Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

‘Yes.’ Ramiro had never expected her to prove so indomitable in the face of a calamity like this. One stride deeper into the hull and the Hurtler would have ended the mission. Maybe Agata was relishing the sense of solidarity with the ancestors, and picturing herself as a member of the most far-flung branch of Eusebio’s fire watch.

The two women returned together through the same opening they’d used to make their separate exits. Ramiro was waiting for them, and he handed Tarquinia her helmet.

‘Welcome back,’ he said. If the ordeal had shaken her, she wasn’t letting it show.

‘How’s Azelio?’ she asked.

‘He’s got five wounds, but they all seem clean to me.’

‘Let me take a look.’

In Ramiro’s cabin, Azelio was still motionless under the tarpaulin, but even from the doorway they could see the light from the wound in his thigh, shining through the fabric.

‘It wasn’t like that a few lapses ago,’ Ramiro declared. That meant it was deteriorating rapidly.

Tarquinia said, ‘Get the medical kit.’

Agata went to fetch it.

‘The hull fragments missed you?’ Ramiro asked Tarquinia.

‘I was lucky.’ Tarquinia buzzed grimly. ‘I was out in the void before I was even awake. After this, I’m going to start sleeping in my cooling bag.’

Agata returned with the box of medication and instruments. Tarquinia dragged herself over to the bed; Ramiro followed, taking off his jetpack so he could move more freely.

Agata remained by the door. ‘You survived worse than this, didn’t you, Ramiro?’

‘Absolutely. He’s going to be fine.’

Ramiro helped Tarquinia pull the tarpaulin out of the way, but they left the straps in place to keep Azelio still.

‘Is there a reason the cabin lights aren’t on?’ Tarquinia asked irritably.

‘No.’ Ramiro had been relying on his helmet and the safety lights; with the cooling system dead they shouldn’t be using any of the Surveyor ’s photonics gratuitously, but well-lit surgery was hardly an indulgence. When Agata switched on the main lights, Ramiro felt a sickening disjunction between the reassuring familiarity of the room – intact and unblemished, as if nothing had happened – and the condition of his guest.

Tarquinia found a long, sharp scalpel and dusted it with astringent. ‘Can you get on the other side and hold him still?’ she asked Ramiro. ‘The straps won’t stop him wriggling, and even if he doesn’t wake he might move instinctively.’

‘Do you want me to hold his leg?’ Agata asked.

Tarquinia said, ‘Good idea.’

Agata joined them. The three of them braced themselves awkwardly over the bed, holding different parts of the same rope for support. Ramiro glanced down at the tunnel in Azelio’s flesh; a luminous discharge was oozing into the hole that the fragment had made.

Tarquinia said, ‘Everyone secure? I’m going to start.’

She plunged the scalpel into Azelio’s thigh, a scant back from the surface of the wound, and started carving a cylinder of her own. Azelio’s torso twitched under Ramiro’s arm, then he opened his eyes and started bellowing. Even without air to carry the sound, the cry that passed from flesh to flesh was piteous.

Ramiro pushed harder against the rope, pinning the poor man down more firmly. It’s almost done, he wrote on his forearm, hoping that Azelio could read the ridges through the fabric separating their skin. Be strong, it won’t be much longer. He locked his gaze on Azelio’s, trying to convey some reassuring sense that his tormentors knew what they were doing.

Azelio kept screaming, but he managed to suppress his struggling. Tarquinia completed the incision. She used a pair of forceps to pull the tube of damaged flesh out of his thigh, swabbed the spilt liquid with a cloth, then dragged herself quickly out of the room. Agata fumbled in the medical kit and found a syringe of analgesic; she injected the powder in three sites around the wound. Ramiro knew from experience that it would take a few lapses to have much effect, but Azelio responded with relief just to the sight of it being administered.

Tarquinia returned. ‘Any of the other wounds need ablating?’ It was lucky that Azelio couldn’t hear her. Ramiro looked over the four remaining holes.

‘I don’t think so. But someone should stay with him to monitor them.’

Agata said, ‘I’ll do that.’

Tarquinia inclined her head in agreement. ‘Ramiro and I will start work on the repairs.’

‘Are you up to that?’ Ramiro already felt guilty that he’d stood by and let her do the surgery.

‘We’re all in shock,’ she said, ‘one way or another. But no one’s going to feel safe until the cooling chamber’s sealed and we have pressure again.’

Tarquinia went out into the void with a camera, then used surveying software and a pre-existing map of the hull to reconstruct the precise shape and dimensions of the gash. They had enough slabs of hardstone in the stores to cover the hole in the chamber, but no single piece would do the job. Ramiro unpacked the masonry workbench and set it up in the front cabin; he’d never envisioned employing it in mid-flight, imagining it would only be useful once they’d reached the surface.

The bench’s coherer could carve precision tongues and grooves into the edges of the slabs, but with no circulating air everything grew hot very quickly; the system hadn’t been designed for use in a vacuum. Tarquinia rigged up an impromptu cooling system, with an air tank venting across the surface of the bench. Ramiro couldn’t think of any better method, but he mentally reviewed their stock of compressed air. They had enough to deal with the crew’s metabolic heat for a stint – but shaping each slab was costing them about a day of that reserve for one person.

They coated the grooves with sealing resin and clamped pairs of slabs together while the resin cured. But they couldn’t assemble the whole structure outside the chamber or they’d never get it through the hatch; they’d have to carry it in as two pieces and join them there.

‘We can clamp these together in the chamber,’ Ramiro said, ‘but how do we apply pressure to bond the whole thing to the wall?’ The chamber was too large for them to brace themselves against any other surface.

‘Use the force from a jetpack?’ Tarquinia suggested.

‘That will agitate the sunstone,’ Ramiro pointed out.

‘What does that matter? The assembly will already be blocking the hole.’

‘But when we open the hatch there’ll be residual motion – and positive air pressure – so we’ll end up spilling more of the stuff.’ The sunstone wouldn’t be going into the void, but tracking down the small pellets even within the confines of the Surveyor wasn’t a trivial exercise.

‘That’s true,’ Tarquinia conceded. ‘So we need to set up a tarp behind us before we go in, closing off the space around the hatch. That won’t be perfect, but it should catch most of the spill.’

Ramiro had no better idea. The only alternative to the jetpack would be to try to install handholds in the chamber – again, without any easy way to apply pressure to a resin join, or to brace themselves to use a drill. He buzzed wearily. ‘At least Verano will be pleased: we can bring him back a long list of suggestions for making the next version easier to repair.’

They dragged the two halves of the assembly most of the way to the chamber. Then Tarquinia fetched the largest tarp from the storeroom and they tied its rim to the handholds around the hatch, enclosing themselves and the hardstone pieces in a rough sphere of fabric. When they opened the hatch white pellets began drifting out immediately like inquisitive insects, and by the time they’d manoeuvred the two pieces into the chamber it was clear that they’d needed the tarp all along, whatever else they did.