Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

“The Robonaut is missing,” noted Stone.

“The lab module is completely infected,” said Vedala, over the radio. “It’s probably been absorbed into the mass. We certainly can’t go in that way.”

“Then how do we get inside?” asked Stone.

“I don’t know,” said Vedala. “But I think I know someone who does.”

Vedala reached out and tapped Stone on his chest with her gloved fingers. Confused, he peered down at her hand. A brilliant dot of green laser light was dancing over her padded glove.

Thirty yards away, the face of Jin Hamanaka was barely visible through a small hatch window of the Russian MRM1 module, attached to the Zarya. Despite everything, she was smiling with a mixture of joy and relief. Seeing the state of the climber, she had realized immediately the newcomers couldn’t be Kline’s allies. Aiming carefully, she pointed the green dot upward, to a gleaming silver cylinder.

The Quest airlock module.

Mated with the starboard port of the Unity node, the airlock was above them, oriented parallel to the planet’s surface. The stubby cylinder was flared at the end, where an airlock hatch was placed for American astronauts to enter and exit during routine EVAs.

“Bingo,” said Vedala, giving a thumbs-up to Hamanaka.

“Right behind you,” said Stone, as Vedala began to pull herself up the climbing platform. Grip by grip, the two made their laborious way along the side of the climber, taking care not to touch the ribbon itself. At the top of it, they stopped to rest beside the rollers. The rest of the way up was blocked by the infected Wildfire module.

But the Leonardo module was a small leap away, attached vertically to the Unity node near the middle of the station. It was a jump they’d have to make to avoid touching the infected remains of the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module above.

“Slow,” warned Stone. “The ISS is accelerating. If we fall, it’s a hell of a long way down.”

Vedala nodded. “Be sure to tether as soon as you make the jump. Think of this as mountain climbing. No mistakes.”

Neither scientist had experience moving in low gravity, but neither had any choice. Fortunately, the extreme safety-mindedness of NASA meant that the exterior of the station was littered with convenient grab bars. And the tether hooks were expressly designed to clip on to these safe harbors during routine EVAs.

“Here we go,” Vedala said, tensing to leap.

With a sharp hop, she launched herself across the flat blackness of space. The surface of the Wildfire module passed by just above her head. Turning without much control, she flailed an arm, her glove swinging dangerously close to the infected surface.

“Watch out!” cried Stone into his helmet radio.

Falling in a short arc, Vedala collided awkwardly with the silver Leonardo module. Scrabbling with both hands, she slid helplessly down the featureless metal exterior. Finally, she managed to break her fall against an external antenna array. She took a few ragged breaths before turning and waving Stone onward.

“Piece of cake,” she said.

Stone crept to the edge of the climber, keeping his arms away from the Wildfire module overhead. He tried not to look at the purple-tinged stripes of material. As he leaped, he imagined he could almost feel the infection radiating off its contaminated surface.

Landing hard just above Vedala, Stone clung to the module with his fingertips. Reaching up, he took hold of a golden EVA handrail mounted securely to the white fabric-covered main truss. The aluminum alloy infrastructure was designed as a highway, and it was studded with plenty of dog-bone handholds, named for their distinct shape. Hanging on tightly, Stone and Vedala stopped to breathe for a moment.

The moment wouldn’t last long.

Vedala was the first to spot the white flash of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, just over Stone’s shoulder, as it accelerated toward them like a felled tree. Curled against the trusswork of the ISS, the fifty-foot-long, seven-jointed arm had silently begun to move. Without a word, Vedala yanked Stone down with all her might. As she did, the metal arm smashed into the strutwork where he had been resting. A wrenching scream echoed throughout the ISS as the powerful arm dragged across the trusswork, leaving crumpled metal in its wake.

“It’s Kline,” gasped Vedala. “She’s controlling it.”

The long clumsy arm dragged itself back up, spraying bits of metal and flakes of paint. It was in a default configuration, with only a flat plate of metal attached to the end. Recovered from the strike, the arm reoriented toward Vedala.

But Stone was falling toward Earth.

Flailing, he dragged his gloved fingertips down the side of the Leonardo module. The antenna array that had caught Vedala crumpled under his feet. Rolling down the side of the module, Stone lashed out with one hand and caught hold of the remains of the antenna. It came away in his grasp, broken. Then he jerked to a stop. A single thin wire still tethered the dislodged antenna to the module, like a tenuously clinging root. Panting, his feet dangling over the glowing planet below, Stone looked up toward Vedala.

“Nidhi,” he managed to grunt. “Move!”

Vedala threw herself to the side as the multijointed robotic arm came streaking toward her. Having already taken care of Stone, it was now trying to sweep Vedala off the strutwork.

As she backpedaled, the robotic arm caught Vedala across the chest.

The collision bruised Vedala’s rib cage, but she managed to grab hold, clinging to the robotic arm as it dragged her off the structure.

Through a spray of spinning bits of wreckage, Stone could see as Vedala was shaken like a rag doll. He pulled himself up inch by inch, careful not to snap the narrow wire. Finally, he clasped fingers around the bottom lip of the Leonardo module. With a decent grip, he could begin climbing. The entire space station shook as the long white arm bucked back and forth, trying to fling away Vedala’s small form.

“Hold tight, Nidhi. I’m coming to get you.”

Reaching the top of the module, Stone shoved one arm through dented trusswork. He paused, racking his mind for an idea. Blue-white light from his helmet LED strafed the metal around him, revealing nothing useful. As a roboticist, he had realized that Sophie Kline had total mastery over the largely automated ISS. She would be capable of assuming control over almost any subsystem.

But Stone hadn’t counted on the robot arm—the possibility had simply never entered his head. The hulking boom was designed to help dock multiton cargo modules as they arrived. Kline would have stripped the motor limit safeguards from it, of course. Controlling such a huge device was normally a slow process, requiring delicate control and a great vantage point—

The robot arm had no touch sensors of its own, Stone realized.

The machine could only be controlled by sight, which required cameras. But he saw no cameras mounted to the scarred length of the robotic arm.

“James!” shouted Vedala, desperation in her voice.

The arm had stopped shaking. It was now accelerating with purpose toward the infected mass of the Wildfire module. If she couldn’t shake Vedala off, Kline was planning to crush her, pressing her body into the pulsing infection that streaked across the module’s surface.

With a quick glance around, Stone found what he was looking for.

Launching himself wildly along the strutwork, Stone soared toward the golden squares of a solar panel. He grabbed awkwardly with heavily gloved hands. The flexible black and golden material bent and then crumpled, bits of black glass spraying away in slow motion. Ignoring the mess, Stone held on until his momentum was absorbed.

Then Stone climbed the trusswork, not stopping until he could see his own reflection in the black eye of a large pan-tilt camera.