Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

Inside the chamber, with the hatch closed, Ramiro realised that they had another problem. ‘When we put resin along the join, how do we keep the sunstone from sticking to it?’ A few lumps caught under the fabric of his temporary repair hadn’t made much difference, but one pellet would ruin the airtight seal between the hardstone pieces.

Tarquinia said, ‘If I back myself into a corner, I can spray air over it while you’re applying the resin.’

‘I think we should rehearse that.’

They tried it. It didn’t work. Tarquinia could keep a small part of the edge free of pellets at any time, but not the whole join.

She said, ‘We need to get another big tarp in here. If we can form a kind of tent and vent air inside it while we’re making the join, that should keep most of the sunstone out.’

Ramiro grew tired just listening to this plan, but he couldn’t see a way to solve the problem without at least one of them leaving the chamber. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it.’

He took off his jetpack and left it in the chamber, opened the hatch just enough to let himself through, then untied a section of the tarp’s rim and slipped past it into the passage. A few dozen pellets followed him through the gap.

When he returned with the second tarp, they wrapped themselves and the assembly in this improvised tent and struggled to drive enough of the sunstone out to be confident that they could make the join. It was impossible to make a working space entirely free of pellets, but once they’d reached a point where the density wasn’t getting any lower they had no choice but to take the risk.

They manipulated the pieces so that they were almost slotted together, then Ramiro daubed resin along one half of the join. Tarquinia wound the clamp down on the assembly, then played the beam from her helmet over the edge. Everything fitted together perfectly; nothing had become trapped in the seam.

Ramiro chirped in jubilation. ‘Well done.’

Tarquinia said, ‘Next time we’re bringing a mason.’

They waited for the join to cure, then opened up the tent. Ramiro’s jetpack had ended up in a corner of the chamber; Tarquinia fetched it for him.

To fix the assembly in place they needed to use the tent again, to protect the edges of the gash they were repairing. Ramiro attached it to the wall with resin at half a dozen points, partitioning off their end of the chamber while leaving a large gap to one side through which to shoo out the pellets. But it was harder than before to drive sunstone from the enclosure, with most of the air they vented just escaping straight into the void.

They’d built the assembly with a raised rim that could sit flush against parts of the wall uncontaminated by the earlier repair. Ramiro spread resin around the whole margin of the gash, then with their jetpacks gently bracing them they manoeuvred the assembly into place.

‘It’s rocking a little,’ Tarquinia said.

‘Don’t say that,’ Ramiro begged her. He reached over and pushed on the spot where Tarquinia had been applying pressure, and felt the stone wobble under his fingers.

At least they’d had the foresight to put a handhold on the inner face of the assembly; Tarquinia grabbed it and pulled the whole thing back from the wall. Ramiro searched the contact region; a pellet of sunstone had stuck in the resin. He managed to wiggle it free, his body jittering as the jetpack struggled to track and counter the small changing forces.

They tried again.

‘Flat, no give,’ Tarquinia announced.

‘Same here.’ Ramiro wasn’t quite ready to believe it, but all they could do now was turn up their jetpacks and push, hoping to end up with an airtight seal.

‘If we’d built clamps into this thing we could have tightened them against the outside of the hull,’ Tarquinia mused.

Ramiro buzzed but offered no opinion; attaching them in the first place would probably have taken more time than it saved.

‘What would you have done in the old days?’ he asked. ‘If you’d been piloting a gnat with this kind of damage?’

‘Flown it back to a workshop in the Peerless for repairs.’

‘And if you couldn’t use the engines until the repairs were completed?’

Tarquinia said, ‘Then I’d call someone for a tow. See how a lifetime of experience has prepared me for this moment?’

They kept up the pressure for two chimes, the resin’s nominal curing time. When they shut off their jetpacks and took their aching arms away, the assembly remained in place.

Ramiro looked over their handiwork. When the chamber was re-pressurised all the force would be pressing the glued surfaces together more closely, and the sloping side walls would also work in their favour, wedging the assembly ever more tightly into place. The whole thing wasn’t going to fall apart; the worst that could happen now was a small leak.

They cut the tent free of the wall and moved to the hatch, too tired now to speak. Outside, the sunstone trap seemed to have held on to most of the spillage. They took off their jetpacks and slipped them around the edge of the tarp to leave their bodies narrower, then followed them into the passage.

Together, they untied the tarp from the handholds while keeping the rim against the outer wall of the chamber. Then they brought the rim together and knotted it tight, leaving the spilt sunstone inside a large, closed sack. Tarquinia slammed the reset lever on the feed for the decomposing agent.

‘That’s the hard part done,’ she said.

‘What?’ Ramiro was already picturing himself asleep.

She gestured towards the access shaft that ran between her cabin and the cooling chamber. The cabins had airtight doors, but there was still a gaping hole where this shaft met the outer hull.

‘Smaller, no sunstone,’ Tarquinia stressed. ‘We’ll be done in half a bell.’

When the shaft had been sealed, Ramiro checked in on Agata and Azelio while Tarquinia went to restart the ventilation system.

‘He’s sleeping,’ Agata said. ‘All the wounds look stable now.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Ramiro squeezed her shoulder. ‘Thanks for keeping your head, before.’

‘What do you mean?’ Agata sounded genuinely confused; she wasn’t being modest.

‘When you went after Tarquinia,’ he said. ‘I was a wreck – I didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘Really?’ Agata buzzed. ‘It’s lucky I didn’t notice, or it might have been contagious.’

Ramiro said, ‘We’ll have pressure soon. Do you want to sleep in here?’

‘If that’s all right.’

‘Tarquinia’s going to set the temperature low enough that we won’t need beds, so just… make yourself comfortable any way you can.’

‘Thank you.’

He left her, and dragged himself to the front cabin. Tarquinia was at the main console.

‘Any problems?’ he asked.

She swivelled around to face him. ‘The cooling chamber’s up to full operating pressure, and we’ll be back to normal everywhere in four or five chimes.’

‘Back to normal.’ That sounded surreal.

Tarquinia said, ‘We should rest for a few days before we try to repair the cabins.’

‘At least. Agata’s going to stay with Azelio.’

‘Right. You take her cabin, then; I’ll be on watch.’

‘You need to rest, too.’

Tarquinia spread her arms, taking in the whole of the Surveyor : they could hardly leave it unmonitored in this delicate transitional state. ‘You were up before this whole thing started,’ she said. ‘Sleep for four bells, then I’ll come and wake you.’

Ramiro removed his helmet and strapped himself to Agata’s bed, still wearing his cooling bag. He managed to doze off, but then he woke after half a bell, aware that the pressure was back in the cabin. He shut off the air to his bag and tried to sleep again, but then he realised how uncomfortable he was. He peeled the thing off and nestled into the sand, trying to erase the image of papers flying out of Azelio’s cabin.