Down Under Crater Billy

I hit the lock, slowing suddenly as I disappeared into it.

The right side of the screen showed me toppling out the other side—

—covered from head to toe in shiny black.

“The human body is largely water,” Gloria said quietly as on the screen I fell, my right leg going off at an angle it had never been designed to bend into, steam shooting from my mouth as I screamed. I winced, remembering how it had felt. At the moment it was blessedly numb.

“You tore hell out of your knee there,” Bob put in, adding his own bit of medical color commentary. “You’re going to be in a cast at least a month.”

The black-coated me began crawling blindly forward, dragging one leg behind me. I could see that my eyes had been open and staring, but they were covered with the same coating of enties as the rest of me. It made my eyes itch and water thinking about it.

I can’t say that it was very enjoyable watching myself scrabbling like a gimpy tar-covered crab toward where Jenny lay. Gloria slipped her hand into mine. “Pretend it’s a movie,” she whispered. “There’ll be a happy ending.”

As painful to watch as that had been, watching myself struggling to drag her back was even worse. I held her hand even more tightly.

Fortunately something easier on the eyes appeared on the left side of the screen. It was Gloria, finally catching up with me. She was nude and magnificent. I was naked, she was nude. I couldn’t have told you what the precise difference was, but I knew it when I saw it.

She went through almost the same routine as I did; eyeing Gabe, taking in the situation on the monitoring screen, glancing at and rejecting the pressuits.

But instead of taking a kamikaze at the airlock the way I had, her gaze went back to the screen. Her eyes narrowed in calculation, and I could almost hear her brain revving up like like a batch of superprocessors given a particularly knotty problem to solve.

I had managed to drag Jenny maybe a meter and a half by then, and was in the process of losing my grip and crashing into a wall like an ant with malting antennae.

Gloria’s gaze swept the chamber like a scanning beam, locking onto the white box by the outer door, her body following after a second later.

She snapped the box’s door open so hard it’s a wonder it didn’t come off in her hand, reached inside, then pulled out an emergency breather mask.

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” I muttered darkly. “Some safety officer.”

Gloria squeezed my hand tightly as on the screen she pulled the mask on and triggered the air cannister. “I had more time to think. That, and I’m a whole lot smarter than you.” I shot her a dirty look. She just grinned.

The Gloria image was heading for the lock now, moving as fast and full of purpose as she ever had on the football field. Lowering her head, she put her arms out in front of her like a diver entering the water and plunged into the shimmering black wall.

She came out the other side all glazed in black like an animated sculpture covered with powdered obsidian.

But not completely covered. Her face was visible. The enties went right up to the rubber seal of the breather mask and stopped, leaving its clear plastic faceplate bare.

I got it then. I’m not usually so slow on the uptake, but I’d had a rough night.

“How did you know it would work like that?” I asked.

She shrugged, her blanket slipping in an interesting manner. “Logic. I’d seen the one part of you that wasn’t covered by enties.”

I studied the screen image of myself dragging Jenny forward centimeter by centimeter, my fingers hooked in her suit’s neckring. Then I saw it. My wristlet, winking in the light as I moved. It was made of metal and plastic, like some suit parts, not overcomplicated water, like skin.

Had I been able to see Gloria coming for me I probably would have broken down and cried. She swept down on Jenny and me like a statue of a goddess come to improbable life, stooped—

“You picked me up first.” I remembered it then.

Another shrug. “You were closest.”

Maybe so, but I could see the look on her face as she picked me up like I was no burden at all, parking me on one round hip and gathering my face to her breast with one arm. Once she had a good grip on me she bent and gathered Jenny up with her other arm. I stiffened when my leg hit the floor, then went limp.

Once she had both of us she headed back toward the airlock. She moved quickly, but with tightly controlled speed. Looking at her face and her posture I got the feeling that if that lock had somehow turned to solid concrete it wouldn’t have slowed her one iota.

Into it she went... emerging into air. The entie bodysuits, which covered both of us, melted back into the barrier as we went through, leaving me naked and her nude again.

Jeff, Anna, Bob and three of his medical people were waiting for her. The went into action, taking Jenny and me away from her and beginning work on us even as they lowered us to the floor.

Gloria stood there, watching intently.

Watching them work on me.

After a moment she peeled off her facemask.