S Morden - One Way

The cooling air blowing around Frank’s face was drying him out even while it cleared his faceplate of fog. His eyes felt scratchy and his skin was tight. He couldn’t even rub some life back into his features, so he pulled faces for a while and drank some water.

How bad would this have been if they hadn’t forced him up and down the Mountain every day, or made him spin on the static bike until he couldn’t feel his legs? He could grudgingly admit to the point of it, while still disliking the actual effort. No, it wouldn’t be this bad on Mars. It’d still be grueling, but the suits were designed to work there, not here.

They sat, mostly in silence, or exchanged one or two words that required little in the way of reply. The clock ticked on, numbers on his console that slowly accumulated like falling dust. He could feel the ache in his muscles slowly dissipate, to be replaced by a general fatigue.

He let the timer run past the ten-minute mark, then decided that they should start again.

“You heard what the man said: we don’t get out of here until we’re done, so let’s get it finished.”

No one moved until he did. He took his nut runner back off his belt, and while three of them built the next ring, the others assembled the outriggers.

It was still surreal, as if everything that was happening outside of his suit was being played on a screen with the sound turned off. Disassociative. Mute images of people working. A silent film.

Music. That was what they needed. Anything, maybe without words, but something other than their breathing to measure time by. When they were on Mars, that was what he was going to do. Get Demetrius to load up some music, if they had any, and play it out over the headphones. It was what the chain gangs used to do. Sing. And what were they but a high-tech chain gang? They might be wearing spacesuits rather than shackles, but that didn’t fundamentally alter what the relationship was.

He wasn’t the only one to think that. He heard someone humming. There was a threshold of volume below which speech wouldn’t be broadcast. It often clipped the first word of their conversations if they didn’t precede it with an opening sound. That made it difficult now to pick out the tune, but after a few bars it became clear:

“Swing low, sweet chariot.”

Frank looked to see who it was. It sounded odd over the speakers. Higher pitched. But everybody was bent over their work, faces down. He couldn’t tell.

“I’m sometimes up, and I’m sometimes down, comin’ for to carry me home.”

“ Keep this channel clear. No unnecessary traffic .”

It stopped. It hurt when it stopped. Frank spoke into the quiet. “It’s OK. We just need to keep going. Stay alert and we can get the job done.”

Alice broke in. “Everyone check their suits, make sure you’re all the right temperature and breathing the right mix.”

They did that, and reported they were all well within the green bands.

Except Demetrius, who said: “I’m losing pressure.”

Frank put his tools down, then picked them up again and hung them from the clip at his waist. He located Demetrius, who was staring at his chest-screen, tapping at it as if he could make the numbers change.

“That’s what this says, right?” He tilted the screen so that Frank could see it. “That I’m losing air.”

Frank, reading it upside down, watched as the digits fluctuated up and down. The green indicator was turning amber, then back to green again, as the suit detected the lower pressure and dispensed more air to make up. “Why didn’t your alarm go off?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why. F-Frank? What do I do?”

“You don’t panic. You keep breathing easily. It’s a slow leak. We just have to find it and plug it.”

“I’ve got a leak? Do I bail? Do I get canned if I do? Frank, I don’t want to go in the Hole.”

“No one’s going in the Hole, Demetrius. I need to check your suit.”

Marcy was there. “It’s going to be fine, Dee. Just stand with your arms out.”

Frank took one side, Marcy the other. Everyone else was watching. Frank checked the seams, the seals, the outer fabric layer.

“Do you feel cold anywhere?” asked Marcy.

“I don’t know: my arm, maybe.”

“Left or right?”

“Right. I just thought…”

Marcy was on the right, and she rechecked. “I’ve got it. There’s a tear just above the elbow.”

Demetrius immediately tried to turn his arm so he could see, but couldn’t because it was his elbow. “What do I do? What do I do? What if I run out of air?”

Frank grabbed Demetrius’s arm and held it tight. “Stop moving around. Let me see.” Quite why this was his job was anyone’s guess, but there he was. He held the cloth taut, and yes, there was a rent, an inch long, just behind the elbow joint, on the upper arm. “How the hell did you do this?”

“I just got caught on a latch. I pulled, and… it came free. I didn’t know.”

“You got to be more careful.”

“What do we do? We’ve got something to fix this with, right?”

They hadn’t been given anything. Help was the other side of a six-foot-thick concrete wall.

“You’re going to use one of the lifeboats.”

“He’ll can me. Brack’ll can me.”

“He might can everyone,” said Alice. “I wouldn’t put it past him. We know there are others in training, and we’ve already had one replacement.” She looked pointedly at Declan. “I’m not going to risk that. So we improvise.”

She pushed Marcy out of the way and inspected the tear in the cloth. She dug her fingers into the hole and pulled it apart. There was no tearing sound. She pinched and pulled at the inner suit, and stepped back. “God only knows what you thought you were doing. You caught the seam at the elbow pad, yanked it hard enough that you’ve torn a flap in the pressure garment. Mostly seals when you bend your arm, but when you straighten it, the inner suit relaxes and it opens up more.”

“Have we got something to fix it with?” asked Marcy.

“We could use a ratchet strap as a tourniquet,” said Frank. “What’s the long-term effect of vacuum on just an arm?”

“Swelling, bruising. Possible embolism. If we tourniquet it too long, he’ll end up losing his arm. I wouldn’t recommend it.” Alice looked at the hole again. “Get me the strap anyway: I’ll need it. Find me something with a blade, or that can be sharpened to a edge. I can seal a hole that size.”

“Shouldn’t I just put my hand on it, or something?” Demetrius tried to put his free hand over the tear, and Alice batted him away.

“You’re losing air, you little punk. You’ll continue to lose air until that hole is sealed. I am not, repeat not, getting canned because you did something monumentally stupid. Do you hear me?”

Demetrius nodded inside his helmet.

“Now I need a blade.”

“We don’t have a knife,” said Frank, “or anything like that.”

“He made that hole with something, didn’t he? We’re cons. If we can’t make a shiv, what the hell are we doing here?”

“I can get one of the latches,” said Zeus. “Five minutes rubbing it down on the floor will give it a rough edge.”

“It’ll do.” She held Demetrius’s arm bent. “Don’t move.”

Zeus broke off the latch with part of the unfinished ring, and started stropping it on the floor. They were all just standing around watching him, and there wasn’t really any need for that.

“OK, this is Alice’s thing,” Frank told them. “We can get some work done: the sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

They left Demetrius with Alice, and went back to work. Declan took up spotting for them again, and with Zeus making the blade, it was just Frank, Marcy and Zero.