Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  Everything in the distance blurred as Stormie focused on the spot, a couple of millimeters in diameter. It was a pit in the faceplate, rough, circular, and definitely indented. She put her hand up to it, gingerly, but couldn’t feel it through her glove.

  She was afraid to breathe.

  She was afraid not to breathe.

  A shadow moved in front of her. Karl Capell landed there, something in his hand. He reached toward her helmet—

  She gasped as if she’d been knocked in the gut, pushed Capell backward and jumped over him. She had to get to the airlock before her helmet lost integrity.

  The others yelled at her as she bounced back toward the Turtle. On her third bounce she came to rest two steps away from the airlock. She stumbled on the steps but got into the lock. She focused so intently on the ding in her helmet that she could barely see past it to activate the cycle.

  Pressure rose until the differential with her suit was in the green. Her lungs burned; she realized she’d been holding her breath. She stepped through into the Turtle and took off the helmet, and let herself breathe. It was dank, stale air, recycled for days and full of the sweat and stink of all four of them. It was wonderful.

  * * *

  Capell was next through the airlock. Stormie was examining the front of her helmet, feeling thoroughly stupid. The pit in the faceplate was deep, but not deep enough to warrant that level of panic. Stupid makes mistakes, and stupid gets you dead, but stupid gets lucky sometimes.

  “What the hell is your problem?” Capell asked.

  Besides you? Lord help me, I know I’m an idiot but I don’t need you lecturing me. Stormie closed her eyes and started counting to ten.

  “Look,” he said, “you don’t like me and I don’t like you. Okay.” He dropped something on the cushion next to her. “I was out of line before. I admit it. But when somebody’s coming to help you, you don’t knock ’em down.” He shuffled back toward the lock.

  When the lock closed behind him, Stormie looked at what he’d left her.

  A standard issue stickypatch, and a sealant applicator.

  Stormie didn’t know whom to be more upset with: herself, for panicking, or Capell, for being right. She always counted on herself to be right. She played back the event in her mind, and realized that Capell had been coming toward her with the stickypatch in his hand. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but even if her helmet had been breached the patch would’ve held pressure well enough to let her get back inside. But what had she done? Everything wrong. She hadn’t trusted him, worried she couldn’t trust him, and had reacted in fear—and maybe even anger. What if she had misjudged her jump toward the lock, and fell and really cracked her helmet?

  She picked up the sealant tube and tapped it against her head.

  Stupid is lucky to be alive.

  * * *

  Gabe came in and helped Stormie find one of the spare helmets and seal it properly with her suit. The couplings were standardized up to a point, but always needed adjustment. By the time they got back outside, Bruce and Capell had moved the troublesome rock and jury-rigged the first of two additional struts to support the broken suspension.

  Stormie looked at the remains of the transit case: a five-centimeter hole was blown out of the side of it, right where one of the latches should be. Bruce explained that the case had ruptured long before they thought it would; Capell hadn’t been close to opening the relief valve, and the burst disk hadn’t blown. He also said he had received a message from the colony approving their plan—which was good, since they were halfway done with it.

  Stormie said little as she and Gabe got the rock completely off the path, then hooked the come-along to the temporary bracing and waited. About a half hour later, Bruce was satisfied with his suspension repairs and gave them the signal to pull out the brace.

  The trailer trembled and fell into place. The suspension held.

  Stormie’s ears were flooded with cheers and laughter from the others, but she was quiet. She wouldn’t let herself feel good about their success, not after her lousy performance an hour earlier.

  Back inside, Bruce announced a mandatory rest period for everyone. After that, Capell would drive and the rotation would pick up again. Stormie gritted her teeth: she would, as always, be next in the driver’s seat after Capell.

  Before she closed her eyes, she checked her messages. Frank said he had tried to get Gary Needham to send out a rescue—even a leapfrog of trucks with extra fuel on board—but Gary wouldn’t risk it. Or the Consortium wouldn’t allow it; Frank wasn’t clear. Stormie smiled, though: she’d joked about getting back and rescuing him, but Frank always loved playing the knight in shining armor. Sometimes she even needed it.

  And as bone-weary as she was, she probably needed it really bad.

  * * *

  Frank knocked on the half-open sliding door into the communications center.

  Gary looked up from whatever he was reading and said, “Just a second.”

  Frank took out his datapad and reviewed the last message from Stormie. Her team was on its way back, and Stormie was tired but pleased that they had been able to repair the trailer suspension enough to keep going, although she anticipated that they would have to travel more slowly than normal. Her message itself would not have bothered Frank, except for the telemetered data the Turtle sent along with the message traffic. The air supply usage rate was higher than it should have been. Frank believed that Stormie must have the situation in hand, but she had not mentioned it in her message. It was important enough that she should have included it, and he was not sure if her omission was intentional—an attempt not to alarm him or anyone else—or if she had not noticed the consumption rate. There was little he could do about it; still, he was worried.

  “Okay, Frank,” Gary said. “How are you feeling? Do we know why everybody got sick?”

  Frank started. Of course, that would be Gary’s first concern. “Not conclusively,” Frank said, “though I have shown Yvette all the data from my sampling and we agree the cause appears to be food-related. She suspects some of the prepackaged food, and mentioned that she may recommend developing additional biocapsules for this type of situation. But that is not why I came to see you.”

  “Then what’s up?”

  “I assume you received the message that the team is on its way back?”

  Gary nodded. “Yeppir. I’m glad I didn’t try to send you out, like you wanted.”

  “Yes, I realize it was unnecessary.”

  “No way you could’ve known they’d fix the suspension that quick. I didn’t think they’d be able to. But why do I get the impression that’s not what you wanted to talk about, either?”

  Frank allowed himself to grin just a little; he had never been good at hiding his thoughts from people. He was, as Stormie said, transparent. Frank explained his concern about the ice team’s air usage rate, and offered to submit his analysis of the data from the LVN.

  “No, I don’t want to see your calculations. I have enough trouble keeping up with everything else.” Gary gave a lazy half wave at the console where he’d been reading earlier. “You tell me you’ve run the numbers, that’s good enough for me. But you don’t think Stormie’s got the same result?”

  Frank hesitated before he answered. “I am not sure,” he said. “It is possible that, because she is fatigued, she has not projected the utilization rate out as far as I have. It is also possible that she has done the projections, knows what they imply, and refrained from including it in a message. She may not want to alarm the others.”

  Gary made a curious gesture: he closed his eyes and pursed his lips and tilted his head from side to side a couple of times. Then he looked at Frank and said, “And you probably don’t want to send a message either, right?”

  “I considered it, but it is also possible that I am being overly conservative. If that is the case, I would not want to alarm them without reason. It would be much more convenient to be able to discuss it with her in real time.”


  A shadow of anger flitted over Gary’s face. “I know. I’ve already sent my third message down below saying, ‘See? We need reliable COMSATs.’ But wishing for it won’t make it real. So what do you want to do?”

  “I would like to prepare a replenishment supply for them. I believe we will have to meet them on their way back, and I would like to be ready.”

  Gary turned to the console, clicked through a couple of menus on the screen. He nodded, creased his forehead, and nodded again. “One question, Frank.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where does something like that fall under your statement of work?” Gary looked at him and raised his eyebrows.

  Strictly speaking, Frank could not say that it did. He was not as creative as James or Stormie at interpreting the contents of their statement of work, and he did not intend to try to invent something on the spot.

  “I do not know,” he said. “And I am not sure I care. It needs to be done, and soon, so that we do not waste time when they need us. I am happy to let the accountants and lawyers work out the finer details. But whether I do it, or someone else does it, it needs to be done.”

  Gary nodded, and gave a little half smile. “Then by all means, Frank, get it done.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Emergency Frequency

  Sunday, 20 January 2036

  Stormie woke when Capell went forward to start driving, but let herself sleep again. Frank had taken pity and not sent any extra work. She dreaded finding out how much would be waiting when she got back.

  Her datapad alarm woke her half an hour before her shift. Gabe and Bruce were sound asleep and hardly stirred. Stormie plugged her pad into the truck and downloaded how much oxygen was still in their stores. The number came back so low she queried the truck again and got the same result. She checked their position and estimated the time remaining on their trip. A twinge became a wave of nausea as she compared their oxygen usage to the trip time and came up short.

  She repeated the calculation, working from the consumption over the remaining travel time backward to the amount of oxygen needed. She got the same result. She stopped short of making up creative insults for herself for missing the problem earlier. She didn’t think she could spare the time for excessive self-critique.

  The time … she hadn’t noticed the truck had stopped, and didn’t realize it was time for her to drive until Capell came through the hatch.

  He didn’t say anything, which suited her like satin. They were like similar magnetic poles, repulsing each other. How much did it matter that he tried to help her? She still wanted to pummel him. She bit back a question about whether he’d kept his clothes on while he drove; being spiteful wouldn’t help. With only four of them in this truck—for that matter, with only the few dozen people in the whole colony—none of them could run away from fights, but they couldn’t afford to prolong them, either. They had to get along to survive.

  She took a deep breath and said what she had to. “Karl.” He looked up. “Thanks for trying to help me. I’m sorry I shoved you.”

  Behind his beard it was hard to tell what he was thinking. He nodded slightly. “That was probably hard for you to say.” He scratched his neck. “No harm done.”

  Bruce sat up in his corner. “Time for changeover?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know you were awake,” Stormie said.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I need you to look at this.” Stormie passed him her CommPact and started putting on her suit.

  Bruce rubbed sleep out of his eyes and asked, “What?”

  “Not sure if we took too long to fix the trailer or we’ve sprung a leak,” she said, “but we don’t have enough air to get back.”

  Capell rolled his eyes. “Oh, great.”

  Gabe woke, propped himself on one elbow, but said nothing.

  Bruce studied the screen, handed it back, then opened his own terminal and queried the truck’s computer. He rubbed his eyes again. “Looks like Snapper’s hurt.”

  “How so?” asked Capell.

  “Slow pressure loss in the number three oxygen tank,” Bruce said.

  “Why didn’t we get an alarm?” Stormie asked.

  Bruce and Capell looked at each other. Neither spoke.

  Stormie looked at Gabe, who sat up a little more but just shrugged. “What aren’t you two telling us?” she said.

  Bruce looked as sorry as a dog that’d just been scolded for chewing up the family Bible. “It’s my fault. We disabled some alarms when we stripped out the water bladder for the ice jack. I forgot to re-enable them.” He scrolled through a couple of menus on the computer. “Not sure if we jarred loose a fitting or took a hit from something, but we’re down to the dregs in that oh-two tank.”

  No one spoke for what seemed a very long time, then Gabe said, “Well, we’re overdue enough that we’d be rationing food anyway. Don’t guess we can ration air, exactly. Won’t the scrubbers make up for it?”

  “They’re working fine,” Stormie said, “but they’re just three-week filters, not the bioreactors we use in the colony. And this truck isn’t as airtight as you’d think. We have little losses here and there.” Like going in and out of the airlock so much.

  “So what do we do?” Gabe asked.

  “Call in another mayday,” Stormie said, “and request a team to meet us with a few charged oh-two bottles.” She compared her calculations to their forward progress and added, “Somewhere around Wurzelbauer Crater ought to do it.”

  Bruce said, “Is that your professional judgment?”

  “I don’t think we need to be that dogmatic,” she said. “But there may be another option. If, Karl,” she looked at Capell, “you’re as good a plumber as you claim to be.”

  He was still expressionless behind his beard. Stormie shivered, a quick, sharp impulse that might have been a shudder of revulsion from just talking to him.

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

  “Can you build us an electrolytic reactor?”

  Capell frowned. “Oh, yeah, I can whip one up out of Mylar and chewing gum. I’ll get right on that.”

  “Come on, Karl,” Bruce said.

  Stormie held up her hand for a second. Quit being such a smartass, Karl, she wanted to say but didn’t. “It’s okay. He may not be able to. It was just a thought.” She worked the problem on her CommPact as she continued. “I figure we could use a little ice so we don’t run out of potable water. We could use greywater, I guess, but it might foul the reactor. Anyway, you split one block of ice at fifty-some kilograms, dump the hydrogen overboard since we don’t need it in the truck, and you’ll get pretty close to fifty kilograms of oxygen. At our use rate, and accounting for the CO2 filters, that’ll give us two and a half extra days—plenty of margin, since it takes less than two days to get back.” She left off the fact that they’d actually require more than that to keep the partial pressure up to the point that they could breathe effectively; she’d go into that later. She picked up the spare helmet and wormed her way to the hatch. “That’s less than two days as long as we’re moving, though, and it’s my shift.”

  She made her way forward to the cab. She looked around carefully, but saw nothing unusual. It looked clean enough, but she wiped the seat anyway.

  * * *

  When her shift was over, Stormie went back to the commons. Gabe was suited and ready, and went forward to drive. He smiled at her as he went through the hatch.

  Bruce and Capell had an assortment of tubing, fittings, wires, and other equipment spread over two-thirds of the area. Stormie took off her suit and sat down, careful not to disturb their arrangement. At this rate, it looked as if they would strip the truck down to the wheels before they got back.

  “I sent the message,” Bruce said. “I don’t know if they could get all the way to Wurzelbauer with the little trucks. That’s a long haul. I expect they’ll meet us at the end of Rupes Mercator or thereabouts.”

  “I hope we have enough to breathe that far,” Stormie
said. “I sent my calculations to Frank with my usual log message, we’ll see if he comes up with the same result.” So much for the extra margin in his calculations.

  At the mention of her log message, Capell stiffened but kept working. Bruce didn’t seem to notice. He said, “Stormie, I’m up next in the rotation, but do you mind driving for me? I need to keep working on this.” He gestured at the mixture of parts.

  She sighed. “Sure, Bruce. Whatever needs to be done, I’ll do it.” That was the way she always did things. Frank, too, which was why they worked so well together. She closed her eyes and curled up on the small cushion to get what rest she could. Just a little while longer.

  * * *

  Stormie took Bruce’s driving shift, but not before explaining that they would need to put several ice blocks through Capell’s electrolytic reactor in order to keep the atmosphere at a breathable pressure. No one was happy about that: their per-kilogram ice bonus was literally evaporating. Gabe had the best take on it: he said that as much as he loved his wife, he didn’t want her spending a lot of insurance money when he could be spending a little bonus money.

  When Stormie’s four hours were up, she stopped the truck and made her way back from the Turtle’s head.

  Bruce and Capell were suited up and headed out the airlock.

  “They going to get some ice?” Stormie asked Gabe. He nodded and went forward into the cab.

  It was strange to be alone in the Turtle. The little compartment that was usually so crowded suddenly seemed huge. Stormie shrugged out of her suit and worked her way through some stretches until she heard the airlock cycling. As the two men brought in the ice, she checked her messages and fought back tears at Frank’s admission that he already had an oxygen supply prepared to transport to them. He didn’t chastise her for not catching the problem, even though he’d found it before it became obvious; he just said he would be there to meet her with whatever she needed.

  By the time Bruce’s shift came around again, he and Capell had the electrolysis rig going. They had shut down most of the lights and even some of the active thermal control systems in order to power the thing. Bruce went forward and took his turn at the control yoke.