blind. The only thing I could hear was the thump of my heart slamming blood against my aching eardrums. My whole body felt strange and numb, all except for one leg. That felt like it had been chopped off at the knee and the stump nailed shut.

You’ve killed yourself, stupid! I thought, but clung to the hope that dying would take long enough to let me save Jenny.

I couldn’t stand on my messed up leg, so I began scrabble-crawling blindly toward the other end of the chamber on two hands and one knee, every motion setting off a fresh firework of pain in the other. Other than that hotspot I was cold, and getting colder by the second.

After what seemed like forever I stumbled across Jenny’s body.

My lungs were on fire as I ran my hands over her to see if she was moving—she wasn’t but I did think I felt a faint heartbeat through the material of her pressuit—and to orient myself. Then I got turned around with one arm around her chest and started dragging her back toward the lock.

I was blind. The pain in my leg was trying to steal whatever little breath I had left, and my head was spinning so badly it was a wonder I didn’t just go in circles.

I lost my grip on her and crashed into one of the side walls, bashing my head and giving my bad leg another twist. I came within an ace of fainting, but somehow held on.

Several panic-stricken seconds of groping blindly around later I found her again. Hooking my fingers under the cold metal of her suit’s neckring I dragged her forward another few centimeters. Then myself. Then her. By then I was beyond remembering where we were going. All I knew was we had to get there.

To this day I don’t know if I would have made it or not. Saying I doubt it is giving it the benefit of the doubt.

What I do know is that suddenly 1 was scooped up off the floor, then gently parked on a wide hip like some women carry their children and pressed tight to soft warm flesh.

Mother? I thought crazily, wrapping my arms around my rescuer’s body and holding on tight with a combination of animal instinct and absolute desperation.

Whoever held me bent down. My messed-up leg hit the floor and twisted off sideways. I would have screamed, but the arm cradling me kept my face pressed up against warm fragrant flesh, stoppering my mouth.

So I fainted instead.

When I came to again I wasn’t dead. I have to rate this as one of the nicest surprises of my life.