Ben Bova - Moonwar

His breath caught in his throat. He felt as if he were gagging.

“No… air…”

An incredibly searing pain flamed through his chest. Christ almighty, my lungs are collapsing!

Yet he remained conscious, acutely aware of everything happening to him.

Can’t breathe! He was gasping, his right hand clawing at the collar of his helmet. Can’t breathe! The pain in his chest was excruciating, yet he did not pass out. His mind was still alert, still functioning.

This is what drowning must be like. You try to breath but there’s no air.

Deliberately, he turned off his suit radio. They’ve got the tractor’s beacon to track me. Don’t want them to hear me screaming.

But he could not scream. There was no air in his lungs, no air in his throat. Nothing but pain and pain and more pain.

And he could not collapse into oblivion. His legs, his gut, even his hands and arms were flaming with agony now, but the mercy of unconsciousness was not allowed him. Doggedly, tears blurring his vision, pain racking his body, he slumped over the tractor’s controls, too weak to sit upright. But still conscious.

Time lost all meaning. Doug knew he was in hell: endless, eternal suffering. Damned, damned, damned to torment forever. The silent, stark lunar landscape trundled past slowly, maddeningly slowly. Doug felt as if he were mired in quicksand, already sucked down into it, unable to catch a breath, impossible to breathe, to move, to do anything but suffer.

He wanted to faint, he wanted to die and get it over with. He thought deliriously that he must already be dead. Why, this is hell nor am I out of it.

He could not breathe. He could not cough or gasp or cry or beg for mercy. Yet he could not end the pain. It went on and on, endlessly, while his mind shrieked and gibbered with horrified terror.

Something banged into his helmet. He felt himself jerked back against the seat.

Slowly the pain eased away. His last touch with the world drifted away from him, leaving him floating in darkness, alone, silent, free of pain and desire and fear.

I’m dead, he thought. At last it’s over. I’m dead.

He was breathing. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but mist, a gray fog.

“…had his suit radio off.”

“Visor’s fogged over. Turn up his fans, for chrissake.”

“How the hell did he get into this fix?”

“Never mind that! Is he coming around?”

The voices were urgent, frightened; to Doug they sounded like a chorus of angels.

“Can’t tell—”

“I can hear you,” Doug said, coughing. “I can hear you.”

“He’s alive!”

“Barely.”

Their frightened, urgent voices faded and Doug sank into blessed black oblivion.

“You are awake now, yes?”

Doug opened his eyes to see Zimmerman looming over him like a rumpled mountain, his fleshy face deathly serious, his eyes burning with inner fire.

The infirmary, Doug realized. I’m in the infirmary. He could smell the antiseptic, feel the crisp sheets on his skin. The little cubicle was clean and cool, walls and ceiling pastel. Electronic monitoring equipment hummed and beeped softly somewhere behind Doug’s head.

“So,” said Zimmerman quietly, “my little machines have saved your life again.”

The old man’s face wore an expression Doug had never seen before. Not tenderness, not from Zimmerman. But he seemed—concerned. He was standing over Doug’s infirmary bed like a worried uncle or grandfather, looking faintly ridiculous in his disheveled, wrinkled, old-fashioned, three-piece gray suit.

“When are you…” Doug asked, his voice little more than a faint whisper, “When are you going to program nanobugs to keep your clothes pressed?”

“Jokes?” Zimmerman’s shaggy brows shot up. “You almost die and now you make jokes at me?”

“What happened?”

The old man ran a hand across his bald pate. “You had no oxygen for breathing. My nanomachines extracted oxygen from the cells of your body and fed it to your brain, to keep you alive.”

The pain…”

“Both your lungs collapsed, of course. My nanomachines kept your circulatory system going, however.”

“Oxygen from my cells?”

Nodding vigorously, as if glad to get onto an impersonal topic, Zimmerman launched into a minor lecture about the amount of residual oxygen stored in the body’s major organs.

“And the nanobugs extracted the residual oxygen?” Doug asked.

“Yah. And fed it into your bloodstream. That way your brain was kept alive even though your lungs collapsed.”

“How did the bugs know to do that?”

Zimmerman scowled down at him. “You think they are stupid? They sensed your lungs collapsing and acted to keep you alive.”

“You programmed them to do that? All those years ago when you put the bugs in me, you foresaw such a possibility?”

“I programmed the nanomachines, ” Zimmerman emphasized the word slightly,’to maintain homeostasis and attack foreign invaders of your body. They sense any deviation from your normal condition and take immediate steps to counter it.”

“They must work pretty fast.”

They react in the millisecond range, usually.”

Doug looked into the old man’s intense eyes. “That’s the third time you’ve saved my life, Professor.”

Zimmerman shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “It gives me the chance to write a new research paper—although who will publish it is a question, with this verdammt war going on.”

“I don’t know what I can do to thank you,” Doug said.

For just an instant, the professor’s expression softened. Then he took in a breath and said sternly, “Try to stay out of mischief.”

With that he turned on his heel and headed out of the cubicle.

“Wait!” Doug called, his voice a painful croak.

Zimmerman looked back over his shoulder, one hand on the sliding partition.

“What’re you doing in your lab? I haven’t seen you in so long—”

“We discuss that later, when you are stronger.”

“But what are you working on?”

With an impatient gesture, Zimmerman said, “This and that. You will see.”

He slid the partition back and left the cubicle. Doug thought that perhaps Zimmerman didn’t want him to see that he actually cared about him. But then he realized:

He hasn’t come up with anything yet. All these weeks tinkering in his lab and he hasn’t accomplished a mother-loving thing.

Before a full minute passed, Edith rushed into the cubicle, up to Doug’s bedside, her green eyes staring at him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, reaching out to her.

She leaned into his arms and kissed him hard. “You really okay?”

“A little weak, but I’ll be back to normal in a couple of hours.”

“Hours?”

“The nanomachines work fast,” he said.

Edith sat on the edge of the bed and laid her head on his chest. “Christmas bells, I was so scared! They said your suit had malfunctioned and you might die.”

Holding her tightly, Doug said, “Not yet, Edith. Not for a long time.”

Hours later, after several sessions with the medics and Kris Cardenas, Doug was sitting up in bed, surrounded by Jinny Anson, Harry Clemens and Bam Gordette.

“The cermet suit failed,” Doug said.

“We’ve gone over it,” Clemens said. He was tall and lanky; it always surprised Doug that he spoke with a Down Maine twang instead of a cowboy’s drawl. “Found a rupture along the seal between the air tank and the backpack frame. Looks like a pinhole in the insulation started it, then the pressure inside the tank broke it into a major leak.”

“How could a pinhole get into the insulation?”