Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

He was interrupted by a tinny yet insistent beeping noise from his wristpad. Glancing down, he read the brief message that had appeared on the tiny screen.

“The shaft is sealed,” he said. “Let’s see if it will hold some air.”

Without waiting to see if Ostara and Ravana followed, Wak stalked towards the open doors of the maintenance shed and entered the gloomy interior.

The airlock hatch at the head of the maintenance shaft was a ten-metre-wide circular door in the concrete floor, painted yellow and split down the centre so that the two halves of the steel hatch could slide open. The waist-high wire fence that ran around the perimeter of the airlock included a wide double gate at the edge of the hatch nearest to the shed door. On the right-hand gatepost was a control panel, upon which red flashing lights and warning buzzers were doing their utmost to attract everyone’s attention. Ravana and Ostara watched Wak tap at the panel keypad, then heard a loud vibrating drone as the airlock air compressors rattled into life.

“This may take a while,” Wak informed them. “The maintenance shaft is two kilometres long and the whole lot needs to be pressurised before the damaged airlock will open. In the meantime, I suggest you suit up.”

“Pardon?” exclaimed Ostara, looking slightly panic-stricken.

Wak pointed to the row of spacesuits hanging on a rack beside the door.

“No one is going through the airlock without a suit,” he said firmly. “The dome sealing the end of the shaft could give way at any time.”

“I am not wearing a spacesuit!” protested Ostara. “I’m claustrophobic!”

“I don’t mind,” ventured Ravana.

“Fine,” snapped Wak. “Ostara, you wait here and keep an eye on the airlock panel. Ravana, grab a couple of suits and get ready to come with me.”

Wak stalked out of the shed and made for his hovertruck. Ravana gave Ostara an apologetic shrug, then walked to the rack of spacesuits. There were four of them in a variety of sizes; all lightweight emergency suits in bright orange rather than full spacewalkers, each with a matching helmet. Ravana selected her usual size and another that looked big enough for the professor, then returned to where Ostara stared pensively at the airlock door.

“You probably think I’m silly,” sighed Ostara, glancing at Ravana. “Being scared of wearing a spacesuit, I mean.”

“Are you scared?” asked Ravana. She placed Wak’s suit over the top of the gate, then carefully stepped into a leg opening of her own.

“Aren’t you?” asked Ostara. She pointed to the circular hatch in the floor. “Doesn’t it bother you that beyond that door is nothing? That we’re separated from the cold, dark depths of space by just a few centimetres of metal?”

Ravana looked at the airlock door. “I never really thought about it,” she admitted.

She inserted her other foot into the spacesuit and pulled it up around her. Emergency suits were designed to be donned quickly over normal clothing and shoes, so were extremely loose-fitting but not very flexible, thanks to internal reinforcing tubes of spring wire. The result made the wearer look as if they had been gorging on chocolate cake, while trying to move in one was like dancing at a fancy-dress party whilst dressed as an airship. As Ravana slid her arms into the voluminous sleeves and wriggled her fingers into the elasticated gloves at the end, she saw Ostara was trying hard not to laugh.

“You look like a toy animal with too much stuffing,” Ostara told her.

Behind them, Wak’s hovertruck arrived at the entrance to the shed. The professor’s face, framed by the scratched windscreen, was a picture of fierce concentration as he carefully manoeuvred the vehicle through the gap between open doors. The truck was of a basic design; the crew compartment at the front was open to the elements and had a simple bench seat for the operator and a passenger, behind which was a flatbed furnished with removable side rails and a couple of straps to keep any cargo in place. The vehicle flew using jets of hot gas and the exhaust blast filled the shed with dust and noise as Wak halted before the airlock, then throttled back the thrusters to let the truck drop clumsily onto its spring-loaded landing struts. Ravana collected his spacesuit from where she had left it on the gate and handed it to him as he stepped down from the cab.

The drone of the compressors finally changed to a less manic tone. In the comparative quiet that followed, they became aware that the airlock control panel was no longer buzzing its warning, though a red light continued to flash. Suit in hand, Wak went to the panel and scrutinised the tiny digital display above the keypad. Seemingly satisfied, he pressed the large green button at the bottom of the panel.

A loud clang reverberated around the shed as the securing bolts of the airlock door were released. Then, with a screech of steel that made both Ravana and Ostara jump, the two halves of the hatch began to slide apart.

Moving away from the control panel, Wak unlatched and slid aside the gates, then stood back and stared into the opening jaws of the airlock chamber. A sudden breeze briefly surged from behind and down through the widening gap, but the engineers’ dome and the compressors had done their job and the airlock was no longer open to the vacuum of space. Moments later, the distant sound of falling masonry and accompanying robot shrieks drifted in from the direction of the palace as the stone elephant fell away from the hole in the ruined courtyard.

Ravana, moving clumsily in her emergency suit, came to Wak’s side and shuddered. The top of the long concrete-lined cylinder now open at her feet was brightly lit, revealing the ragged hole that had been crudely hacked into the side of the white curved wall. Yet it was not the kidnappers’ tunnel that immediately caught Ravana’s eye, for twenty metres below the second set of airlock doors were wide open, beyond which the shaft continued on into a dark nothingness. It was hard not to think of Ostara’s words on the cold black void of space.

“It’s a long way down,” she murmured.

“Indeed it is,” Wak agreed. He handed her a length of rope, at the end of which was a large clip. “Best if you attach that to your suit. One slip and a couple of kilometres later you’d be smashing straight through the temporary dome and out into space. I’d hate to have to explain that to your father.”

Ravana gulped. Taking the rope, she clipped it to the safety ring on her suit. The other end she saw was attached to a long handrail that ran alongside the ladder fixed to the wall of the airlock chamber. In the time she had been staring transfixed into the dark shaft, Wak had pulled on his own suit and clipped a second safety line to himself. He now motioned to Ravana to pick up her helmet and follow him into the cab of the hovertruck. Once they were seated, the professor beckoned to Ostara, who up until now had taken great care to maintain a wary distance from the edge of the airlock.

“Stay by the control panel and keep your wristpad audio channel open,” he instructed. “If anything happens, we’re relying on you to close the airlock as quick as you can.”

“If anything happens?” asked Ostara, startled. “Like what?”

Wak ignored her. He put on his helmet, then motioned to Ravana to do likewise.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, waving to Ostara. His voice sounded tinny and slightly distorted through Ravana’s helmet speaker.

“Loud and clear,” replied Ostara, speaking into her wristpad.

“Ready to go, Ravana?” asked Wak, turning his helmet visor towards her.

Ravana nodded. With one hand on the control stick, Wak tapped in the start code on the hovertruck’s control panel and the thrusters roared into life, sending Ostara scurrying for cover. The truck lurched into the air, then slowly edged forward through the gate until it was hovering above the open shaft. Ravana peered over the side of the truck and looked down into the abyss. Her left hand was clamped around the handle on the edge of the windscreen, while her right held the safety rope attached to her suit, which looped down out of the cab before coming back up to the rail inside the airlock. Now they were directly over the open airlock doors, a mere length of rope seemed very flimsy protection indeed.