Энди Вейр - Artemis

I prodded a technician in the chair next to me. He didn’t stir. Of course, even with perfect air, it would take these guys a while to wake up. They’d been breathing nineteenth-century anesthetic for half an hour.

“Hang on,” I said. “I’m going to take a sniff.”

I pulled the mask away from my face for a second and took a very shallow breath. I immediately fell to the floor. I was too weak to stand. I wanted to puke but resisted the urge. I held the mask against my face again.

“…no good…” I murmured. “…air still bad…”

“Jazz?” Dale said. “Jazz! Don’t pass out!”

“ ’m’okay,” I said, getting up to my knees. Each breath of canned air made me feel better. “I’m… okay… I think we just have to wait. It takes a while to replace all this air. We’re good. We’re doing good.”

I guess the gods heard that and laughed their asses off. No sooner had I said it than the sound of air through the pipes quieted down and fell silent.

“Uh… guys… the air stopped.”

“Why?” asked Dale.

“Working on it!” I shot a look at the status screens. Nothing obvious there. Then I went back to the line schematics on the wall. The main valve was right there in Life Support and it led to a staging tank in that room. It read empty.

“Ugh!” I said. “We ran out of air! There’s not enough!”

“What?!” Dale said. “How can that be? Life Support has air to last months.”

“Not quite,” I said. “They have enough air to refill one or two bubbles and they have enough battery power to turn CO 2back into oxygen for months. But they don’t have enough oxygen to flush the entire city. It’s just not something anyone thought of.”

“Oh God…” said Dale.

“We’ve got one chance,” I said. “Trond Landvik stockpiled huge amounts of oxygen. It’s in tanks right outside.”

“That bastard,” said Sanchez. “I knew he was after my oxygen-for-power contract.”

I looked over the control board again. Thank god Vietnamese uses a superset of the English alphabet. One section of the schematic was labeled LANDVIK.

“Trond’s tanks are on the schematic!” I said.

“Of course they are,” said Sanchez. “Trond would have had to collude with them to make sure his air system could interface with theirs.”

I ran my finger along the map. “According to this, Trond’s tanks are already connected to the system. There’s a whole complicated set of valves in the way, but there’s a path.”

“So, do it!” Dale said.

“The valves are manual cranks and they’re outside,” I said.

“What?! Why the hell are there manual valves out on the surface?!”

“Safety,” I said. “Trond explained it to me earlier. Doesn’t matter. I just memorized the pipe layout. It’s complicated as hell and I don’t know what state the sub-valves will be in. I’ll work out what to do when I’m there.”

I bolted out of Life Support into the corridors of Armstrong.

“Wait, you’re going out?” Dale said. “Wearing what? Your EVA suit’s in here.”

“I’m on my way to Conrad Airlock and I’ve got a big pipe. I’ll pry open Bob’s locker and wear his gear.”

“Those lockers are centimeter-thick aluminum,” said Dale. “You’ll never get through in time.”

“Okay, good point. Uh…” I hurtled through the Armstrong–Conrad Connector tunnel and checked my Gizmo. We had twenty-five minutes left. “I’ll use a tourist hamster ball.”

“How will you turn the cranks?”

Goddammit, right again. Hamster balls had no arms, gloves, or articulation points at all. I’d have no way to grip anything outside.

“I guess you’ll have to be my hands. The tanks are in the triangle between Armstrong, Shepard, and Bean. Meet me at the Bean–Shepard Connector. I’ll need your help to get into the triangle.”

“Roger. Driving to the connector now. I’ll get as close as I can and walk the rest of the way.”

“How will you get out of the rover without killing Sanchez?”

“I’d like to know that too,” Sanchez added.

“I’ll put her in your suit before opening the airlock,” he said.

“ My suit?!”

“Jazz!”

“Fine, yeah. Sorry.”

I plowed through Conrad Ground as fast as I could. My home bubble had some of the most Byzantine passageways in town. When you put a bunch of artisans in one place with no zoning rules, their workshops expand to fill every nook and cranny. But I knew the layout by heart.

Naturally, the tourist airlock was the farthest point from the Armstrong Connector tunnel. I mean, where else would it be?

I finally got there. Two EVA masters lay on the floor in front of sixteen tourists who’d passed out in their chairs. The leak had caught them in the middle of orientation.

“Dale, I’m at the airlock.”

“Copy,” came his voice. He was far from his Gizmo’s microphone. “It’s taking a while to cram Sanchez into your gear. She’s kind of tall—”

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I’m 164 centimeters—exactly average for a woman. I’m not tall, your saboteur friend is short.”

“Don’t stretch out my suit,” I said.

“I’ll defecate in your suit!”

“Hey—!”

“Sanchez, shut up!” Dale said. “Jazz, save the city!”

I charged into the large airlock and pulled a deflated hamster ball from its cubby. “I’ll let you know when I’m outside.”

I spread the flaccid plastic on the ground with the zip hatch facing up, pulled a scurry pack off the wall, and put it on. Time for some Rudy Gizmo Magic. I closed the inner airlock door, waved the Gizmo across the airlock control panel, and it granted me access.

Next problem: Airlocks are meant to be operated by EVA masters wearing suits with gloves. This was going to take some finesse.

I deactivated the computer controls and switched to manual. First thing I did was spin the outer door’s crank. The door (like all airlock hatches) was a plug door—the air pressure behind it pushed it into its seal. So, while I made it possible to open the door, you’d have to be Superman to actually pull it open against the pressure. But I’d moved the physical latches out of the way, at least.

I very slowly turned the venting valve. As soon as I heard the hiss of escaping air, I stopped turning it. At full-open, the valve would let all the airlock’s air vent into space in under a minute. But at this rate it would take a bit longer—long enough for me to not die, hopefully.

I hurried to the hamster ball and crawled inside. It was an awkward affair, like getting into a collapsed tent, but that’s just how these things worked.

I closed the zip seals (there are three layers of them for safety), then cranked the airflow valve on the scurry pack for a few seconds. The ball grew just enough for me to move around.

Normally you do this shit when the airlock’s not venting. You take your time, inflate, and wait for the EVA master to check your seals. I wouldn’t have that luxury.

The pressure in the airlock decreased, so my ball grew like a balloon in a vacuum chamber. That’s not an analogy. It was literally a balloon in a vacuum chamber.

I crawled forward (it’s hard to move in a partially inflated ball) and reached out for the hatch handle. Since my ball wasn’t fully rigid, I could bend the skin just enough to grip the hatch. I held on with both hands as the pressure tried to pry me loose.

The ball grew more rigid as the airlock vented, making it harder and harder to hang on to the handle. That rubber really wanted to be a sphere now. It didn’t approve of me wrapping it around a handle.

I came close to losing my grip a couple of times but managed to keep hold. Finally, the airlock pressure got low enough that I could pull the door open.