by Devin Hanson
Jackson fastened one of his carabiners to the safety line and started jogging uphill. He couldn’t bring himself to go completely without, but with only one carabiner, he wouldn’t have to break his stride when he came to a post. By this point, he had become proficient enough with the carabiners that he could unclip it and reattach it to the safety line in one swift movement. It left him exposed for that second or two, but it was a risk he was willing to take.
By the time he reached the edge of the impact site, Millicent had already anchored her rappelling cable around a solar panel support and had disappeared from view. For the last fifteen meters to the ragged edge Jackson had to make his way from panel support to panel support. The safety line that he had been following had snapped when the meteor had crashed through the habitat.
He reached the edge and leaned out over the destruction, his heart in his throat. The meteor had torn through the edge of the habitat, taking a twenty-meter bite. Fortunately, the meteor had been traveling away from the habitat when it had hit, so the path of the destruction clipped through four levels of the habitat then exited out the side.
From his position on the top edge, Jackson could see the messy cross-section of the habitat floors. Ducts, wiring, support struts and pipes were in ruinous display. Automated systems had cut off the pressurized components, so water and air weren’t flowing through the pipes and ducts, and the power cables were dead.
The contents of the exposed rooms and hallways were in massive disarray. The available oxygen had ignited on impact, but after that, the carbon dioxide atmosphere smothered every flame. Surfaces and materials that were hot enough to burn, but didn’t have the requisite oxygen to produce flames, were bubbling and melting.
The top floor had taken the brunt of the force and had been the chimney through which the brief rush of flame had channeled. Jackson’s stomach twisted. There was nobody alive on that floor. The few people Jackson could see were scorched and burned.
Millicent seemed to have come to the same conclusion, for she was on the second level down, just now unclipping herself from the climbing line. She looked up, waved at him, then vanished from sight.
Jackson swallowed back his fear and caught up the climbing line. He felt clumsy trying to thread it through his suit’s harness with gloves deadening his sense of touch and the suit blocking his vision, but he managed. His heart was thumping in his chest as he carefully backed over the edge and started lowering himself into the destruction.
How long had it been since the meteor had hit? A minute? A minute and a half? He tried to remember the details of the safety lectures he had as a child in school. In the event of a hull breach, someone exposed to pure carbon dioxide had roughly fifteen seconds of consciousness. If they had the presence of mind to hold their breath, that estimate could be extended up to a minute, but the adrenaline and fear of the situation made it unlikely you could stay conscious beyond that. After consciousness was lost, death would occur after two minutes.
If there was someone still alive, they had only a handful of seconds remaining to reach them.
Jackson kicked off the ragged lip of the tear and let the carbon fiber line slide through his grip. Inexperience made him clamp down too soon and he swung about awkwardly a foot off the floor of the first level. He eased off and slid the rest of the way to the floor, then pushed off and dropped to the second level.
This time he timed it better and he landed hard on the second floor. The room he was in looked like a cross section of a hospital room. The remains of an examination table were melting and bubbling. Cabinets sagged and plastic containers wilted across counter tops. There was nobody in the room. Jackson could hear Millicent to his left, so he turned and went right, the better to spread their efforts and rescue more people.
Each level of the habitat was sectioned off by emergency decompression bulkheads. If a hull breach occurred, the bulkheads would slam shut, sealing off the area with the damage and protecting the rest of the habitat. They couldn’t build many bulkheads into the walls without taking up valuable space and weight, so most habitat levels had bulkheads spaced every hundred meters.
Jackson pulled open a door and drew up short. A bulkhead intersected the hallway, sealing him off from the rest of the habitat. The emergency panel next to the bulkhead had popped open, with small, ten-minute air supply canisters hanging from racks. Jackson reached in, grabbed a handful of webbing and hoses, and pulled out half a dozen or so masks.
He hurried back the way he had come and crossed over the ruins of the doctor’s office, edging around the hole in the floor. He followed his ears toward Millicent and found her in the next room. It was an operating theater, a big set of lights hanging askew from the ceiling. Millicent was trying to kick down a door that had halfway melted shut. There were more people lying on the ground, unconscious or dead.
“I have masks!” he called to her.
Millicent turned from the door, relief on her face. “Good! Quick, now!”
Jackson handed her some of the rebreathers he had collected and knelt down by the closest figure. It was an unconscious woman; her eyes partially opened and rolled up into her head. She was hyperventilating weakly, breathing shallowly and rapidly. Jackson strapped the mask to her face and adjusted it until it was snug, then turned on the air supply. He rolled her onto her side into the recovery position, and then hurried to the next person.
This one was a man, a bloody weal across his temple. He wasn’t breathing. For a second, Jackson hesitated. The man might still be alive, but without CPR, he wouldn’t recover. There just wasn’t a way to provide CPR without a friendly atmosphere. There was nothing Jackson could do for him.
Millicent had finished fitting her first mask on a young woman, a few years younger than Jackson was by the look of it. “There are more in the next room,” Millicent jerked her head, indicated the half-melted door.
The rush of heat from the meteor had warped the door just enough that it no longer fit into the wall cavity. Millicent had been in the process of prying it open, and she had managed to create a gap of a few inches before the door had jammed.
Jackson had had the opportunity to repair more than a few doors during the course of his routine work around Nueva Angela. Most doors on the habitats were designed to slide into a cavity rather than swing open, as it involved fewer moving parts. A Teflon ribbon set into a groove in the floor made wheels unnecessary.
He could tell at a glance that the door would never open. But habitat doors were lightweight, a honeycomb of thin plastic sheathed in sheets of more plastic. They were rigid enough but had next to no flex resistance. Jackson took half a step back, dropped his shoulder, and rammed his full weight against the door.
With a pop, the door sprung free of the tracks and clattered into the room beyond. There were a lot more people in the room and judging by the number of comfortable-looking chairs, Jackson guessed it was a waiting room.
Two women sat in adjacent chairs, white-faced, passing a rebreather mask back and forth between them. The rest of the people were male, and unconscious. Jackson underhanded one of his masks toward the women, and stepped into the room, checking on the men.
Of the four men, two weren’t breathing. Jackson turned his attention to the ones that were, and fitted his last mask onto the face of the one with the weakest breathing. Millicent joined him a moment later, and together they masked up the other survivor and set the two men on their sides.
“Will they live?” one of the women asked.
“If they’re still breathing, there is hope,” Millicent responded shortly. She pushed herself to her feet and opened the outer door to the waiting room. The hallway beyond was truncated by a bulkhead. Banging noises were coming from the other side; someone trying to get through.
“Addison and Carlson, there is nothing we can do?” the other woman asked.
“Those are the two not breathing?” Millicent asked.
The woman nodded numbly.
Millicent shook her head. �
��No. I’m sorry.”
“A mask–”
“Would only waste air,” Millicent said harshly.
The woman flinched and raised her chin defiantly, bloodshot eyes narrowing in anger. “Do you even know who I am?”
“You could be Annette Everard herself,” Millicent shook her head. “It would change nothing. They’re as good as dead already. No vital signs and no way to restore them. I really am sorry, but now we must focus on those that can be saved.”
The woman stiffly nodded once and turned her head away.
Millicent jerked her head at Jackson and headed back into the room that had borne the brunt of the damage. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered over the radio once they were out of sight. “I think those were matriarchs.” Jackson looked back involuntarily and Millicent caught his arm before he could return to the room. “I meant what I said to her. There is nothing we can do for her ainlif. It’s a tragedy, but such is life.”
Booted feet swung over the edge of the roof and figures in exposure suits rappelled down the line. Four or five of them went to lower levels. One of them stopped at the second level with Millicent and Jackson, and Jackson recognized Wharton.
“Have you checked the lower levels yet?” he demanded.
“No, we just finished triage on this level,” Millicent shook her head. “What took you so long?”
“We got here as fast as we could,” Wharton growled.
More lines were lowered, and it seemed like the entire extra work crew was present, clambering over wreckage and searching for more survivors. Distantly, Jackson was aware that the meteor storm was over. The sky was still streaked with smoke, but there were no more fiery streaks racing across the sky.
“Got a pair of matriarchs back there,” Millicent said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “We should get them evacuated soonest.”
“Matriarchs!?” Wharton took half a step in that direction before he pulled himself under control. “Anyone else?”
“They’re the only ones conscious. There are a pair of ainlif that didn’t make it, and another two that did.”
“Okay.” Wharton shook himself out of his stunned immobility. “Great. We’ll take care of that. Why don’t you two get them prepped on stretchers. I’ll have my men get them to an airlock.”
Jackson looked to Millicent and his chief shrugged. “All right. Come on, Jackson. Their air won’t last forever.”
The extra repair crew had brought stretchers with them, and once it was known there were conscious people needing rescue, the stretchers were lowered rapidly over the broken lip. A proper pulley system had been set up, with a motorized winch.
It would take time for the bulkheads to be released. First, everyone had to be evacuated from the next section over and the next ring of bulkheads sealed, then the air pumped out of the isolated section and replaced with raw atmosphere. Only then could the bulkheads closest to the damage be opened and rescue parties gain entry.
The extra crew had brought sufficient air tanks with them that the dozen or so unconscious survivors would be in no danger of asphyxiation. It was procedure to evacuate out the conscious survivors as soon as possible, so long as it wasn’t precipitating. Being conscious, they could navigate the external areas of the habitat without having to be carried.
Conditions outside the habitat were as mild as Jackson had ever seen, if a bit chilly. The wind was barely more than a breeze, and any clouds at their level were many kilometers away. The matriarchs could make the trip swiftly and safely. They could be back inside the habitat in a few minutes, rather than waiting for up to an hour for the bulkheads to be cycled.
After explaining the situation to the matriarchs, Jackson and Millicent got the two women lying down and strapped safely in. Carefully, the matriarchs were winched up to the surface, with people standing at the lips of the ruined floors, keeping them from bumping into the ragged edges.
Jackson stayed below, and he and Millicent were tasked with various duties, seeing to the safety and comfort of the unconscious survivors. The matriarchs passed from his thoughts, and he focused on the present.
By the time the day’s work was over, the survivors cycled through the bulkheads and hustled off to receive medical care, he was barely able to keep upright. When he was told to report to the dirigible for the return trip to Nueva Angela, he dragged himself aboard gratefully, with only enough energy to get himself situated and strapped in, then he fell into a deep sleep, troubled with nightmares.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
The construction of the habitats would seem alien to anyone from Earth. There are no wooden products to be seen, and there are no bulk mineral components either. Concrete, plaster, gypsum, latex and cotton are completely absent. There is very little organic material to be had on Venus beyond the inevitable food waste. Constructing the habitats entirely out of mined iron and nickel would be prohibitively heavy.
The solution came in the form of synthetics. Nylon and other synthetic plastics were used for everything that didn’t require structural strength. The raw materials that couldn’t be gathered on Venus were shipped from Earth in bulk and the final material synthesized on location.
The engineers and chemists developing the habitats found they could substitute nearly everything with one form of plastic or another. And better than organics, plastic could be endlessly recycled and reused. Nothing on Venus went to waste.
Leila jerked awake as the habitat lurched and swayed beneath her. Panic choked her, and she lunged from her bed, fumbling for the emergency kit that was always kept under her bedside table. Blankets tangled around her feet, and the bed was lower than she was used to. She lost her balance and struck her knee against the hard floor.
That, more than anything else, shocked her fully awake. She had thick, exquisitely soft carpets in her bedroom. Her tablet blinked on and started emitting a piercing alarm. In the flashing red lights from the tablet, she finally got a clear look around her.
She was not home.
Memory of the Challenge came crashing back. Her eyes burned and she choked back a sob. Tears blurred her vision, squeezed from abused tear ducts already raw from unaccustomed use. Leila fumbled at her tablet, muting the alarm.
She was no longer Leila Everard. She could keep her first name, if she wanted to, but her last name had been stripped from her. The nausea from the injection still coiled tendrils of disquiet in her stomach, but she felt no immediate need to vomit. She had been sterilized, her eggs poisoned and rendered unviable.
Leila pressed a hand against her lower stomach, imagining the ovaries beneath her fingers withering and dying under the chemical assault. Outside of her room, alarms shrilled, stabbing at her ears. She barely heard them. She was barely aware of the room about her. The panic from a moment earlier was gone. Had the habitat been struck by something? She had sensed no drop of air pressure, and she felt the first stirrings of regret in her chest. How easy it would have been, to have been ushered into death.
What had happened? The tears in her eyes blurred the lettering on the tablet, making it impossible to read the details of the emergency. Stiffly, she lay back down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling.
She couldn’t bring herself to care about the danger. Vaguely, she remembered seeing an emergency supply cabinet outside and down the hall. There would be others about, people rushing to get to those supplies. The empty feeling in her chest spread.
Leila couldn’t bring herself to face anyone right now. She couldn’t bear the thought of looking into someone’s eyes and seeing the recognition in them. She couldn’t bear to be reminded of what she had lost.
She could no longer be a matriarch. Forty thousand years of life had been stripped away from her in a heartbeat. Now she would live the truncated, meaningless existence of a normal human. If she developed cancer or sickened, she would die like every other human.
What was the point, then? She had sixty years of life remaining to her, maybe a few more if she was lucky. She no l
onger had decades available to her to search for what she wanted to do with her life. She no longer had the resources of the matriarchs available to her. She already had more of an education than most of the common folk, though. Unless she somehow found a way to make a great deal of money very quickly, she would never be able to afford further education.
Unbidden, her mother’s cautious protests about taking the Challenge came to mind. Had she known, somehow, that Leila wouldn’t succeed? It wasn’t unheard of for the female children of matriarchs to pass up on the opportunity to take the Challenge. They wouldn’t be immortal, but they were also left intact and able to reproduce and were not ostracized from their families.
She could have taken that route. No. Leila squeezed her eyes shut and felt the hot tears track down the sides of her face. She couldn’t have. Ever since she was old enough to understand, she had wanted to take the Challenge.
It was her mother’s fault. She had known, somehow, that Leila hadn’t been worthy. Cynthia hadn’t taught her the right things, hadn’t trained her sufficiently. Fresh tears burned at Leila’s eyes and she scrubbed the backs of her hands over her face. Even now, in the depths of her despair, she couldn’t blame her mother. The Challenge tested a person for who they were, not what they had been taught.
It was her own fault that she had failed the Challenge. Even Annette Everard, First of the Matriarchs and Leila’s grandmother, had been forced to leave one of her children behind on Earth. Susan Everard had been the first person to fail the Challenge, and she certainly hadn’t been the last.
