Red Thunder

by John Varley

  “Roger. The wreck is leaking, and we don’t like the looks of that lock window.”

  “So what do you need?”

  “Jubal’s suit, and Dak’s. A big bottle of air. Flashlights, the more the better. Some whole blood, a couple pints. I can’t recall Aquino’s type, but it’s in my medical file. And patching material, lots of it.”

  “Roger,” I said, and took off.

  * * *

  [376] SOMEHOW I WRESTLED all that stuff out of Red Thunder’s air lock, all tied together.

  Along with everything else I’d brought enough yellow poly rope to outfit a Boy Scout Jamboree. I got everything tied to an eyebolt so it wouldn’t drift, and started casting. I figured it would take a few false starts before I got the hang of it. I was right. But on the fourth try, just as Kelly was coming out of the lock, I got the weighted end of the line dead center. Kelly only had to reach out and grab it. She tied it off, and I attached the bundle of junk to it. She pulled it across, hand over hand at first but then just letting it drift, because though it was weightless, it still had considerable mass, something you could never forget out there or you could get crushed.

  When she had the stuff I pulled the rope back, tied it down, then pulled myself along it. First you take the goose across the river because the fox won’t eat the sack of grain…

  It took me three minutes to cross, but in only one minute I experienced what Travis had talked about. At first I was scared. Dear Lord, it was empty out there! Just two little specks tied by a thin cord, and me in the middle. But very quickly I experienced something like rapture. Somehow, in all this vastness, my fear was so insignificant, so primitive and unworthy an emotion for this starry cathedral, that it just went away. So be it, I thought. Amen. This place is inimical to life, tries every second to snuff it out… and I didn’t mind. Oh, I wasn’t eager to die, but for the first time I could remember, I wasn’t afraid to die, either. I smiled, then I laughed.

  “Manny? Problem?” It was Travis.

  “None, Trav. Kelly, did I tell you I love you?”

  “Not today,” she laughed, “but it’s been a busy day.”

  “I love you. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes. Yes, Manny, I will.”

  “Duly witnessed and recorded,” Travis said. “Dak, have a cigar.” I could hear Dak laughing in the background. I drifted along the rope [377] and into Kelly’s arms. You can’t kiss in a space suit, and even hugs leave a lot to be desired, but we did the best we could.

  AFTER WE’D CYCLED Jubal’s and Dak’s suits through the lock Kelly got in and I shoved everything else in with her. She knocked on the wall with a wrench and the barrel of the lock began to turn. She smiled and waved at me, then she was gone, and the cracked window rotated into my view. I could see why they were worried. What Alicia had described as little icicles had grown into white starbursts a foot long, what I guess you’d call free-fall icicles. I had to knock them away with my glove before I could get to work.

  Anybody in Florida knows what to do when there’s a hurricane alert. I’d lived through two near misses. Each time Mom and Maria and me had taped up the windows. This won’t stop them from breaking, but it stops them from shattering in such a spectacular way. This window was about to get a total taping with our alternative patching material, duct tape.

  We’d tested, and found that ordinary gray duct tape stood up to cold and vacuum for something between six and eight hours, after which it could turn brittle and lose its gumminess, or adhesive qualities, whatever you want to call it. I had a big roll of it tied to my belt. I started peeling off three-foot strips and pasting them over the window.

  Not a fun job. If you’ve ever been frustrated trying to lift up the end of a roll of sticky tape, try it wearing mittens. If I ever order another space suit, I’ll be sure it has something that can be used as a thumbnail.

  I struggled for ten minutes, strips of crumpled duct tape clinging to my suit, feeling like Br’er Rabbit fighting with the Tar Baby. I covered the whole surface of the window with long strips, much longer than needed to cover the one-foot diameter circle. Then I put on another layer, at right angles to the first, and for good measure, a third layer, diagonally. Then I knocked on the metal of the hull and the lock rotated. I got in, and repeated the process on the inside of the window. When I was satisfied I knocked again, and the inner lock door was [378] opened by Kelly. She had her helmet off and her nose was red and dripping a little, and she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.

  I got quick introductions to Holly and Cliff. Both were shivering uncontrollably, though wrapped in layers of cloth. I had brought a couple of big fluorescent camp lanterns, which we switched on. They gave out a ghastly light, making our skin look like sour milk, except Cliff’s, whose dark skin looked almost bluish.

  First order of business, get them into suits.

  There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all space suit, but the Russians had come about as close as possible. The torso can be expanded and the arms and legs lengthened or shortened a full six inches. This was accomplished with a design a lot like those bendable plastic soda straws, a bellows arrangement. We figured to fit Captain Aquino into Jubal’s suit, as he was a short man, like Jubal, though not nearly so bulky.

  Captain Aquino almost proved to be my undoing. I guess I hadn’t realized that “compound fracture” meant a sharp point of bloody white bone sticking right out of the meat of his thigh. I felt sick, quickly removed my helmet just in case… and the cold slapped me in the face so hard I was shocked right out of my nausea.

  I was breathing hard, and so was everyone else. The air felt thin and sour. But I’d brought an alarm that would scream if the oxygen content fell to dangerous levels, and so far it was silent.

  You don’t really know what chaos can be until you’ve seen it in free fall. Things were drifting around, things as small as tiny frozen droplets of water and blood, and as large as tables and chairs. You could shove them into a corner but they’d just drift right back out again. One of the things that kept floating about and getting in the way was the body of Dr. Brin Marston. Aside from some blood coming from her mouth she seemed almost unhurt. She did seem to be bent backwards more than normal.

  “She died peacefully,” Holly said to me. “She never woke up. After an hour she stopped breathing.”

  Holly Oakley was in shock, like Alicia had said. I had to stifle a laugh [379] that would have been horribly inappropriate. But think about it. She’s sitting in total darkness, she and Cliff. They know they are doomed. They know the air is going to kill them in a few hours, the only question is how. By getting too cold, too thin, or too oxygen-poor? Then there’s a knock on the door, and who is it but your ex-husband, the one your lawyer screwed so badly in the property settlement, the alimony, and the child support.

  For the record, Travis said the property settlement had been more than fair, she had never asked for alimony, and he’d never begrudged a nickel of the child support.

  Now she seemed to be only partially aware of what was going on. Kelly was helping her into the suit Alicia had brought in, the one that had been on the rack beside Vasarov’s corpse, and it was like dressing a toddler. Holly’s attention wandered, often to the body of Dr. Marston.

  “Manny, can you do something with her?” Kelly asked, jerking her head toward Marston. I shoved the body against a wall, then tied one of her legs to a stanchion. I tried to close her partially opened eyes. Big mistake. Her eyelids were frozen in that position.

  Cliff had managed to struggle into Dak’s suit. He was about the same height as Dak, but quite a bit huskier. “It’s going to cut off the circulation in my legs,” he said, teeth chattering, “but I can handle that if I have to.”

  “It’ll only take ten, fifteen minutes,” I told him. I showed him how to adjust the systems on the Russian suit. He sighed as the heating elements warmed up.

  “God, I hate being cold,” he said. Then we both went to help Alicia.

  I really had to
hand it to Alicia. Liquids won’t drip in free fall, so how do you make an I.V. work? She had brought some broad rubber bands. By winding them a few times around one of the bags of type B positive blood I’d brought over, she could produce enough pressure to force the blood into Captain Aquino’s veins. But that was about all she could do for him until we got him over to Red Thunder.

  “Setting the bone will be easier once we’re under way,” she decided. “Right now, I want to disturb that wound as little as possible, or he’ll [380] start bleeding again.” She got a big pad of sterile gauze and packed the wound, then wrapped it tightly in sterile tape. The gauze turned red almost immediately.

  “Let’s get him in the suit, pronto,” she said.

  We got the body of the suit on him, the I.V. tube nestled against his chest. Got the arms and gloves on, then one leg. Then, very gingerly, eased the other leg over the wound. Aquino began moaning and tossing his head, so Alicia jabbed him with more morphine. We got his helmet on and turned on all suit systems. All lights were green.

  But not on Holly’s suit. No sooner had we buttoned her down and turned the suit on than we got a big red light for pressurization. A quick inspection found two holes one inch across in the right lower leg. Something had passed right through the tough fabric.

  “Okay,” Alicia said. “We’ll get Cliff and the captain across, then I’ll come back with Kelly’s suit. It should be a pretty good fit.”

  “No!” Holly grabbed my arm and squeezed hard. Her eyes were wild. “I can’t stay here in the dark, alone. Please don’t make me do it.”

  “It won’t be dark,” Alicia soothed.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “I’m not sure this place will stay pressurized much longer,” I said.

  “You’re right. Okay. Do you think we can patch it so it will hold?”

  “Yes.” I sounded surer than I felt… but the duct tape hadn’t failed us so far.

  So we wrapped tape, round and round and round some more. We used the rest of my roll, making a thick, tight band from her knee to her ankle.

  It should hold, I thought. It had to hold. We couldn’t bring her dead body to Travis after coming so close.

  I’m not a praying man, but I prayed. Please, just ten minutes. Let it hold for ten minutes.

  SINCE AQUINO SEEMED to be more or less stabilized, we moved Holly up to priority one. I crowded into the air lock with her and I pressed the button… and nothing happened.

  [381] “Please don’t tell me it’s stopped working now!” I shouted.

  “Calm down, Manny,” Kelly said over the suit radio. “It only works on manual now. Alicia is cranking it… there it goes.”

  It seemed slower than it had when I entered the ship, a thousand years before, but it was turning.

  We had worked it all out before we got into the lock. As soon as there was enough space, I squeezed through the door and snapped onto the lifeline attached to Red Thunder. No time for any rapture during this crossing. I pulled myself along, talking on the radio the whole way, alerting Dak and Travis that we would be in a hurry when Holly came over. I only started slowing myself when I was twenty feet from the ship. I soaked up my momentum with my legs, got turned around just in time to catch Holly as she came speeding along the line. I quickly unsnapped us from the crossing line and attached us to the line leading back to Red Thunder’s air lock. Hand over hand, with me in the lead, we made our way around the ship.

  I got her in the lock and started it cycling. Elapsed time: five minutes flat. Okay, God, we didn’t need the whole ten minutes, so hang on to the surplus and let me use them for the rest of this stunt.

  I looked back at the wreck and saw Alicia starting across, hauling Aquino at the end of a short rope. Trying to hurry slowly, I pulled myself back to the crossing rope and waited for her. You go back for the fox, row him across the river, bring back the goose…

  When she was safely on her way to the lock I pulled myself across the gap once more. The lock was just finishing its rotation, bringing the taped-over window into view again. I didn’t like the looks of it, I thought it might be bulging. It stopped. Cliff would be letting it flood with stale Ares Seven air. It bulged even more. Nothing I could do about it, it would hold or it would not.

  Then I thought about it some more. I pictured it…

  “Kelly! You and Cliff get away from the door, it might-”

  That’s when Cliff pulled the inner door open, and the patch gave way, the tape-wrapped circular window hitting me square in the faceplate. Some of the remaining adhesive glued the patch in front of my face for a second, until I yanked it away.

  [382] It all lasted only a few seconds, with small objects being shot through the hole by the escaping air like weird grapeshot. I stayed off to the side until the eruption died down. I pulled myself around to look through the hole, but something was blocking it.

  Somebody’s spacesuit backpack.

  Cliff was breathing hard. “Manny, Kelly got sucked into the air lock. There’s a bunch of junk jammed in there with her. I’m clearing it away as fast as I can, one minute, I think. Two minutes, tops.”

  I couldn’t see anything but the red fabric covering Kelly’s backpack. But then some snow began to drift out of the hole.

  “Something hit me pretty hard in the side,” Kelly said. “I’m trying to get my hand around to it… there’s a clear fluid leaking, Manny. Not blood. Clear. I’m… I’m scared, Manny. I feel like I’m buried alive.”

  There she was, inches away from me, and there was nothing I could do.

  “We’ll have you out in just a minute, honey,” I said.

  “I’m starting to feel… kind of cold. It’s suit coolant leaking, isn’t it, Manny?”

  “It must be. Even if you lose it all, you can’t freeze that quick, babe. I’m going to set a new Olympic hauling record. I’ll have you back safe and sound in Big Red before you know it.” But was her voice fainter? And if it was, was it because she was speaking softer… or because the air was getting thin?

  “I’ve got it cleared, Manny,” Cliff said. I could see Kelly’s backpack move away from the empty porthole. “I’ll squeeze in here, and you crank us around.”

  “Me… crank what?”

  “The manual lock turner,” Cliff said, a little impatiently.

  “What… where is it?”

  “To your left… are you oriented with your feet aft?”

  “Yes.”

  “To your left, two feet away, a red arrow should be pointing to the hatch cover for the manual control.”

  “Got it.” I grabbed the hatch cover handle and pulled. And I pulled [383] myself right off the ship. In free fall nothing can be pulled, twisted, raised, or lowered unless you are tied to or braced against something that will give you leverage.

  I planted my feet against the side of the ship, reached down, and pulled. And pulled, and again, and again.

  “Hatch cover is jammed,” I said. “I’ll try it-”

  “Never mind, no time. I’m out of the lock now. Cranking it around…”

  The empty hatch window rotated away from me, and in about a minute the inner door appeared, and the instant it was open enough I reached in and grabbed one of the shoulder straps the Russians had put there for exactly that purpose, hauling a wayward, disabled, or dead cosmonaut without damaging the suit.

  … You leave the goose, then row back and pick up the sack of grain.

  A fine mist was coming from a small tear in the fabric of her suit, freezing almost instantly. Now I saw some blood mixed in with it.

  “I’m cold,” Kelly whispered. “I’m real cold.”

  How much air was she losing? In the time I had to get her across she would not freeze to death. But she could die very quickly with no air. I looked at the system lights on the forearm of her suit. Oxygen pressure was green, but for how long?

  There was what seemed like several miles of rope between us and Red Thunder’s air lock. Actually, it was three ropes. Twenty feet along the w
reck from the lock to the crossing line. The line was a hundred yards long. Then there was the line from Red Thunder’s cockpit to the air lock aft, about fifty feet. Too long.

  Sometimes you can’t hurry slowly, you just have to act. I worked it all out in seconds, then I planted my feet against the hull by the lock and jumped.

  At first I thought Kelly’s weight on my right arm had pulled me off course. My target was the titanium thrust ring Caleb had worked so hard on, so long ago. The last of the three ropes was tied to it. If I could snag the ring or the rope, I’d have saved two, maybe three minutes. If I’d aimed badly, I had killed Kelly. If we both soared off into space, Travis would come get us. I’d be alive, but Kelly would certainly be [384] dead. I had plenty of time to work that out as we flew between the two ships.

  Though it was the fastest crossing I ever made, it felt like the longest. How fast were we going? Fifteen miles per hour? Thirty? Probably not. But there was a threshold speed, beyond which my hand would not be able to stay closed when I grabbed the ring.

  If I was even close enough to grab it.

  Then I saw I would be close enough. I reached out.

  “Try to hook your elbow through the ring,” Travis said.

  Elbow… I was going to be close enough. I held out my free arm and let the ring hit me, instantly curling my arm. It was almost pulled out of its socket as my body and then Kelly’s pulled at me, swinging around the ring.

  My arm was forced straight out and I lost contact with the ring. I’ve missed. I’ve killed her.

  Then I opened my eyes and saw I was floating motionless relative to Red Thunder. I shoved my feet against the thrust ring and swung us both into the air lock.

  “I think I’m burned,” Kelly said, even fainter than before. “It hurts.”

  “Almost there.” I slammed the emergency button and air flooded the lock, silently at first, then becoming a scream, louder and louder.

  I realized it was Kelly screaming, incoherent at first, holding her hands to the sides of her helmet.