Interplanetary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Sass took a moment to digest this. “You’re not opening that door, Cope,” she concluded.

  “Yeah, I am,” he replied, and did so before she could stop him. “Need to look.”

  Sighing, Sass slipped into the passageway upside-down from him, to add her light to the view. As advertised, a collection of boxes and pallets floated free. The problem epicenter was 9 meters back from the door. The first couple meters should have been empty, its fuel pallets and stores already retrieved by this point. However, the entire ship was shaken by the…event. And no gravity remained to organize this space. They watched the drifting mass for minute or two, striving for a glimpse.

  But they couldn’t see 9 meters back.

  Sass ventured, “Is it safe to transfer this stuff to the remaining 3 containers, Cope?”

  “Probably not,” he replied. “But I don’t think we have any choice. What I’m wondering is how to make it safer.”

  “Suggestion,” Sass said on their private channel. “I supervise transshipment. You go in and restore our gravity. With gravity holding this box in place, completing the job should be safer. No?”

  “No,” he decided at last. “Steel cables to tie the box to the ship first. Cap, the moment I open that conduit, the hold loses pressure. If I can possibly manage it, I’d rather fix this from the outside. Or at least wait until I’ve got more time.”

  “More time?”

  “I want our other rego containers back. Ben? How many have you located?”

  “All four,” he replied. “Three behind us. One’s a bit ahead but shot off perpendicular to our path.”

  “We think that one’s gone,” Abel added. “I might be able to rendezvous with the three behind, though. If we don’t wait too long before maneuvering.”

  “Wait on thrusters,” Sass ordered. “How long do we have, Abel?”

  He sighed. “Still calculating.”

  Copeland explained, “Sass, it’s going to come down to how many we can still retrieve once we have some way to do that. And secure them. Right now, we can’t accomplish any of that. And we still might have to jettison this box. I recommend we start transshipping this front stuff while I attach the cables. There’s still fuel and water in here. Snag that. Our lives could depend on it.”

  “Alright. Choose the teams.”

  “Clay and Kassidy are with you. I need Cortez and Abel. Can Ben mind the ship?”

  “He can.” Sass issued the orders. Copeland opted to remain outside. He let Abel and Cortez haul the steel lines and fittings to him, after Clay and Kassidy exited via the trapdoor. By the time her pair of helpers were on duty, Sass had decided where to stow what from the front of the container.

  They couldn’t pick and choose, because the drifting contents with their momentum each posed a serious hazard. They just latched a portable grav lifter onto the first fuel pallet and coaxed it out and across to the other forward container. The process was agonizingly slow. Their most experienced cargo hands were on Copeland’s team, not Sass’s.

  “Jury-rig complete,” Copeland reported forty minutes later. “This container isn’t going anywhere. How are you on transfer, cap?”

  “Clear 2 meters,” she replied.

  He snorted amusement. “Did you get any fuel? Ice?”

  “One pallet of each.”

  “Cool. Grab one fuel, take it inside and fill the hopper. My team, offload tools into the trapdoor for Sass’s team to stow. We’ll empty the container. Sass, when your team is done with fueling, let me know and stand by.”

  Sass mentally rehearsed this evolution and found his plan wanting. “Correction. Clay, you’re on Abel’s team. Cope, you’re coming inside. Abel, as soon as you get a visual on those crates we were talking about, we need a picture. Remember, something already exploded in there. Play it safe, people.”

  17

  Abel listened carefully as Clay rapidly briefed him and Cortez on how they were transferring cargo from the wounded box to the others. “Can’t get the cargo to sit still.”

  Abel considered this core problem. And it was a massive problem, literally. A single crate like those tidy little one-tonne packages from Hell’s Bells could kill them.

  “Sass,” he hailed her. “We’ve still got a soybean-loading bulkhead. When you get a minute, let’s pass that out the cargo ramp. That’ll help us shove stuff. Maybe Kassidy could move it to the cargo ramp for us?”

  “Will do,” Sass replied shortly.

  He switched back to their work-party channel. “In the meantime, we’ve got empty fuel barrels out here. We can jettison those to free up the cubic we need.”

  Clay started to step into the container, but Abel pulled him back. “Where’s the hook? There.” He kicked ‘upward’ and snagged a pole stowed against the ‘ceiling,’ the side of the box away from the ship. But the handle was broken, possibly smashed by shifting cargo. He hurled it torpedo-fashion out of the access aisle, to join the flotsam drifting through the Aloha system until some gravity well claimed it.

  “Going for hooks,” Cortez announced, and moved to the container across from them.

  “I begin to see why this took you so long,” Abel murmured. He considered his grav lifters. The ice crates and pallets were simple wood. He could hammer hooks into them. He still had some carbon fiber lines on him, lighter than the steel. And a single movable bulkhead coming out. But to transfer anything efficiently, he needed cargo to sit still in two containers simultaneously.

  Clay snagged a fast-moving fuel barrel, easily proving that it was empty. He pushed it carefully downward.

  “Add more momentum next time,” Abel advised. “We don’t want litter starting to orbit us.”

  Clay chuckled. He’d forgotten about that problem.

  Abel got on the comm again. “Jules, baby? Hold up Kassidy on the cargo ramp. Could you find my bucket of space bungees to add to her load? And a few tarps, the strongest ones we’ve got. Oh, and that box of extra grav hand-haulers I got for when we hire extras for loading.”

  “Will do!” Jules cried, eager to help in the emergency.

  “OK, gang. Let’s keep the pallets and toss the barrels. Empties only.”

  Cortez handed him a hook on a broomstick, and passed another to Clay. “Pass the light stuff out to me. I’ll stow or jettison.”

  The empties in this facing pair of containers were all stowed near the doors. Organized and armed, the crew snagged out the empty barrels and the clutter of drifting pallets in a matter of minutes. As Abel closed his door and moved on to the next pair, he nodded in approval at how Cortez brought the pallets to rest neatly in the narrower cross-corridor between the long sides of the boxes. Made of the ubiquitous Mahina spruce and utterly desiccated from their months in space, the pallets massed next to nothing, yet retained enough strength to make handy filler and render mismatched shapes orderly and stackable. Many were broken, but those might prove useful too.

  Clay lagged him by a few minutes. But by the time the third and fourth containers were free of empty fuel barrels and loose pallets, their tools delivery awaited in the cargo ramp. Scrabbling like gifted monkeys, they popped out the loose container-divider bulkhead, tarps and bungees, and sealed the ramp again. A scant half year ago, Cortez was nervous and Abel completely green at EVA maneuvers. Clay had been the rusty old hand. By now Clay had all he could do to keep up and not get in the younger crew’s way.

  Back in the aisle, Cortez immediately bungee-corded her pallet corral. Abel popped open container number two, directly opposite the problem child, and nimbly oriented the loose foamcrete bulkhead to block off the space. He started attaching bungees to its corner tie-downs. Clay caught the gist and matched his work on the other side. They left the stretchy cords dangling for now.

  Then Abel rapidly attached grav haulers to the surface, clicking them to push inward at maximum, counter-pressing with his opposite hand to keep his ram-wall straight. Not unexpectedly, the bulkhead got hung up within a few meters, the grav haulers not strong enough to push
back the massive contents behind it. Using nothing but the strength of their backs, Clay and Abel managed to squeeze the stuff back another meter. Then Abel called it quits.

  “That’s not bad. Nearly a quarter container over here. Let’s see if it’s still moving.” He carefully pulled the ‘top’ down and a slow crate escaped. “Oh, good. Cortez, catch a crate of protein stock. We can take that inside.” He replaced the foamcrete ram and tried pushing again – no more give.

  Cautiously, he tried pulling the wall out again, this time on his right. Everything stayed put, so he put that back and repeated on the other three sides. The contents of this container were an unordered mess, and it would be hell to retrieve anything from it. But without gravity, and pressed for time, not moving was the best he could manage.

  His wife, bless her, gave him four tarps, strong as he could wish for. He slid the bulkhead out of his way and bade Clay shift it across the aisle. Meanwhile Abel fixed a tarp wall across the slightly compressed content of the back of the container. A touch of acceleration, or the grav coming back on, and those bungees and tarp were toast. But hopefully it would keep things out of their way while they transferred cargo across the aisle.

  He joined Clay with the bulkhead already erected, but only about 10 cm into their forward box. He was having trouble just keeping it upright single-handed. Abel started the grav haulers again and they both put their backs into it. “Cortez, close the opposite box for me, would you? This stuff is unruly.”

  “Aye.”

  This pesky container seemed more loosely packed than its companion across the way. And their efforts to push things back yielded the equal but opposite reaction promised by Newton. Most of the stuff had been drifting side to side until now, the forward-to-back momentum mostly damped by crushing empty barrels and pallets, or something as yet unseen. But as soon as they tried to push it inward, the junk joyously tried to push them right back out of the container.

  The first grav-hauler died after 3 meters progress at compacting, its power charge exhausted. Abel grunted with the sudden increase in effort to keep his side of the bulkhead from shoving him off. “Need another grav hauler here!”

  Cortez, minding the tools out in the aisle, rushed to deliver. At just the moment she entered the container, something massive hammering the back side of the container managed to flip Abel into Clay. When an 80-kg flailing man rammed into him, Clay’s back slipped sideways and the bulkhead twisted open.

  Cortez didn’t stand a chance as a one-tonne crated anvil of Sagamore-refined metals slammed into her. Its momentum rocketed her against the opposite container wall, where it crushed her and bounced back, biting a chunk out of the bottom lip of the container before passing its merry way into the unblinking stars.

  Abel and Clay’s attention were on each other, not her, as they untangled themselves and fought the bulkhead back into place. A minute or so later, the first mate was back against the wall, heaving again, and his eyes caught her form. Cortez was moving very slowly, a rag doll rolling forward and turning to the left. “Cortez, report!”

  No response.

  18

  Abel’s voice exploded from the ship-wide address speakers. “EVA casualty! Eli, Jules, ready med-bay. Kassidy, pick up Cortez by the trap door.”

  Kassidy, sitting on standby under the scrubber trees in the hold, snatched her helmet and made her way outside in record time. They’d talked about this. Inside the trapdoor lock, the second she had a green light on the seal from the hold, she punched the emergency override button to open the outer doors, blowing the air out.

  She’d expected the outdoor crew to supply Cortez right to the door. But then she would have already been inside the airlock. Apparently Abel really did mean pickup.

  Kassidy almost stepped out without securing her tether, but caught herself in time. She swore at herself for her near-fatal mistake. They’d been right to hold her in reserve while Cortez worked the job. She’d been mortified to wait in the hold. But Cortez really was better as EVA crew and engineering technician.

  Kassidy hooked herself to the inside of the airlock for this maneuver, since she urgently needed to return here. Playing out only a couple meters of line to get clear of the doors, she scoped out the situation. Cortez rolled lazily in a hunch. Why aren’t Abel and Clay in the aisle?

  “Abel? Your status?” she asked.

  “Fighting hostile cargo in the problem container. Get Cortez inside. Crush injury.”

  Oh, hell. She imagined crush damage could be far worse than laser shots or broken bones, burns or environmental toxins, the kinds of injuries they’d plied the auto-doc on before.

  And this job wasn’t simply to help Cortez inside. Kassidy had suffered a sudden promotion to medic.

  She propelled herself to the rolling pressure suit, no bigger than her own. That was a help. Cortez didn’t out-mass her by much. Working quickly, she ascertained that Cortez’s suit still held air pressure and heat. But the other woman was clearly unconscious and looking a bit blue. Blood had dribbled out her mouth and spattered on the face-plate.

  They’d talked about this, too. At normal body temperature, without oxygen, a person began suffering brain damage after only a few minutes. Blood loss could kill them even quicker. But in a hypothermic state, with the body significantly below 37 C, someone could survive for hours and be resuscitated.

  Kassidy carefully overrode the suit temperature down to -5 degrees. Then she hesitated, wondering where she could grab onto the guard without inflicting more damage. “Where was she hit?”

  “Didn’t see it,” Abel confessed. “A small one-tonne mass hit her, moving fast.”

  Kassidy reassessed. Blood from the mouth, no damage to the face. That meant Cortez was hemorrhaging in the torso somewhere. Maybe the digestive tract, maybe the lungs. Tugging her by the shoulders was probably OK, ever so gently. She’d need time to get hypothermic.

  Working quickly, Kassidy retrieved Cortez’s safety lines, leaving her latched to the ship at a ring near the trapdoor. “Eli, you monitoring?” She’d been adding things up mentally. If the lungs were caved in, she’d expect a lot more blood in the helmet. “I suspect major crush injury to lower abdomen. Haven’t examined too closely. Trying to bring her temperature down. Vitals are weak, blood oxygen levels OK but falling.”

  “Understood,” Eli acknowledged softly. “Setting auto-doc.”

  There – Cortez was down to a single line tying her near the trap door. Not wanting her to spin, Kassidy shifted around her back and clamped an arm around her shoulders. From there, she gently hauled them to the trap box. Fortunately, the hold was just as zero-g as the outside of the ship at the moment. Kassidy need only make sure everything was tucked neatly inside, then cycle the lock.

  As the inner doors opened, two scared faces confronted her, Jules and Wilder. “Wilder, you cannot be here now,” she barked sharply. “Stand back!”

  “Wilder, suit up and outside,” Abel ordered. “Sorry, man.”

  “You’ll tell me?” the sergeant begged softly. “How she’s doing?”

  Kassidy hauled her helmet off. “It’s going to be touch and go for a while. Keep your mind on your work. Be careful out there.” Her eyes flicked pointedly to the silent suit between them. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Right.” He gulped and started loping toward the suit locker. Kassidy was glad to see he and Jules were using their personal grav generators, Jules possibly at a full g, Wilder likely at Mahina normal one sixth. Kassidy racked her helmet on her own back. Sass and Copeland emerged from the engine room, where they’d been refueling, but they hung back.

  Jules gently tugged Cortez by the helmet, and steadied her floating in the hold while Kassidy hopped out of the trap box, then stripped out of the top half of her suit, leaving it dangling from her belt.

  “Shall I remove her helmet?” Jules offered, clearly spooked by the blood.

  “No, it’s keeping her brain cold. Just hold her for me.”

  “She’s so still,” Ju
les breathed. “Is she…?”

  “She’s alive,” Kassidy replied, checking the pulse at her neck. Very weak, very slow.

  Jules stepped back while Kassidy towed Cortez into the med-bay, careful not to impart her own personal gravity to the injured woman. Eli pushed the auto-doc open, then cut his own gravity to accept delivery. Kassidy pressed the still form into the mattress while Eli cut an access hole into the arm of Cortez’s suit without disturbing its wiring.

  Working together they inserted three lines from the auto-doc into Cortez’s veins at the elbow. In normal enclosed mode, the machine accomplished its sensor, nanite, IV and drainage connections for itself. But they needed to keep Cortez on ice until proper blood flow to the brain could be ensured. They used the pressure suit for that.

  Unsurprisingly, the auto-doc display popped up dire warnings that the patient’s condition was critical. Please close lid to enable sensors.

  Can’t, Kassidy thought. But that wasn’t good enough. Like Ben before her, she studied the contraption’s lid and discovered that components could readily be snapped out of their carriages. She glanced over the modules on offer, and selected one that looked like a scanner.

  Kassidy’s mother was a hospital director in Mahina Actual. Her father was the moon’s pre-eminent designer of medical nanites before his exile. She didn’t have any formal training. She didn’t consciously remember how she knew this stuff, which bored afternoon pestering a parent or nurse with endless questions. She just knew.

  She held the scanner above Cortez’ bellybutton region and clicked its button. Eli read out the auto-doc’s complaint to her. “Remove electronics between sensor and patient.”

  “Computer, put auto-doc instructions on audio,” Kassidy murmured. She snatched the scissors from where Eli left them, and set to cut a small sensor-sized patch from the pressure suit around Cortez’s midsection.

  “Watch out for…” Eli started to warn her.