‘I AM BOB FIVE,’ the robot’s deep voice replied in Matt’s headset.
‘Bob Five – emergency.’ Matt struggled to get the words out. ‘Help us. We need air.’
The robot gazed down impassively at Matt.
‘Bob Five. Emergency. Help us.’ Matt was gasping now. ‘Get us some air. Hurry.’ The headache was intense now, a drilling pain between his temples, and his vision was contracting.
The robot started moving. It swivelled round, and lumbered off towards one side of the main hangar doors.
‘No – Bob Five. We need help. Don’t – don’t go …’ Matt tried to shout, but it came out barely louder than a whisper. He collapsed in the dust, arms outstretched towards the robot, imploring it to come back.
The robot stopped by the hangar door controls, and extended one of its giant hands to take hold of the manual door winder. Its metal claw squeezed closed on the handle, then its wrist started to rotate, spinning round like an electric drill as it turned the winder.
A deep moan of seized machinery reverberated through the hangar floor and into Matt’s helmet, followed by a slow, grinding vibration, as metal moved against metal in the dark.
The hangar doors were closing.
Clare felt the noise, and turned round to face the doors. She could see them moving, shutting them in, sealing them off from any help, as if anyone could help them here, in this forgotten corner of the Solar System.
The robot continued to wind the vast doors closed, the edges crawling together, centimetre by centimetre. Each half of the door was made from overlapping sections, and as each section latched shut, there was a dull boom , and the remaining sections of the doors continued their slow march together.
It must have taken many minutes, but in Clare’s oxygen-starved brain, it seemed as if the doors were racing shut, and she tried to reach out her hand, to try to claw her way out of the hangar, out into the crater and the distant sunlight. But no sunlight fell on the entrance to Erebus Mine, there had never been any sunlight here, not ever, and the doors were nearly closed now.
Boom .
The sound reverberated through the mountain and into Clare’s clutching fingers, as the last section of the doors thudded home, and the locking actuators moved to seal the entrance.
Thunk.
Dust sprang up, and collapsed back to the floor like water, as the locking pins slid home and locked the doors shut. They were trapped, entombed forever in the mine, and they would never be found.
They would never send anyone to rescue us, Clare thought, they would never send another ship, not after another loss. Helligan had been right; a few more dead bodies wouldn’t make any difference – they should have left this cursed place alone, left it with its dead, left it alone in the deeps of space.
The robot thudded past, near to where Clare lay, and moved away from them, leaving them to die in the darkness. Clare lay down and gave up; she had no strength left. She felt the cold of the hangar floor creeping through her suit, draining the heat from her body, and she wondered how much longer it would take.
The red LED in her helmet filled her contracting vision. Already, she was beginning to lose control of her breathing; it came in short, sharp gasps, and her chest heaved, trying to draw oxygen into her lungs.
This is the end, she thought, and her fingers crept towards her faceplate release; this is how it all ends, entombed in a dead mine on a dead world, and no one would ever come to recover her body, not out here, so close to the Sun, although it was darker than the night.
She closed her eyes.
She felt another vibration coming through the floor, and in her confused mind, she thought the mine was collapsing, burying them in their tomb. She squeezed her eyes shut and cringed, waiting for the roof to fall in on her and crush her, but the pain didn’t come.
She opened her eyes, and the light from her helmet had turned into a cone of light, stabbing upwards. She puzzled over this for an age; there couldn’t be any shafts of light in a vacuum, then she realised that a dense fog was whirling about in great clouds, rolling across her vision. It filled the hangar, reaching into the corners with ghostly fingers. Dust and scraps of paper whirled about in the mist, and she heard a faint noise, like a seashell held to her ear when she was a child.
Something nudged her, and again, and she realised she was being buffeted by something. Something was blowing around her, blowing against her, and with her last strength, she turned her head towards the back of the hangar.
She was unable to take it in at first; her mind refused to believe what she saw.
Twenty metres away, the robot was operating another manual winder. Another set of doors, huge in the darkness, opened slowly, and air was gushing out, blowing dust and debris around in the great empty hangar.
Air. There was air in the mine . It billowed out into the hangar, filling it up, fogging as it expanded and cooled.
Clare’s chest heaved, and she convulsed; there was nothing to breathe any more, there was nothing in her lungs. She was surrounded by air – if she could only get her helmet open. She tried to unlock her faceplate, but her fingers would not move. Try, she told herself, and her fingers responded, but it was too slow, too late—
Someone grabbed her shoulder and turned her onto her back, then there was a fumbling, a click, and a sudden suck of air as pressures equalised. A hand lifted her faceplate, and blessed fresh air rushed into her lungs.
She took a deep breath – too deep, and the ice-cold air burned in her chest, but she didn’t care, all she wanted to do was breathe, breathe. She inhaled dust, and coughed, but it didn’t matter, she just sucked more air down.
A face loomed over her as she lay there, and she saw that it was Matt. He knelt down beside her, his eyes searching her face. He looked away for a moment, speaking to someone else, and then turned back to her.
She gazed up at him, unable to speak. The emotion at still being alive, of coming so close to death and surviving, rose up and overwhelmed her. Her face broke up and she turned away, sitting up on one arm, not wanting him to see her like this. Matt put a hand on her shoulder. Her body shook with sobs.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be all right.’
‘I thought – I thought I was going to die,’ she whispered through her tears.
‘Didn’t we all,’ Matt said, and laughed, wiping his eyes. He moved round so that she could lie against him, and put an arm round her. They remained that way for a while, neither of them moving.
Eventually, Clare pulled herself up onto one shoulder, and sniffed as she composed herself. Her chest hurt, and her throat was dry from breathing in the cold air.
‘How are the others?’ Her voice was hoarse and unsteady.
‘They’re all okay. Steve’s in the worst way, but he’s going to be all right. Rick’s with him now.’
Clare looked around her, and her eyes widened.
‘Air – how come there’s air in here?’
‘I know. I don’t understand it.’ Matt looked to the far end of the hangar, to where the robot stood by the open inner doors, then back to Clare. ‘You should take it easy for a while; you’re suffering from hypoxia.’
Clare complied reluctantly, and lay back down. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, letting the oxygen flow back into her lungs.
As her body recovered, the memory of the crash and the frantic race for survival came flooding back. Her mind flicked over ever detail of the last hour; remembering it, analysing it. The crash, the explosion, the open outer doors, and now air in the mine. She didn’t know what all of it meant, but one thing was certain.
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