Андрей Демидов - Natotevaal. War Chronicle

Whitehouse took a deep breath.

His stomach was aching with hunger. Cocoa from the thermos has been drunk an hour ago and he did not want to crawl clinging to the rail, get through the narrow doors of the airlock system to change the thermos, check its tightness, and climb back. He had no strength for that.

– Hey, Mackliff, what about the connection?

– Maybe I will be able to fix it…or maybe not, – the flight engineer was obviously nervous.

Whitehouse glanced at the altimeter that was showing 301 mile in perigee, and crawled to his bracket, gently scouring the safety cable.

In order to distract his mind from the gloomy thoughts and a hungry rumbling in his stomach, he switched the intercom headset to a broadcasting wave.

A familiar tongue-twister struck his ears:

– You are listening to CNC, the official radio broadcasting company of the Yokohama pact countries.

Takashi Midzuki is on the microphone.

Transmitting the latest news…

Today at three o'clock (Tokyo time), in Brussels the long-awaited conference on rectification of the consequences between troops of the Islamic States Coalition and the Euro-Asian Union had begun.

The representatives of the military command of the North American community and the Pacific Union will take part in the conference because their troops were also involved in the conflict last year. The conference is held behind closed doors, but it is known from reliable sources that the main issues will be the exchange of prisoners of war and the withdrawal of the forces from the line of demarcation Bombay-Balkhash-Baku-Ankara.

According to our observers, a compromise can hardly be reached, as the main condition of the BIT leader, General Yasser Mohammad Vazir, is the immediate lift of the ban on the export of oil products from the countries of BIG, and the abolition of all trade sanctions… Listen to what is said in the…

A green lamp lit above the right eye of Whitehouse; Mackliff demanded him to switch to internal communication. After the tell-tale voice of the speaker, flight engineer’s speech seemed sluggish:

– Gosh, Ronny! What were you doing? Stop dreaming. Listen, I fixed the transmitter, but I have a feeling that we are being jammed. Do you hear me? Hey!

– I can hear you, but if you do not stop shouting in the headphones my membranes are going to burst. Nonsense! Who would possibly jam someone here? The Germans may be fixing something and that must be the cause of this interference.

-No, it’s not that, the background noise is too stable for ordinary interference.

-You are always imagining things; – Whitehouse slowly turned around and in three hundred yards from the Shuttle saw a matt cylinder with a thin light pen. And he braced his feet on the basis of his camera as if he was capturing an enemy on the wrestling mat of the Amateur club.

– Looks like it is giving in… I have to increase my efforts. What if I try and give a push with my space suit engine? I wish a miracle would happen, for once!

Whitehouse pushed the power lever up and started the back pack.

His shoulders cracked from the tug and a fierce vibration pierced the body, he felt his chest being pressed into metal. On the upper panel of the pressure helmet the reboot lights of all systems of the space suit glimmered violently. The engineer’s voice burst through the roar of the jet:

– Ronny, this is a miracle! The fall has slowed down, and we began to level off, it seems that one of the shunting engines turned on!

– Yeah and Elvis Presley rose from the dead and helped it with a bright song…This is not a shunting engine, but my back pack has turned on – Whitehouse could not finish the sentence.

He just clenched his teeth and let out a howl, trying to take a breath with his sandwiched diaphragm. A string of orange circles flashed before his eyes, his head felt heavy. The torso control panel cracked and sank in, the temperature rose sharply.

The hum of the back pack became a roar and suddenly stopped.

The red lamp flashed; the fuel consumption is 100%.

– Mack-cliff…– Whitehouse pushed away the firm bracket, which remained in the same position, and started to move away slowly from ‘Independence’.

It seemed to him that he was floating on his back, pulled by gentle surf, relaxing and exposing his face, damp from ocean spray to the sun. Fast seagulls…

– Ronny, we are descending again. Have you noticed which of the shunting engines has worked? Answer! – Rattled the voice of the flight engineer in his humming eardrums.

– Mack-cliff…– The tether uncoiled, stretched and sprang back with a sharp tug around the waist, causing Whitehouse to return from his comatose surf to the height of 291 miles.

– Mack-cliff …– Whitehouse was hanging in thirty yards from the gleaming white hull of the Shuttle. – Goodness, Mackliff! My space suit and air conditioner broke down and the cadmium cloth layer has dispersed, and…

– What the hell, where are you, I do not see you…Ronny, Ronny! – Dybal’ interfered.

– Of course you don’t, I am hanging right at the opposite side – he gasped, starting to fall into oblivion, but suddenly shouted as if his nails were being pulled out.

– Idiots! Pull me, pull me faster!

The tether length was reducing with agonizing slowness; the electric motors could barely work with the discharged batteries.

When the astronaut fell into the oval of an airlock, the altimeter, which was the only undamaged device of his space suit, stated flatly: 285 miles at perigee.

***

The ‘Independence’ sank into silence.

Usually buzzing local computers were out of order.

The ozone-plasma synthesis reactor was a towering dead pile of panels.

Usually noisy TV and rustling air conditioning were also silent. Mackliff saved the emergency batteries. He was sitting fastened by the battery.

– Mackliff! I can see a probe on the right!

– Does the recognition system ‘beep’ something?

– The system has become junk long ago and it won’t ‘beep’ anything.

– Damn! Does it have any identification marks?

– Aha! Would you like its home address and phone number?

– Come on…

– I don’t know the Sun is in the way. I can’t see a thing…

– Try to approach it.

– What for? This must be the worried rescue service. We have lost contact with them about six hours ago. They are looking for us. Let’s hope that this thing sees us. Or maybe…There is a lot of junk in space nowadays. Eh, I wish we could shift the bracket and two hours later we would drink coffee on our way to Canaveral, – Whitehouse nodded in the direction of the Germans, seeking for support of his words, but saw that they had already climbed inside, and now he's all alone sitting on the telescope.

A yellow strip of Equatorial desert could be seen between his feet that were hanging in the emptiness.

It was uncomfortable and cold, the air conditioning system of the suit was working properly. The chill came from the heart – 297, 6 miles at perigee. He clenched his teeth, and with one jerk reached the unfortunate bracket. He clasped the transmitter and was digging into its innards with a gleaming sting of a soldering iron.

Next to him, in a t-shirt, hovered Dybal, waving away the parts that popped up from the hands of a flight engineer:

– So what? We don’t need this, do we? Why did you throw away the sixth board?

– No, we don’t. Can you imagine, – Mackliff has been maliciously commenting on his massacre with the transmitter.

Lieutenant Whitehouse gradually came to himself, carefully fastened to the plane of the bed by his comrades.

A hard bitter K was stuck in his throat, and even the third package of orange tonic could not push it through; his chest responded with a dull ache to each breath, white spots were flashing before his eyes, and his folded hands involuntarily floated over his head, as if they were still clutching the bracket.