She heard a hissing echo, then a loud thump. One of the external hatches burst open, dumping the aliens out of the node. In a gush of evacuating air, the two dying and freezing Kylarn thrashed as they were sucked out into the deadly vacuum of space. Red Spot managed to tangle its tentacle on one of the handholds, but its grip soon loosened and it slithered out.
JJ paled. “They’re both gone.”
***
Twenty
They barely had a chance to catch their breath. After the two large creatures were blown out the airlock to drift like big, frozen projectiles, JJ helped the station-master take an inventory of the station personnel.
King, Bronsky, Pi, and Ansari all had bruises and welts from their scuffle with Brown Blob.
Tony’s eyes shone with pride. “We saved the station.”
“For now, at least,” King said.
Dr. Romero and the four members of the satellite team were still safely holed up in Medical module. Dr. Kloor went to free Security Chief Napali from where she had been sticky-globbed to the bulkhead in the CMS module; he discovered that a quick burst of super-cold liquid nitrogen froze the elastosnot so that it could easily be shattered. Dr. d’Almeida reported that she had found Mira in the observatory module, and both were returning to the Mess, where they all gathered.
“The squidbutts weren’t on the space station long,” JJ said. “Can’t do us any more harm now that they’re dead, but they sure left a big mess behind.” They began to retrieve the scattered food packages and clutter that drifted around the community module.
“Definitely a big mess in the Mess,” Tony said.
Dyl was still getting Song-Ye loose from the tangle of spiderwebby goo that had trapped her in the green-house module. Finally, they both came in, looking a bit worse for wear.
“During the commotion, five of the experimental animals got loose from their cages, so Junior and I had to round them up,” Song-Ye said. “Five floating hamsters and mice, trying to scurry in weightlessness, grabbing onto anything they could find, bouncing off walls—it was a bit of a challenge.”
Dyl laughed. “I think we should call them animal astronauts.”
JJ saw the red welt on the Korean girl’s neck. “Are you all right?”
Song-Ye ran her fingers over the mark. “I’m fine now. That stuff may look like snot, but there’s nothing funny about it. It burns and tightens up, and it hurts!”
“How did you get her unstuck from the wall, Dyl?” Tony asked.
The young man grinned. “You mean, after I calmed Song-Ye down from her panic?”
The girl scowled at him again. “That was partly your fault, Junior!”
“How did I know it was going to snap back?” Dyl asked. “I was trying to save a damsel in distress.”
“Pfft!” She rolled her eyes. “I hurt all over, and Junior thinks he’s a hero.”
Mira sailed into the room, accompanied by the astronomer. “You may be sore, but we’re lucky the Kylarn didn’t want to use their laser shredders on the space station—it would have hurt a lot more, and none of us would be heroes. We’d all be dead.”
Dyl snorted. “Well, you’re just a big bucket of cheerup, aren’t you?”
“Just being realistic,” Mira said defensively.
“But she’s making a good point,” JJ said. “I don’t think the squidbutts were trying to hurt the space station. They wanted to capture it.”
“Looks like it,” King agreed. “That’s why Brown Blob was in Central before we chased it away.”
JJ grinned as a thought occurred to her. “We may have lost the two squidbutts out the airlock, but their starfish ship is still docked to the station. We can study it, analyze their systems, figure out their propulsion, even their weapons. It’ll be a goldmine.”
Bronsky was already smiling at her. “That knowledge might be worth all of these headaches.”
Dr. Romero and her patients offered to assist. Lifchez, Rodgers, Kontis, and Kimbrell tried to help with the cleanup, but were soon doubled over in misery and had to be helped back to Medical.
The Stationmaster called for attention. “We have to make a thorough assessment as soon as possible, figure out where we stand. Who knows what other damage the Kylarn did that we don’t know about yet?”
JJ realized that it had been quite a rush when the two squidbutts went in separate directions and the crewmembers scattered throughout the ISSC.
“Right, there’s no telling what else they might have messed up.”
“We know they tried to take over Central and shut down life-support systems,” King said.
“So they wanted us dead,” Tony said
Ansari’s eyes were hard. “We need to have a conversation with Colonel Fox at CMC about how to protect this station against further attacks.
“Earth still has a lot of old-style nuclear missiles in various stockpiles, but I don’t think they’d be able to hit those fast-moving starfish ships,” Napali said.
“There must be another way,” Ansari said. “Staying here is dangerous, but if we abandon the station, we’d be handing it over to the aliens, and we would never regain our foothold in space.”
Suddenly, the lights in the Mess Module began to flicker. The connecting node room went entirely dark, and several of the status screens on the bulkhead went out, shutting down. “It’s life-support again! Our power is failing,” Pi said.
Dyl groaned. “That’s a problem.”
“Some sort of Kylarn sabotage, maybe?” JJ asked.
“I don’t know how,” King said. “We got Brown Blob out of Central, and Mr. Pi reversed all of the commands.”
“Boy,” Tony said, running a hand through his light brown hair. “What else can go wrong?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” JJ said.
Ansari was sweating as she went to one of the few functioning control terminals. She entered commands and studied the screens with a grave look. “The problem isn’t a command from Central. Our primary solar-power array has either been damaged or knocked offline.”
“How could they do that?” Dyl asked.
But JJ was already headed toward a viewport, through which she peered into space. She looked at the giant, reflector-covered, windmill-shaped apparatus that converted sunlight into electricity, and saw immediately that several of the vanes were bent, and the entire array had been knocked off its framework. Two flattened masses hung from the array like giant bugs splattered on a windshield.
“Another kind of space junk,” JJ said in a grim voice. The bodies of the two Kylarn, even in death, had damaged the station, drifting free and smashing into its solar-power array.
“If we don’t get that fixed,” Stationmaster Ansari said, “the ISSC can’t survive.”
***
Twenty-One
“Good thing we trained for outside activity. This sure wasn’t anything we could have predicted,” JJ said. By now, she and her friends were supposed to have taken the MMUs over to repair the Eye in the Sky satellite; that, however, was no longer a possibility, thanks to the destructive Kylarn.
Captain Bronsky led the Star Challengers outside on the repair mission. Kontis and Kimbrell had offered to return to duty, but Ansari had refused. “Not necessary—we have a qualified crew, and you’re still sick.”
The Stationmaster divided the healthy crew into small teams and assigned each a responsibility. The teams were combing over the station modules to repair any damage the Kylarn had done. Mira had volunteered to clean the hardened alien adhesive off of the walls, collecting samples so that chemists could study it.
At the same time, the EVA crew had to make emergency repairs to the solar panels so the station could get back to normal.
JJ thought of how the Star Challengers had gone out from Moonbase Magellan to erect new solar-power arrays … which the Kylarn had also destroyed. Every task out in space was complicated—moving in a bulky suit, using clumsy gloves, and manipulating tools in micro-gravity—but somebody had to do t
he work, and it might as well be the Star Challengers. Captain Bronsky would guide them.
“This has not been a good day,” Song-Ye muttered, and her voice was transmitted through the helmet radios.
Tony gave a wry response. “That’s the result of your thorough analysis? We’re alive, and we kicked some alien butt, didn’t we?”
JJ reviewed the last few hours in her mind—the arrival of the Kylarn spacecraft, the malicious destruction of the blind Eye in the Sky, the two creatures forcing their way into the ISSC and wreaking havoc before sacrificing themselves out an airlock. To add insult to injury, the drifting alien bodies had damaged two of the primary solar power panels! JJ groaned just to think of it all.
“It’ll get better,” Dylan said. “We’ve shown the squidbutts what we’re made of. They won’t mess with us anytime soon.”
“Right,” Song-Ye said, “Not for at least ten minutes.”
Bronsky and King carefully made their way along the large array of delicate reflector sheets. The two dead Kylarn were there, frozen solid and splayed out … disgusting. “Cadets, help me remove this debris.” the Russian said. “Attach the alien bodies to tethers. Earth scientists will want to study them, but for now we must get the solar-power panels working.”
Dyl and Song-Ye retrieved the hard, monstrous carcasses, clipping tethers to the petrified tentacles and pulling the dead aliens away so that King, Tony, and JJ could help Bronsky lift the solar-power array erect again and reattach the connectors.
Two of the arrays shining vanes had been damaged. “They’ll have to be replaced, but that is for later,” Bronsky said. “For now, we restore the connections so the solar collectors will feed energy into the station. It will keep us alive.”
JJ was struck by just how fragile everything was. Though the space program tried to plan for emergencies, to install safety procedures and backup systems, humans on the space station were still pioneers living in an extremely hostile environment. Fortunately, the crew was resourceful and could fix any number of problems with the materials at hand. That’s what they were good at.
But no one had planned for an alien invasion.
With the Russian pilot guiding her, JJ made the final connection while King and Tony anchored the support strut for the solar array back onto the ISSC’s hull. Ansari’s voice came over the helmet radio, sounding overjoyed. “That’s partial power restored. You did it, team! Now we have enough to meet our basic requirements.”
“Check another emergency off our list,” JJ said.
Bronsky rounded them up. “Time to get back inside. We need to contact Collaborative Mission Control and discuss what to do next.”
Inside Central, Mr. Pi operated the comm station. “Transmission complete, Stationmaster. I’ve relayed all the information to CMC. Every little clue helps.”
“Those two frozen Kylarn specimens and their intact ship will give our scientists plenty to work with,” Dr.
Kloor said. For once he sounded optimistic rather than grumpy.
“Now that we know the trick, maybe we can take a bunch of fire extinguishers and raid the Kylarn base on the far side of the Moon,” Dyl suggested.
Security Chief Napali, with few gobs of sticky material still stuck to her hair, looked feisty after her ordeal. “I’ll be sure to suggest it during the next Earth Defense Council meeting.”
Before any of them could relax for a second, the loudest alarm JJ had heard so far blasted through the speakers. The siren sound was different this time, a grinding klaxon—a new kind of emergency.
“What now?” Song-Ye groaned.
Stationmaster Ansari looked as if someone had dumped hot coffee in her lap. “That’s the station evacuation alarm!” She whirled to Pi. “I didn’t call for an evacuation.”
“It’s automated, Stationmaster. Sensors triggered it.” He entered commands and searched through menus to find more information.
“Are more Kylarn coming?” Dyl asked.
“Not that I can see.” King peered out through Central’s observation window.
Dr. Romero’s voice spoke over the intercom. “What’s the nature of the emergency? Do I need to get my patients ready?”
A chatter of voices came over the speakers, asking what was going on. Ansari looked particularly upset as she peered down at the flashing alerts on the screens. “Oh, no! After all we’ve been through.…”
“It’s an ammonia coolant leak,” Pi reported, his voice strained. “Our atmosphere is tainted—levels are rising.”
“Then we’d better patch the leak,” Tony said. “Compared with everything we’ve done so far, how hard can it be?”
“It’s not that simple. We have air-quality monitors throughout the station modules,” Bronsky said with a suspicious sniff. “Look at those readings.”
“I don’t smell anything,” Song-Ye said.
“You will soon,” Ansari said. “The internal workings of the ISSC are cooled by ammonia—NH3—in external cooling loops. If there’s a leak across the cooling loop, then deadly ammonia could get into the water and air of the station. Quantities can ramp up to fatal levels in minutes.”
“I’ll bet one of the Kylarn did it when they were here,” Dyl grumbled. “They were trying to get rid of all humans on the station.”
“No choice now,” Ansari said, her voice filled with disappointment. “That’s one of the only situations in the ops manual that calls for an immediate and complete evacuation.”
“Shouldn’t we check it out first?” JJ asked. “It could just be a Kylarn trick.”
“Look at those readings—it’s not a trick,” Pi said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they sabotaged something on their way through the station, but this is one thing I’m not sure we can fix in time,” Ansari said. “The regulations are clear. A serious ammonia-coolant leak requires us to abandon the station. With the levels increasing at such a rate, we could all suffocate before long.” She looked grim and sickened as she activated the intercom. “Dr. Romero, prepare your patients.”
“One thing leads to another,” Dyl said, “and each one gets worse.”
JJ felt a deep frustration. “After all we worked for, after how hard we defended this place, now we just have to … leave?”
“How long can you hold your breath?” Song-Ye said. “Ammonia is poison—you can’t breathe it.”
King sniffed the air, perplexed. “But I still don’t smell anything.”
“By the time you smell it, it’s too late,” Bronsky said.
JJ winced. “This is exactly what the Kylarn wanted—even if it is a real emergency, we can’t just leave the station empty so the squidbutts get their tentacles on it.”
Ansari was grim and nodded to Napali. “Security Chief, is there a way to scuttle this station after we leave? I’d rather wreck it than let the aliens have it.”
“I’m sure I can rig something, Stationmaster. But we have to authorize it through Colonel Fox.”
More lights flashed on the alarm screen, and Pi called out, “There’s a second alarm, another set of air-quality monitors registering high concentrations of NH3.”
JJ remained skeptical. “But how could we possibly spring two leaks at once?”
Pi said, “A leak would normally spread through the ventilation systems.”
“But the diagnostics came back clean,” King said. “Everything seemed fine.”
“The Kylarn,” Song-Ye said, as if that explained everything.
“That’s it.” Ansari clenched her teeth, but she was the Stationmaster, and she knew immediately what she had to do. “Contact the CMC and inform Colonel Fox that we have no choice. Prep both emergency lifeboats. Instruct all crewmembers to report to the nearest lifeboat. Everybody, grab emergency breathing masks.”
Dyl pointed out a problem. “Those lifeboats were designed for the crew you have on hand. With the five of us and Mira, can you fit six extra passengers aboard?”
“It’ll be crowded, I won’t argue that,” Ansari
said. “We can survive long enough to descend through the atmosphere and splashdown in the ocean. The lifeboats are primitive ships compared with ISSC. We’ve needed to replace them for a long time, but there were always higher priorities.”
“I should go find Mira,” King said, troubled.
“She knows how to get to the escape craft, if this is an evacuation alarm,” Song-Ye said. “We all got the info.”
JJ felt a great sense of loss. “I don’t like this one bit.”
Pi pointed to the readings on the screens. “You can’t argue with the data. Ammonia is rapidly building to lethal levels.”
JJ checked the source of the second leak—the Equipment Module? She didn’t think the Kylarn had even made it there in their raid on the ISSC. Besides, Dr. Kloor had leak-checked the Equipment Module while the Star Challengers were out repairing the solar array.
Stationmaster Ansari activated the station-wide intercom. “Everybody, you know the drill. We have no choice but to abandon the station. All hands, evacuate the ISSC.”
***
Twenty-Two
The space stations evacuation lifeboats were outdated craft even older than the supply ship Halley, which Bronsky had retooled as the Recon-1 probe. With Earth scrambling to get its space technology up and running again since the Kylarn attack on the moonbase, there simply hadn’t been enough time to design and install sophisticated add-ons. Dylan just hoped the two old ships would hold together long enough for everyone to get safely down to Earth.
He and Song-Ye rushed to the Medical module to help Dr. Romero with the patients. Lifchez, Kimbrell, Kontis, and Rodgers still looked queasy, even after two days of recovering from their illness; the doctor said that food poisoning was rarely so persistent, but they were definitely improving.
“I hope they have air-sickness bags aboard the lifeboats,” Lifchez said. “I’ll try to hold it in, but no promises.”
Dyl didn’t want to imagine that kind of mess in a crowded lifeboat streaking back down through the atmosphere to the ocean. He said, “Let’s bring some supplies just to be safe.” Dyl reached into a cupboard and pulled out a handful of barf bags.
Space Station Crisis: Star Challengers Book 2 Page 12
