But if Tapestry was holding a grudge against him, she was doing it on a backburner. She gave him a small smile as he floated into the meeting room, tossing a vacuum sealed granola bar in his direction.
“Melvin got in touch through the communications console,” she said. “I already sent him a message back letting him know I was about to wake you up.”
“And you let him know about Melanie?” asked Malcolm.
Tapestry’s smile widened slightly, and she nodded.
“It was close to an hour ago when I sent my message,” she said. “His response should reach us pretty soon.”
Malcolm nodded slowly, chewing his granola bar thoughtfully.
“We’re going to have our work cut out for us,” he said. “If we can’t rely on Jade for portals anymore, we’ll have to carry out this mission in the same way the original crew would have.”
“I know,” said Tapestry. “Think you’re up for it?”
Malcolm grinned at her.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
He ate quickly, and then followed Tapestry into the cockpit, trying not to admire the pleasant effect weightlessness had on her butt. A few minutes went by before a chime sounded, indicating an incoming message.
“Hello there,” said Melvin. “Amateur astronauts! We have a lot to cover today.”
It wasn’t just him in frame. Close to a dozen members of ground control were clustered around him, and the expressions on their faces spanned the spectrum, from hope, to anxiety, to disbelief. Melvin held a piece of paper in front of him, probably instructions given to him by the rest of his team.
“The good news is that the ship is almost entirely intact; the bad news is that there is at least one major repair that will need to be performed on the ship,” he said. “Now, this is going to get complicated, so keep this video message on hand for later review.”
Calling Melvin’s instructions complicated was a bit like calling a volcano “hot”. He went on and on, veering off occasionally into what seemed like pointless digressions until his ground control teammates prodded him back to his main point.
Some of the ship’s solar panels were damaged and would need to be replaced. Melvin explained how this would entail one of them performing a spacewalk and doing the repair manually. Malcolm felt a prickle of nervous excitement at the prospect. Tapestry, on the other hand, looked as though she’d been given a death sentence.
“There’s much more to get you up to speed on than just repairing the panels,” said Melvin. “But this is, uh, how should I say, priority number one? It’s why the ship was running on reserve power when you first came aboard. If the solar panels aren’t repaired… most basic functions including CO2 scrubbing will fail within 48 hours.”
“Great,” muttered Malcolm. “A timed mission. Just what we needed.”
“Generally, this would involve the entire crew,” said Melvin. “It’s possible to do with just two astronauts. One should stay inside the ship and relay instructions. The other will… go outside the ship and perform the repairs as carefully as possible.”
Melvin’s tone was nervous and a little worried, which didn’t do wonders for Malcolm’s confidence in their ability to complete the task. Melvin went on to give specific explanations of where the replacement solar panels were located, how to detach the old ones, and how to connect power cables to them.
By the end of it, Malcolm was thoroughly overwhelmed. Melvin wished them good luck before ending the message, and instructed them to send an update to ground control as soon as the repairs were complete. Malcolm glanced over at Tapestry and raised an eyebrow.
“Well?” he said. “What do you think?”
She slowly shook her head.
“I think this is going to be a lot more difficult than it sounds,” said Tapestry.
Malcolm nodded. “I’ll do the space walk. The flying I used to do with my wind manipulation has given me a strong threshold for vertigo.”
It feels like it’s been an eternity since I last used it.
“Are you sure?” asked Tapestry. “Malcolm… I have a bad feeling about this.”
“One of us has to do it,” he replied. “And you’re more detail oriented then me. You’ll be more helpful giving me instructions.”
She slowly nodded, though she wore her concern openly on her face. She’d put her hair onto a pony tail instead of a bun that morning, and the end of it moved freely in zero gravity. Malcolm felt a sudden, unbidden urge to hug her, and he gave into it. Tapestry hugged him back.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll fix the ship, reach Europa, and rescue Savior.”
Tapestry sighed.
“This is so far outside the realm of how I imagined things going,” she said. “But I guess there is no turning back now, is there?”
“Is that a rhetorical question, or…?”
Tapestry flicked him in the shoulder.
“Do you need help getting into your spacesuit?” she asked.
“From you?” He grinned. “Of course.”
CHAPTER 21
Climbing into the bulky space suit was, in fact, a two-person process. It wasn’t a heavy as he’d imagined it would be, but it still felt a bit like putting himself into a futuristic version of medieval armor.
“I’ll be able to communicate with you through your ear piece,” said Tapestry. “It will be just like when we used those Bluetooth headsets as champions.”
“Yeah,” said Malcolm, with a slight eye roll. “Just like that.”
Tapestry frowned, carefully checking the seals on the suit. She had found a manual of shuttle procedures, and was carefully going down the list, making sure they didn’t make any stupid mistakes.
“Malcolm…” she said. “I’d understand if you backed out of doing this.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “This is our only chance, Tapestry. For rescuing Savior and for getting back to Earth. And it will be a piece of cake compared to facing off against a bank robbery, or a demon.”
She smiled, but it was more for show than genuine. The helmet was next, and Tapestry carefully pulled it into place over his head.
“Oh!” she said, remembering something. “You put the diaper on already, right?”
Malcolm was glad that the radiation protection of the helmet’s face shield obscured the color of his face from her.
“Yes, Tapestry,” he said. “I put the diaper on. But I cleared myself out already, so hopefully… it won’t be necessary.”
This is less glamorous than I imagined it, watching astronauts in historical footage.
“The manual says that there’s a safety line that you’ll need to connect to once you’re in the airlock,” said Tapestry. “Let me know once you’ve done that and I’ll initiate the opening sequence.”
Malcolm tried to nod, but the helmet made it impossible.
“Will do,” he said. “Alright, let’s get this started.”
He pulled himself into the airlock. The inner airlock door closed behind him with such solidity that Malcolm half expected it never to open again. He took a calming breath, keeping his emotions where he needed them.
Moving in the suit was about as difficult as he’d expected. The arms and legs were bulky and not really designed for quick movements. The hands had surprising mobility, but Malcolm still struggled for a minute while getting the safety line attached.
“Safety line connected,” he said to Tapestry, over the radio. “I’m ready for you to open the door.”
“Got it.”
He heard air whooshing past him and out into the vacuum as the airlock depressurized, and then nothing at all as the door leading out into empty, black space slid open. Well, it wasn’t entirely empty, Malcolm silently conceded.
Jupiter stood out against the abyss of stars like the angry god who it took its name from. Malcolm didn’t have to look at the planet to see it. They were nearing the end of the first half of the crew’s original journey, and Jupiter was larger than the
moon, larger than the sun, larger than anything he’d seen in the night sky back on Earth.
He could see a couple of moons, one of them probably Europa, their destination, but they were like sparks in the light of a bonfire. It was the most majestic thing Malcolm had ever seen. It felt like Jupiter was challenging him, a massive hole just waiting to suck them in.
“Wind Runner?” said Tapestry, over the speaker in his helmet. “Are you okay? You’re just standing there.”
“I’m… taking in the scenery,” he said.
Terrifying. This is beyond terrifying.
Malcolm edged his way forward to the spaceship’s outer airlock door. The fact that he was weightless did not make pushing himself into the vast, empty void any easier. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and wondered what Tapestry must think, observing his vitals from back in the cockpit.
“The replacement solar panels are in the second outer storage locker,” said Tapestry. “There are handholds leading around the side of the ship to the left, so you don’t have to search. Malcolm, are you okay?”
No. Not even a little.
“Fine!” he said. “Just give me a second or two.”
The only way they would be able to make it back home to Earth was if the ship had enough power. And the only way it would get enough power was with working solar panels. It was not a matter of choice, and that, more than courage or changing his perspective on the situation, was what pushed Malcolm to leave the ship.
He grabbed the first handhold to the left of the airlock door and hung onto it for dear life. He double checked that the safety line was still attached properly, which it was. He tried not to look down at Jupiter below him, much like a climber with a fear of heights would avoid looking at the ground.
Slowly, Malcolm pulled himself along the path of handholds. His fear faded enough to be manageable as he realized that he could let go without immediately falling away from the ship. They were still moving through space, of course, but without anything affecting his movement separately from that of his vessel, it felt no different from being stationary.
Looking at the ship from an outside perspective instilled a different kind of humble fear into Malcolm. It was so much smaller from the outside than it looked from the inside. It was so much more vulnerable than he’d realized.
Worst of all was when Malcolm risked a glance away from Jupiter, in the direction they’d come from. Back toward Earth. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t even see a hint of it. The thought that he was far enough away to require a telescope to see humanity’s home planet made him feel like throwing up.
Which would be a terrible idea while wearing a helmet.
He made it to the storage lockers after a minute or two of careful climbing. They didn’t have locks on them that he could see, but each one did have a handle that needed to be twisted before the door could slide freely open. It was a frustrating experience in zero gravity, like trying to open a jar with a stubborn lid. Except that unlike a stuck jar, his future survival depended on getting it open, and his oxygen was limited.
When the door finally gave way and slid open, Malcolm breathed a sigh of relief. There was a motion activated LED light on the inside, which was a helpful touch, since he wasn’t sure how to activate his space suit’s head lamp.
“Alright,” he said. “Which ones are the solar panels?”
Tapestry instructed him more directly from that point forward. The panels were smaller than Malcolm had been expecting, small enough so that he could carry one in a single hand while pulling himself along the handholds with the other.
All of the installed panels were on a massive contraption that could be adjusted from inside the ship to keep it angled toward the sun. Malcolm immediately spotted the broken panels. A few of them were scored by black dust, which probably meant a small asteroid had been responsible for the damage.
“Alright,” said Malcolm. “I’m ready to get started.”
Tapestry explained how to pull the broken panels off and what to look for. She was calm, collected, and detail oriented. She was like an angel, whispering instructions into Malcolm’s ear and helping him keep his mind off the terrifying, uncaring reality of the openness of outer space.
It was difficult. Malcolm needed to first snap each broken panel free from its bracing, and then disconnect a cable, two tasks made difficult by the gloves of his suit. When the first panel came free, he moved at an awkward angle, losing his hold on the new solar panel and knocking it out of his reach.
“Go after it!” said Tapestry. “We can’t afford to lose many of those panels.”
“Uh…” Malcolm watched the panel as it slowly floated away. He took a deep breath, and pushed off from the outer surface of the spaceship.
He was moving away from Jupiter, but that only put him slightly more at ease. The safety line behind him seemed like a thin, insubstantial thing. His heart pounded harder in his chest with every meter of distance he put between himself and the ship.
He reached the solar panel before he got to the end of his line and turned to head back. The line didn’t even look like it was attached to the ship with how much slack it had let out. He managed to pull himself back toward the vessel with a single movement, a testament to how little energy it took to shift his direction in space.
Malcolm installed the first panel, and the second, and then the next five. There was only one broken panel left. He made the trip back toward the storage compartment slowly, feeling an enormous amount of relief at being near the end of the task.
“There’s some interference on the sensors,” said Tapestry. “I can’t tell from what. Be extra careful out there in the –”
Something struck Malcolm in the back with the force of a mean fastball. He gasped, praying that his suit would hold against whatever damage had been caused. He realized he’d let go of his handhold in surprise and turned to try to find it again.
Another bit of space debris struck him, pushing him away from the ship. Malcolm felt a surge of sudden, panicked survival instinct. He was going to be knocked loose. He was going to die.
No! I won’t die like this! I will survive, at any cost!
He gritted his teeth and took hold of his safety line. Something twisted inside of him, and he felt a sudden surge of energy unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d heard of people pushing themselves to the limit in life or death situations and knew that he was right up against his.
He only saw the approaching chunk of space debris for an instant, long enough to guess that it was at least the size of a beach ball. In that moment, all Malcolm could think to do was to use his wind manipulation to stop it. His no longer functioning wind manipulation, which wouldn’t have worked in the vacuum of space, anyway. He called to it with every ounce of his will, and watched as it did nothing to stop the asteroid from striking him hard in the chest.
And then, everything went black.
CHAPTER 22
Malcolm groaned as he opened his eyes. His head was throbbing. Had he gotten jumped in the trading square again? Perhaps what was left of Bennett’s gang had found him and decided to take revenge for his attack on their leader…
His eyes focused, and days of his life snapped back into recent memory. He was in a spacesuit. Which meant that he was still in the middle of his spacewalk, repairing the ship’s solar panels.
Except the ship was nowhere in sight. And his safety line was no longer attached to anything. Malcolm felt terror surge through him at the implication.
“Tapestry!” he shouted. “Tapestry!”
There was no response. Malcolm twisted, spinning in a circle. He could see Jupiter behind him, and it seemed larger than it had been before. Of course. That made sense. An asteroid had knocked him loose from the ship, and it had been traveling in the direction of the nearest planet, pulled in by that immense well of gravity. Just like what was now happening to him.
This can’t be as bad as it seems. Tapestry must know where I am. She’s probably on her wa
y to save me.
He spun around again, searching for the ship behind him. It wasn’t there, and though he saw several small pinpricks of light that might have been it, they might also have been stars.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Tapestry! If you can hear me…”
If she can hear me… what? I don’t know where I am, and I can’t hear her.
There was a crack on the front of Malcolm’s helmet. He couldn’t hear if it was leaking oxygen or not, but it wasn’t a good sign. And if he was out of sight of the ship, it didn’t matter either way. But he couldn’t have been unconscious for that long. The ship had to still be nearby.
Malcolm drifted without purpose or destination. He tried to slow his breathing as much as he could, and conserve what oxygen he had left. It was something he could focus on, a tiny thing within his control.
Am I… going to make it?
The hopelessness of his situation crept up on him over the next few minutes. Any faith he had in saving himself or being rescued was fading like the sun over the horizon. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d first stood on the edge of the airlock. This was his worst nightmare. He was helpless, cast adrift into the void. A tiny, pathetic human in an infinite sea of nothing.
“Well…” he muttered. “That’s it, then.”
It’s over. I did my best.
He chuckled, and then felt despair seize him by the heart. A painful lump formed in his throat. He was ready for tears, but they never came. They would have been a pain to deal with in zero gravity, anyway.
Drifting.
Malcolm heard a faint, slightly ominous chiming noise, which he guessed was his life support system informing him that he was running dangerously low on oxygen. He didn’t know for sure, as the heads-up display was broken along with most of the rest of his electronics. He had no way of knowing how much longer he had to live.
I had a good run. I’m alright with this being the end.
He considered it, wondering if that was really the truth. Was there anyone back on Earth who would miss him? Perhaps Rose, but that was assuming that her memories of him ever came back. Maybe it was better for Malcolm to die in space, billions of miles away. He was the last person who knew the painful truth of her past. Perhaps if he died, it would die with him.
Wind Runner: The Complete Collection Page 78
