A Necessary Trigger

by Bill Patterson

  “OK, sounds good,” said the Commander.

  “There's more.”

  “Oh. Continue.”

  “Reinhart had a complication. We seldom have broken bones up here, so the data is sparse on this. He had a marrow embolism in both legs below the knee. A chunk of bone marrow was shaken loose by the break and travelled through the arteries until it plugged them. Everything below the break lost blood flow and started to die.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “Could be fatal, sir. We're not set up for delicate arterial surgery here, but I improvised, and cleared the arteries. Still, a good part of his lower legs were starved for blood for a little over four hours. It's not all dead. Actually, a lot of it came through fine, because there was some cross-circulation from other arteries. But the muscles were badly affected and have started breaking down.”

  “Prognosis?” asked the Commander.

  “Uncertain, sir. He's suffered a reperfusion injury, which has given him rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdo results when a whole lot of muscle disintegrates all at once, flooding the bloodstream with breakdown products. I'll skip the biochem, but the upshot is…his kidneys are shutting down. He was awake for a minute and reported pain in his back. He's passing brown urine, a sure sign of rhabdo.”

  “What can you do about it?”

  “On Earth, I'd have both arms and legs plugged in to IVs, running ten bags of saline into him every twenty-four. That flushes the poison out of the kidneys and saves them. I don't have ten bags of saline on this whole station. I'd also have him on 24/7 dialysis, one machine doing arterial and one venous. We don't have one dialysis machine up here. If we weren't under flare protocol, I'd have you recall that cargo ship and fly him down to Earth. It's too late for that now.”

  “How long does he have?”

  “A week. His kidneys have about a day and a half until they shut down permanently. If we can get him down in a week, then he can live. Up here, he's done for.”

  “What if you ran five bags a day on him?”

  “Commander,” said Poulin, “I'd recommend against that. You'd be endangering the whole crew for someone who isn't going to make it.”

  The Commander wiped his face with his hands. Lisa looked lost in thought. “Daniels? You've got something?”

  “I'm not sure, sir. Doctor, can't we manufacture normal saline for your IV lines?”

  “Not a chance. You need sterile manufacturing procedures, pure chemicals. It's not something you do with beakers and test tubes.”

  “Suppose I could guarantee sterility. Do we have the ingredients?”

  “You need distilled water—I guess that's doable, and pure sodium chloride, and I'm not talking the stuff in the mess hall, either. I might have a couple of jars of it in sick bay, but I'd have to look. We'd need other electrolytes, of course, but those are the major ones.”

  Lisa had a twinkle in her eye. “Give me an hour. Let me see what I can come up with. I need to see an engineer. With permission, sir?”

  The Commander waved her out. “Dismissed.”

  After she floated out of earshot, the Commander turned to the doctor. “If she does come up with something, would you administer it to this patient?”

  “Of course. He's going to die without it.”

  ***

  “McCrary, you busy?” asked Lisa when she was five meters from the man. Heads turned in the crowded shelter, reminding Lisa there was no privacy at all.

  “Lieutenant Daniels,” said McCrary, nodding at her. He tapped a note into his pad and put it in his cargo pocket, giving her his full attention.

  “You don't need to be all formal,” she said, her tone low. “We graduated Officer's School together, remember?”

  “Many eyes, many ears, two officers,” he said.

  Lisa took a second to expand his terse comment in her head. “Right. Lieutenant McCrary, we need to manufacture a large quantity of sterile distilled water.”

  “Wait.” McCrary took out his data pad, scrolling rapidly between several screens. “Possible. Dangerous, though.”

  “How about an armored suit?”

  “Better. I'll go. I know exactly what's required. How much?”

  “Fifteen liters per day.”

  “That's all? Easier. Still need that suit.” His eyes lost focus momentarily. He stared at the tanks of water that surrounded the crowded cubic, part of the shielding that kept them safe from the storm of radiation from the flaring Sun. “Three hours. Need Chief's OK, too.”

  Lisa smiled faintly. “Don't worry, I think you'll get it. Come with me?”

  ***

  Commander Parlitt was near sick bay when the two lieutenants approached. He looked into the impassive face of McCrary, and the earnest yet worried face of Lisa Daniels.

  “That was fast,” said the Commander. “McCrary. You're the one who found the dead microcontroller.”

  “Sir,” said McCrary, then lapsed into immobility.

  “We can do it, sir,” said Lisa. “We can make isotonic saline, if the Doctor has the pure salt we need. McCrary says he can make sterile distilled water, at least fifteen liters per day.”

  Parlitt looked at McCrary, who nodded. “OK, Lieutenant McCrary, tell me how. Full details, too, no one-word answers.”

  McCrary looked momentarily hurt, but immediately switched into 'report-to-superiors' mode.

  “We take water from a clean source and boil it. The tank should be clean steel or aluminum. We wrap a heating element around the tank and turn it on. The steam is routed into lengths of spliced IV tubes, surrounded by a cooling medium. We can use either another tank of water, or a very cold surface. The water is collected in a sterile tank, and leftover steam returned to the boiling vessel.”

  “That's it?” Commander Parlitt was suspicious. “I thought you'd have some complicated gizmo.”

  “No sir. Good engineering should be kept simple. Starting with sterile tubing is the best choice.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There's still the mixing with the sodium chloride and the placement in a delivery bag, but I think the doctor would rather do that himself.”

  “Tell him about the suit, McCrary,” prompted Lisa.

  “Right. Sir, someone will have to leave the shelter to gather the materials from Engineering and Sick Bay. I recommend me. I know how the radiation hardened space suits work, I was in a solar storm when I interned as a spacehand.”

  “That's right, I remember reading about it in your personnel jacket. Saved a Moondog, as I recall.” The Commander turned to Lisa. “The guy had his headphones on so loud he never heard the alarm. McCrary had to drag him, unconscious, into a shelter. Should have given him a medal, too.”

  “UNSOC would have to admit the accident in order to award a medal. I was warned to keep quiet, instead,” said McCrary quietly. “I did nothing any other Moondog would have done.”

  “Yeah,” said the Commander, “But you were the one who noticed him missing, and forced the Collins Commander to let you go look for him. That's more than your typical Moondog would do.”

  “Any man's death diminishes me,” murmured McCrary.

  “Locke?” asked Lisa.

  “John Donne. Sir. Time passes.”

  Parlitt shook himself and tabbed a circuit on the wall communicator. “Get me the Chief.”

  McCrary filled in the Chief Engineer on the situation, the need, and the mission in remarkably short order, and received permission to get the needed materials.

  ***

  “Nice thermal mass,” said Lisa, admiring the zig-zag pattern of IV tubing taped to the large tank of water. “Splices were genius. Does an answer just appear to you, or do you work it all out logically?”

  “Yes,” said McCrary. “In that order, too. Intuition first, then rigorous vetting.” He looked at his watch, then at the markings on the flask attached the first Y-splice. “Three hundred fifty milliliters in the past hour. I might need to rig a second distiller. We're not making enough water—only about eight
liters a day. Something's off.”

  Lisa had a flash of a memory and caught her breath. Could I really know something McCrary doesn't?

  “Heat from the tubing goes into the air and the metal of the tank,” she said. “Then into the water inside the tank.”

  McCrary nodded. His eyebrow rose, inviting her to continue.

  “…which isn't moving. No gravity, no convection. The wall gets hot, the water gets hot, and doesn't move the heat anywhere. Wall approaches tube temperature, steam stops condensing, yield falls.”

  McCrary growled as he took out his datapad. “Dammit. I hate screwing up.” He hammered at the virtual keypad, then tapped the commcode for his Chief.

  “Sir, I screwed up. I need to stir the water in tank 15E to redistribute the heat. We're not getting the yield we need.”

  The voice of the Chief shouted through the speaker. McCrary lowered the volume significantly. “You won me a bet, McCrary. I figured you'd remember the stirrers by the ninety minute mark. Thank you!”

  “Sir, I didn't figure it out. Thank Lieutenant Daniels for spotting it.”

  “Damn. Thank her for me. I've unlocked the stirrers for you. I've checked—they're the right voltage.” There was an air of challenge in the voice of the Chief.

  “It's water, sir, not LOX. Nothing cryogenic, no hazard. But thank you.” The call disconnected.

  “What was that all about?” asked Lisa.

  “Apollo 13. Chief enjoys quizzing us.” McCrary was paging through the control panel hardwired to the bulkhead until he found the page he was looking for. He tapped a sequence, and the low sound of an electric motor came to life. “Be back in thirty minutes to see if we're going to make it.”

  Lisa nodded. She knew her curiosity itch would goad her into reading a century-old file on the early days of spaceflight. Apollo 13. McCrary said it as if everyone knew the lesson of that mission. I've got a lot of reading to do.

  ***

  A clockwork device metered the fluid into the spacehand's arms with a speed that took Lisa's breath away. She backed out of the alcove and hunted down the doctor. Ted must be peeing constantly to get rid of so much fluid.

  “Nope. Only about half as much as needed. I've got him on diuretics, too,” said Doctor Poulin. “You can slow down your distilled water production—we're running out of sterile bags to contain it.”

  “I'll let McCrary know.” Lisa looked grim. “How much longer before we know if his kidneys will recover?”

  “I'm giving him another twenty-four hours. Hopefully by then, we'll know for sure.”

  “I wonder if we can rig some kind of dialysis machine for him,” Lisa mused.

  “Don't,” said Doctor Poulin. “It's just going to delay the inevitable.”

  Lisa stared at the doctor. “If we can dialyze him, he'll get past this storm, another ship can come, and we can…” Lisa's voice ran down as Doctor Poulin shook his head.

  He looked at her. She stared back. Then the penny dropped. “They're not going to send another ship.”

  The doctor's lips compressed until they were white. “They said, no, Subraman Venderchanergee, our glorious Director-General of the UN Space Operations Command, stated, quote, 'It makes no fiscal sense to send up an empty vessel to bring home one clumsy spacehand, even if we had such a ship ready, which we don't.', unquote.”

  Lisa closed her eyes briefly. She had heard stories about corruption in UN's various agencies, but she never thought it would extend to space. She opened them, and the fierce light that burned in them startled the doctor.

  “This must never happen again,” she ground out. “Somehow, someway, we must develop a lifeboat. Probably a three-man craft. Pilot, doctor, patient.” Her eyes widened. “Come to think of it, we couldn't evacuate this station if we had to.”

  The doctor nodded grimly. “You might want to speak to the Commander.”

  “No. Not until I can show him a plan that would work. I know just who to develop such a plan. In the meantime, someone's got to tell Ted the bad news. Who?”

  “Commander went in when you left. He'll take care of telling the crew, too.”

  “This just sucks. Ted doesn't have to die.” Lisa pounded her fist against a bulkhead.

  The doctor reached out and touched her fist. “Yes he does, if that's what it takes to make the rest of the Astronaut Corps wake up to the problem. If we somehow magically fixed this, then people would expect another rabbit out of a hat when the next crisis appears.”

  “That's nuts. They won't go with a near miss?”

  Doctor Poulin shook his head sadly. “No. People don't sustain years-long efforts without some kind of symbol to shoot for. Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember 9/11. Ted is that symbol. Call it a necessary demise.”

  ***

  His eyes fluttered and his fingers twitched as she visited him. He slurred his words, and occasionally lapsed into unresponsiveness.

  “Ted, hang in there.”

  He swiveled his eyes to meet hers. “I'd say 'for what?', but that wouldn't be nice. Doc told me about you and your engineer friend trying to rig some kind of dialysis for me. Hey, you guys gave me a running start with this,” he said, nodding towards the bag of fluid being forced into his arm. “At least I had a shot. Thanks, Loo. I'll be thinking of you when I get to the great beyond.”

  “We're not licked yet,” she said, a mixture of bravado and despair in her voice.

  “Yes I am, Looie, and we both know it. Just…don't forget me. I've got nobody downstairs. I'd like someone to remember me up here.”

  Lisa put her hand on his chest, covered with a light cotton shirt. She slowly grasped the fabric, twisted it slowly, and pulled her face down until it was inches from his own.

  “I swear by all I hold holy, Spacehand Theodore Reinhart, that you will never be forgotten up here.” She released him before he got any funny ideas and pushed back slightly.

  She told him about her lifeboat idea. “I don't care how long it takes, but we will have lifeboats up here on the Chaffee. If I have anything to say about it, I will make certain that the first one is named after you.”

  Lisa spoke a few more minutes with him, and as she left the alcove, she hugged him briefly. “Your buddies want to visit if that's OK.”

  “Sure. I'll hang on if they will.” He closed his eyes briefly when she left.

  ***

  “Lieutenant McCrary,” said Lisa, as she drifted to a stop a few meters from him. “We have to talk.”

  He looked up from his commpad, blinked strongly, and put it away. “Go ahead.”

  Lisa outlined the lifeboat problem. “We've got to do something about it!”

  McCrary seemed to be looking right at her, but she realized that he was off into whatever space he used for problem solving.

  “The Moon.”

  “Excuse me?” She prided herself on being able to follow her classmate's sudden leaps of intuition, but only managed it half the time.

  “We'll make them ourselves. All lunar materials. Maybe.”

  “Collins is making oxygen for us. That's all they're geared for,” she said.

  “For now. Got notions how to get more out the Moon. Complex bootstrap operation, prelim steps take longest. But in the end, I think we'll be able to make your lifeboats.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten years, if UNSOC's aboard. Unlikely. Might take twenty.”

  Lisa shook her head. “So, for at least another couple of solar cycles, crews up here are going to have to huddle behind the water tanks until the Sun stops flaring.”

  “Yes.” McCrary looked at her steadily. After a minute, he reached up a hand to pull her back to the deck.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You'd think I would remember to quit stomping in zero gravity.”

  “Unlearning habits takes as long as learning them. Preliminary plans, two weeks after flare. Constant refining, no 'final' plans. Your job: sell it. To our Commanders, not UNSOC. Complete blackout.”

  “UNSO
C will claim we're wasting time, money, resources. Short-sighted.” She shook her head. “Spend enough…wait. When I spend enough time around you, I start to sound like you.”

  “How?”

  “See, you're doing it right now. Clipped talk, no unnecessary words. Dammit, I keep adopting your speech patterns! All right, McCrary, we'll brainstorm this thing while we're stuck here, and I'll sell it to the Commander when we're ready.”

  “Sell it now.”

  “Now? Why?” She twisted her mouth as she thought why McCrary would recommend the earlier course. “I think I see. Reinhart.”

  “Yes. Emotion, not logic. Agreement for a rescue capsule is easy. This requires more.”

  “More? I'd be happy with a simple lifeboat.” Lisa looked at McCrary. He was only two years her senior—how did he get such a complete grasp on everything?

  McCrary looked at the crowded conditions. “Go for the rescue capsule. Add in 'solar shelters'. I'll make sure they can reenter if we ever need to abandon all this.”

  Lisa looked around. “Yes. I see.” She smiled at him. “You're a genius, you know that?”

  “I decline. People say so anyway.” He grabbed a projection on a nearby bulkhead. “I should block out the whole process before Spacehand Reinhart leaves us.”

  “Just tell me when to start prepping the Commander.”

  McCrary nodded. “Plant a seed now. Rescue capsule.”

  Lisa gave McCrary a regulation salute, which he returned without a scintilla of emotion. She left to see if she could scare up something to eat.

  ***

  “Sir, a moment?” asked Lisa Daniels, after she had put herself around six hundred calories of emergency rations. Her stomach hurt slightly—she had not fully hydrated them, and they were pulling water out of her tissues. She tried to hide the discomfort in front of the Commander of the Chaffee.