S Morden - One Way

Zeus lumbered over, climbed past Frank and perched on the very top step.

“We going to go early?”

“Tempting, but cameras. We know what we have to do. We know we can do it.” Frank felt his suit begin to stiffen. “We’ve done this before. We’ve got suit time. Just another day at the office.”

“Any idea how long we got to do this?”

“That’s probably something Brack should have said. It’ll take less time than we have air for. We’ll be fine.”

The others drifted over. Alice took the seat next to Frank, effectively blocking the rest of the structure to those still standing.

“Anyone feeling light-headed, got cold spots, feel like they’re struggling for breath?”

“I’m good,” said Zero. “You good, Marcy?”

“Chill. That is, I’m fine. Dee?”

Demetrius nodded inside his suit, and unless anyone was watching, he didn’t look like he was moving.

“You got to speak to us, Demetrius,” said Frank. “Let everyone know you’re OK.”

“I’m good,” he blurted, too abruptly for the compression to cut out the initial volume. “Sorry. I’m good. This…”

“Feels like the real deal?” said Declan. “Marcy’s right. We should chill. It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

Frank flipped out his control box and peered down at it. He had solid green lights, all the way. The situation was novel enough that he’d rather trust them than his own impressions. “I’m doing OK. Zeus?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just enjoying the view.”

Frank closed his controls. He knew it had just clicked shut, but he hadn’t heard it. He raised his boot and tapped at the steps. He could feel the vibrations, but other than that, it was silent. Sound simply wasn’t traveling. He thought about the consequences of that, being on a building site. If he was driving around in a buggy, no one would hear him coming. If he was reversing, he could run someone over. In fact, he could run them over lots of times, and unless they were on the same frequency, he wouldn’t know until he actually checked.

He could be standing right behind someone, and they wouldn’t know. And they could be right behind him…

The suits had decent enough vision out of the front, but didn’t allow more than maybe ten o’clock to two o’clock to the sides. He could stand beside someone, and unless they turned towards him, he’d still be in their blind spot.

Which was all pretty bad news.

“I want to change the rules some,” he said.

“Oh, God. Here we go.”

“Shut up, Alice.” Frank paused, but she’d finished lodging her objection. “We’ve got limited vision, and limited hearing. All the usual things that keep us out of trouble aren’t there, and we have to do this differently. So one of us—we’ll take it in turns—stands to one side and watches out for the things that no one has spotted. Things that might drop or fall or crush or impale. People about to get in each other’s way. That sort of shit. They just have to call it before it happens.”

“And you’re taking first watch, right?”

“I won’t be taking any watches. Declan? You’re up first, if that’s OK. Just sit up here and keep an eye out. We’ll swap it around every fifteen minutes or so, so we stay fresh.”

“W-will we really explode?” asked Demetrius.

“No,” said Alice. She sounded bored. Bored with even having to think about nursing any of them, now or in the future. “You’ll be unconscious within ten seconds, less when you inevitably panic. You’ll have a double pneumothorax and you’ll go into cardiac arrest within a minute. There’s a window of about thirty seconds where, if you’re repressurized, you’ll live. Probably.”

“No one’s dying today,” said Frank.

“Accidents happen,” she said.

Frank exchanged a look with her. “Preventable accidents happen. So let’s prevent them.”

They waited, and after what seemed an age, the voice told them to start.

Stirring himself, Frank got to his feet, feeling the drag of the life-support system on his back as he stood. The steps wobbled, but didn’t rattle. Strange how things that he’d taken for granted were so important in building up the environment around him. All he had was the sound of his breathing.

“OK,” he said, and started walking towards the cylinder. He had no idea if anyone else was following him, because he couldn’t see them. It was just him, the few inches to his faceplate, and on the other side of that, pretty much instant death.

He was going to a planet where that was the rule, not the exception.

They cracked open the cylinder—the air trapped inside made the hatches pop out—and they started dragging the drums out, lining them up, ready for Frank to give them the once-over.

Declan made what sounded like a yawn, and Frank wasn’t having that. “Stay frosty, man,” he said, belatedly remembering that everyone would hear him equally loudly. “Declan. We need you alert.”

“I am alert. No one’s done anything stupid yet, that’s all.”

The first drum he opened contained the nut runners, and spare batteries. He counted them out, checked them all, and handed them round. He tapped three drums. “This, this, and this. Let’s do it.”

The mat went down first, rolled out with what should have been a loud slap and a gust of wind, but instead done in total silence. Then the airlock was carried into position—it took four of them—and placed face down on the concrete. Frank checked it, and got Marcy to check it as well: he didn’t want the thing going on backwards.

He swapped Marcy out for Declan. They unrolled the plastic from the airlock surround, and started building the inner ring. All in absolute, uncanny silence.

“This is weird as fuck,” said Declan.

“Makes it difficult to concentrate. You expect the tool to make a noise. It doesn’t. You wonder if it’s working, when it obviously is. That’s OK. It’s a test. We’re supposed to find things out so it doesn’t freak us when we’re up there.”

Up there. Mars was no more up than the Sun was down, but soon it would be Earth that was up there, just a pale dot in a pink sunset.

The first inner ring was done. They tied the airlock to it with tensioned cables. They lifted over the main plastic tube and positioned it. They started work on the first outer ring.

And Frank was tired. He was tired in a way that he shouldn’t have been. Every move, deliberate and precise, needed additional effort: not much, just a little, but all those added up. His timer told him they’d been working forty-six minutes.

They could go to the hour, and everyone then take ten minutes. They couldn’t eat anything, but there was water in the suit, supplied by a little sippy straw.

Frank swapped out Zeus for Alice, because she was as old as he was, and likely to be feeling the strain as much as him. Not that she would ever admit to it. So he cycled her to be on watch.

And people were starting to drop things, misthread and misalign bolts, and get on each other’s nerves. Without suits, they’d be halfway done by now, but they were barely a quarter of the way through.

The last section of the outer ring went into place. Zero secured it in position, and stood slowly, wearily. He was almost reeling. Frank had had enough. It was starting to get dangerous.

“OK. Let’s take a break.”

No one complained. They were that exhausted. They put their tools down—and there was no way they could do that on the Martian surface, so Frank had them all pick them up again and stow them on the belts that went around their waists, and only then could they rest.

Except finding a position to rest in was awkward. Lying on his back wasn’t an option, due to the hump of the life support. On his front, there was the bulge of the faceplate. On his side was possible, but sitting, slumped forward, forearms on thighs, head bowed, was about the best any of them could get. Four of them could fit on the steps. Small folding stools would be a bonus, but there weren’t any. The remaining three—Frank, Zeus, Marcy—stacked the drum lids up until they reached a respectable height, and sat down.