Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

The tire immediately tried to get away when the lug nut came loose, so he flipped the nut toward the door, hoping it would bounce inside and Donna would catch it, but it ricocheted off the armrest and flew away like a tiny chrome star. To hell with it. If he ever mounted this tire again, he would make do with four nuts. He grabbed the tire by one of the slots in the rim and steadied himself against the side of the truck, which set it bobbing around until they both settled down, then he pulled himself and the tire back toward the door.

He was panting like crazy. He probably needed a shot of fresh air, but he would need another hand to do that. He had to get the tire inside first.

He grabbed the open door like a shipwrecked sailor grabs the side of a lifeboat. There was a bad moment when he thought the tire wouldn’t fit inside, but Donna grabbed it and pulled while he pushed one-handed, and it slipped in, compressing the seat and scraping along the roof as it went.

Trent was seeing stars now, the loopy kind inside his helmet. He cracked open his air tank and let it refill his suit with fresh oxygen, then shut it off again and tried to climb into the cab, but the tire was right where he needed to go. He gave it a little shove, and Donna scooted out of the way as best she could, but the tire was so fat that she couldn’t fit between it and the windshield, and there wasn’t room for both her and Trent and the tire to sit side-by-side on the seat. This one couldn’t be turned around to fit the narrow way like the spare had, either.

“Jesus Christ, now what?” Trent growled. There was plenty of air in the tire, but no way to put that air in the cab without leaving the tire there, too. He grabbed the door frame and tried climbing in overhead, but there wasn’t room for that, either. The pickup bobbed around while he pulled and pushed, trying everything he could think of, but there wasn’t room in the footwell, nor between the steering wheel and the windshield. He was screwed.

His rope trailed away toward the planet, writhing like a snake on a hot road. So close. The pickup had fallen considerably farther in the last minute or two. It looked like he could just reach out and touch the surface now. Donna might get that chance, but unless Trent could hang on outside through the entire vector translation and the parachute descent, breathing his own carbon dioxide the whole way, it looked like he would only wind up touching the inside of a grave.

The rope slid back toward him, looping around his body. He felt it tugging on him, then realized it wasn’t the rope. Something was pushing on him.

Air. They were hitting the top of the atmosphere. It wasn’t thick enough for friction to melt anything yet, but at the speed they were moving they were about five seconds away from becoming a big meteor.

He looked in at Donna and pointed frantically at the planet, mouthing the word jump ! over and over.

She could barely reach the computer. The tire was leaning forward against it now that the pickup was being pushed backward by the onrushing air. She had to shoulder it aside, then it took her another couple of seconds to lock in her landing site and hit the button. Trent felt himself slip around until he was hanging by the door frame, and the door banged him on the knuckles, but he held on, and a second later the planet vanished.

The wind ceased in the same instant. He rebounded into the edge of the door, bounced off it like the balloon he was, then finally wedged himself between door and frame. The pickup wobbled in reaction, but he hung on until it steadied out. Below his feet he saw a big black hole in space with a crescent of sunlit planet capping it at a jaunty angle.

He looked inside. Donna held up her hands, all five fingers splayed out on her right, and three fingers extended on her left. Eight minutes. Plus some more under the parachute. Might as well be forever. He didn’t have that much air left in his Ziptite.

Now she was pointing frantically toward the back of the pickup. What else was the matter? He looked over his shoulder, but the camper looked the same as always, its aluminum sides reflecting the starlight and the little bit of sunlit planet.

The camper. He whacked himself on the forehead, his gloved hand bouncing off with a hollow boing . He could throw another tire in the camper and wait out the landing in there. Donna would have to do the whole thing herself, but she knew how.

He nodded and said “Okay!” with exaggerated lip motion, then grabbed the roll bar and pulled himself over to the other rear tire. If they were going to land with two tires missing, they should be on opposite sides, and on the same end. Then he realized that he had better open the camper door first, because he couldn’t very well do that with a tire in his hands.

He crawled over the top of the camper, never letting go with one hand until he was sure the other was gripping something solid, until he was upside-down next to the door handle. He’d designed the door to open inward, so air pressure would seal it tight when they were in space and none of their food or anything would be exposed to vacuum. He had never figured on having to open it in space, but he had wondered what he would do if they landed somewhere where the air pressure was lower than where they started. Even half a pound per square inch added up to a lot of force on something the size of a door; he would need a crowbar to pry it open.

Fortunately, he had thought of that, and had put a valve on it just like the one in the driver’s door. With the spigot on the outside, of course. He cracked it open and was relieved to see fog shoot out of it. The camper’s seals were still tight, anyway.

It was a regular water faucet, with the spigot aimed downward. That wouldn’t have been a problem on the ground, but in space it worked just as well as the maneuvering jets in the bumper. The pickup started to nose over under the thrust. Trent tried to twist the spigot around, but it was screwed in tight, so he did the only other thing he could think of: he cupped his hand underneath it and let the air blow against his hand.

That seemed to work. He felt the pressure pushing against him, and he had to hang on tight with his other hand, but the reaction pulled the back of the pickup down again.

Trouble was, the air was cold! It felt like he was sticking his hand in the blast from a fire extinguisher. He held it there as long as he could stand it, then shut off the valve for a second and shook his hand to get some warm blood flowing into it. He took the opportunity to give himself a fresh shot of air in his pressure suit, then went back to venting the camper, first shooting air straight out of the spigot, then cupping his hand underneath it and reversing the thrust.

It took four times, alternating hands, before the air was all gone and he could open the door. He left it just slightly ajar so nothing could get out, then pulled himself around to the right rear tire, careful to make sure he had a good grip with his nearly numb hands, and started spinning off the lug nut. It was tough to do with stiff fingers and stiff gloves. He got it partway off, but the last few turns were being a bugger. He couldn’t get a good enough grip on the nut, and every time he did, his whole body wanted to twist clockwise when he tried to unscrew it.

He finally realized it wasn’t just his clumsiness. The nut was stuck. He reeled in the lug wrench and fitted it to the nut, then managed to spin the nut off with one good flip of the wrench. The pickup started to spin the other way, but much more slowly. He hung on tight, and when he stopped the wrench, the pickup stopped, too. He didn’t even try to save the nut; just let it float away. Four nuts would have to do on this wheel, too, if he ever remounted it.