Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘We’re still drifting,’ Jumai said after a few moments.

‘It’s coming under control. Switch to vernier thrust. Laterals one and three, dorsals two and five: five-second micro-bursts.’

‘Aerobrake is beginning to realign,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Good. Hold this drift for another ten seconds. Stand ready on laterals two and five, two-second bursts. That should kill it.’

When the ship was at rest, holding station relative to Lionheart, Hector said, ‘The remaining centrifuge arm is static and locked down. I don’t think we lost much air – the internal doors must have shut tight as soon as the centrifuge broke away.’

‘Do you think we should pull back to ten kilometres?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘We were fine until we tried moving closer.’

Hector was already unbuckling from his seat. ‘Maybe we were, but if we do that we’re just back to square one – drifting with no fuel to get home. As far as I can see, there’s only one course of action now.’ He pushed himself from the seat, spinning around in the air. ‘I’m going to reach that airlock, disarm the security system.’

‘Across seven kilometres of open space?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Better than ten.’ Hector stabilised himself, brushing fingertips against the wall, and opened the door.

The ship shook again. The impact was much louder this time, and it triggered an avalanche of damage and warning indications. The after-vibrations rumbled like a passing express train, dying away over tens of seconds. ‘Direct hit against the aerobrake,’ Jumai said, when the diagnostic messages had localised the impact point.

‘Even if we started pulling back now, it wouldn’t make any difference,’ Eunice said.

Geoffrey and Jumai abandoned their seats. ‘There has to be an alternative,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If we give ourselves enough drift away from Lionheart, we’re bound to fall out of range eventually.’

Hector was about to lower his helmet into place. ‘Not how it works out here, cousin. Provided Lionheart can see us, it can hit us.’

‘He’s right,’ Eunice said. ‘Unless you can find another comet to hide behind, you have very little choice. The aerobrake won’t hold indefinitely.’

Jumai and Hector were both now fully suited, with helmets on, although Jumai had not yet locked her visor down. Hector was on suit air: an image of his face, distorted and enlarged, had appeared on the external surface of his visor. He’d become a cartoon character of himself.

‘Senseless the three of us crossing at the same time,’ Hector said. ‘Jumai knows more about security countermeasures than either of us, but if she runs into a gene-locked system she won’t be able to disarm it. Besides, it’s not her mess. That leaves you and me, cousin.’

‘Fine,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We’ll cross together.’

‘Better if I cross alone, then you bring the ship in when I give the all-clear.’

There was another impact, just as brutal as the last.

‘At this rate, there won’t be a ship left to bring in,’ Geoffrey said.

Hector opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it and nodded once. ‘Follow me and I’ll show you how the manoeuvring units work. Eunice, stick by us. You might come in useful yet.’

Geoffrey should have anticipated a complication, but it wasn’t until they had the thruster packs clipped on that he began to grasp what the difficulty might be. It wasn’t with the packs themselves: as soon as he studied the controls, nestling under his arms like seat rests, Geoffrey understood what Hector had meant when he said that the operation was intuitive.

But they were bulky. At a push, two suited people could have squeezed into the ship’s midsection airlock. With the thruster packs in place, the lock could only take one person at a time.

‘We’ll still go over together,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Cycle through and wait on the other side until I get there. We’ll start our crossing after the next package arrives.’

Hector’s cartoon face nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. At least we’ll have ninety seconds of clear time. If we can get close enough to Lionheart, she may not be able to steer one of those packages onto us.’ He reached out a gloved hand and tapped the airlock control. ‘See you on the other side, cousin.’

The ship jolted. Hector propelled himself into the airlock and closed the inner door. The indicator next to the door flicked to red, signifying that decompression was in progress. ‘Ninety seconds,’ Geoffrey said on the pre-assigned suit-to-suit channel. ‘That one felt pretty bad.’

The inner door twitched in its frame, jamming tight into its pressure seals.

‘He just blew the outer door,’ Jumai said, astonished. ‘Didn’t wait for the chamber to depressurise!’

‘Hector, what are you doing? You’ve just dumped a roomful of air!’

‘We won’t miss it, and it was a damn sight quicker than waiting for the normal cycle,’ Hector said, sounding pathologically calm under the circumstances. ‘But don’t worry. The outer door’s closing normally, and it will still hold air. In a minute or so standard pressure should be restored.’

‘He’s leaving,’ Jumai said. She had her open visor pressed up against the inspection porthole next to the airlock.

‘Hector! We had an agreement!’

‘Senseless both of us taking this risk, Geoffrey. You put your neck on the line when you came aboard this ship to find me. It’s only fair that I reciprocate.’

Jumai worked the lock, forcing it to cycle back to readiness. ‘Going to take a while. You can dump air a lot faster than you can pump it back in, and the inner door won’t open until there’s atmospheric pressure on the other side. Maybe if I had an hour I could find a workaround, but—’

‘Never mind.’

Forcing himself to concentrate, Geoffrey stared at the thruster-pack controls again. They’d looked simple at first glance, but that had been with the understanding that Hector was going to show him the ropes once they were both outside.

‘I have to follow him,’ he said. ‘If I don’t, I’ll never be able to look myself in the face again. But you stay here. We need one warm body back on this ship. The proxy doesn’t count.’

The ship jolted again.

The airlock indicator flicked to green, signifying readiness. Other than the venting of some air to space, no damage had been done by Hector’s sudden depressurisation. Geoffrey forced himself to breathe slower, though it did nothing to calm his racing heart. He was terrified. He didn’t want to go out there, into open space. He’d never been outside a spacecraft in his life, much less in a situation where he might be swatted out of existence at any moment. But he’d told Jumai the truth. He had to be able to live with himself, and if he left Hector to his fate, that abandonment would corrode him from within.

The airlock opened. Geoffrey pushed himself inside, clunking against the outer wall with excess momentum. He nodded at Jumai’s cartoon face, and then the inner door was closing.

The emergency vent control, the one that Hector must already have tripped, could not have been more obvious. It was a red handle the size of a shovel’s grip, recessed into the wall so that it couldn’t be activated unintentionally. Geoffrey took a good hold on it. There was another static handle next to it, providing a bracing point against the sudden decompression. He clenched that with his other fist.

‘Venting,’ he said.

He felt the tug as the air gasped from the lock but retained his grip. His head-up informed him that he was now exposed to hard vacuum. Geoffrey eased out of the lock, taking care not to knock the thruster pack as he emerged. His instincts were to retain a point of contact with the ship, but that wouldn’t get him anywhere. He had to submit himself to space, and trust in the harness.