He stood in the open inner doorway of the airlock and found the button. Then raised his right leg and twisted his boot to fit between the second handrail and the wall. He didn’t bother trying to fit his other leg into the same space. Instead he pushed himself down until his knee was directly under the rail. He bent his leg so his calf rose up to make a hook.
He tried an overhand grip, then switched to underhand, locking his right glove on to the handrail nearest the door. Only then did he reach out, slide his left glove down the track of the inner airlock door until he found the gap that contained the emergency OPEN button.
Nothing to wait for. Either they had closed their own outer airlock door or they hadn’t. Not his job. Dabeet pushed the button.
Two things happened at once. The gravitics stopped, so that Dabeet was no longer sagging downward from his perch between the two handrails. But this barely registered with him because there was an enormous force trying to pry him out and hurl him through the door.
He was struck by several items, but the suit did its job so that nothing injured him. He couldn’t see anything that flew out the airlock door because the wind of the escaping atmo pushed his head against the wall so that his faceplate showed him nothing. His heads-up display was blinking with warnings—he was no longer in a breathable atmosphere, he was no longer in gravity, he was going onto suit atmospherics, the suit was beginning to provide warmth as the ambient temperature plummeted, and oh, yes, equilibrium was gone because Dabeet was inside a spaceship that was now spinning in every possible direction, roll, pitch, and yaw.
And then, after only a few seconds, it was over. The atmo was gone and so was the wind pushing his face against the wall and the force trying to pry his leg out from the handrail.
No bones broken. His grip still held. But now he needed to get his leg out, and to do that he had to pull himself forward.
It didn’t take long. His leg, being uninjured, turned, straightened, then bent as he needed it to. His boot came free of the handrail. This immediately caused him to float outward but his hand grip held.
He pulled himself into the wide-open airlock and took the short jump to the rail beside the outer door—almost without thinking, except that he did murmur to himself, “Outer handrail,” and saw how it attached to the ship, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to let go of the previous rail until—
His toe snagged on the frame of the inner door, causing him to spin ass-over-teakettle and now his reaching hand wasn’t actually reaching for anything and he was going to go out the door, he knew it—
But then his head fetched up against the side wall of the airlock and he caught the handrail near the inner door and caught himself and controlled himself, with the help of the suit’s power assist. He loved the design of this suit, because how else could a child have held on with one hand and managed to straighten himself and still his motion? He had no such strength in his wrist, in his arm, but the suit was strong enough, and now he held himself in place, his feet toward the outer door as he saw the station float past.
This was the first time he saw it through the door but he could not possibly have made any kind of jump that took him toward the station. By the time he saw it, it was already too late, any exit movement would have taken him through the door heading somewhere else, somewhere random.
The rotation was not as bad as he feared—the station had not passed so very quickly in front of the doorway.
There was no guarantee that it would ever be visible through the door again, though, because the ship was rotating in every direction.
Dabeet gathered himself, pulled his legs toward his chest, and again reached for the rail near the outer door. This time he caught it easily, despite a bit of coriolis effect from the multiple spinning.
Was the nanooze still on the outside surface?
Yes. Trying not to see the spinning, trying not to think about how far he already was from the Fleet School station, Dabeet clung to the doorframe while getting his body through the door and his feet planted squarely on the nanooze.
Then he looked for the station. The previous jump hadn’t been possible, but the next one would be.
He couldn’t see the station at all, though there were several points of light that might have been nearby ships catching sunlight. But “nearby” could mean five hundred kilometers and he would be invisible to them and anyway, Monkey might already have jumped, mightn’t she?
No, it had only been thirty seconds or so—a minute?—since he pushed the button and ejected the Juke ship from the airlock. They must have retracted the dockbridge before he—
No distractions! Look in the direction you’re spinning toward, he told himself. See it before it’s directly overhead.
It was never going to be directly overhead. He saw the station, the completed wheel, the half-completed wheel, the battleroom cubes attached to the center, but he wasn’t going to get a chance at a straight-up jump from this surface. Yet if he tried to walk—Don’t Walk! Don’t Run!—he wouldn’t get into a better position because in a few moments the station would be invisible again so, leaning in the direction of the station as best he could, Dabeet rose onto his toes and pushed off.
Only after he had left the surface did it occur to him that the rotating ship might collide with him, hitting him with the nose or tail of the vehicle.
It didn’t. He had pushed off with such vigor that the whole thing was already behind him.
He was not headed directly for the station. It could have been worse. He was moving on a course that would take him past the station by about a quarter of its diameter. Under the circumstances, that was pretty good aim. But also under the circumstances, that was certain death because he would miss the ship and—
Monkey has to catch me, and if she’s going to catch me she has to see me. Dabeet looked away from the ship, concentrated on the SIG icon on his heads-up display and then chose ALL LIGHTS from the menu. He spread his arms and looked at them—like a Christmas tree. Like the neon sign over a bar.
If I use my suit’s directionals, I could point myself closer to the station, and—
No directionals. No! He didn’t know how to use them and Monkey had to be able to predict his course. She wasn’t supposed to smack into him directly, so even at this angle, she could probably pull the tether right in front of him so he could hug it and she could drag him in.
Except for one problem. The station wasn’t getting any closer. In fact, it was obvious that he was still moving away from the station.
Am I still attached to the ship somehow?
No, he realized. He had been moving away from the station at exactly the velocity of the ship. He took his strongest leap toward the station, but all his strength couldn’t have overcome the ship’s speed. The push that the escaping atmo gave the Juke ship was far stronger than anything his legs could have achieved. I didn’t reverse my direction of movement, I merely slowed my outbound movement a little. I’m not going to pass near the station because I’m still moving away from it.
That’s why he was supposed to leave the ship as quickly as possible. So that Monkey could outstrip his outbound movement using her directionals. He had no way of guessing if he was even within her two-kilometer range. The time it took him to catch himself in the airlock, reorient, stand on the surface, search for the station, and then, finally, leap—
I had to do all that. I had no choice. What good was leaving the ship if I wasn’t somehow aimed toward the station so my movement away would be somewhat slower?
If she can reach me, Monkey will reach me. If she can’t, then I knew this might be how I died, I knew it and I chose to do it because who else should take this risk? I’m the one that the kidnappers chose. Now they can pin the whole raid on me and I won’t care because I’ll be dead.
A light appeared in front of the station. It had to be Monkey turning on all the lights of her suit. It took a while, concentrating on that spot of light, before he could be sure that he was looking at a spacesuit mo
ving toward him. Moving a lot faster than he was moving, so she would overtake him, she really would. If the tether was long enough.
The suit was tracking her, too, because she was in motion and he had focused on her for three seconds. It reported that she was on a good course. No, not a good course, she was going to pass behind him. She had aimed and missed!
No, fool, Dabeet told himself. Just because your head is pointed toward the station doesn’t mean you’re moving that direction. Since you’re moving away from the station, she’s not passing behind you, she’s going to pass ahead of where you’re going to be.
Only now you’re upside down, fool. You can’t grab the tether with your legs.
He scanned the heads-up display and saw an icon labeled ORI. He vaguely knew that the suit could use the directionals automatically to reorient him, and ORI seemed like the best candidate for the menu he needed. Could it reorient him without changing his direction of movement? Time to find out.
He first selected REV but all that did was rotate him on the vertical axis so now his back was toward the approaching spacesuit. REV again and he could see her. He tried INV and this time the suit spun him upside down. His feet were now vaguely toward the station and as Monkey approached, he could see that their heads were now pointing in roughly the same direction. At moments he thought she was going to miss him by a hundred meters; at other times it looked as if she was going to collide with him. How could his perspective change like that?
It wasn’t his perspective. The heads-up display showed that her trajectory really was changing, because she was using her directionals to perfect her aim.
He saw the sparkles behind her and realized that he was catching glimpses of the tether. The sparkles ran straight back toward the ship, though they looked like a series of dragonflies darting straight toward Monkey.
Don’t look at her face, don’t try to communicate, all that matters is the tether. No distraction. The tether. Wrap your arms around it and—
Dabeet pulled his arms back to his sides. In the position he was in, it was quite possible that in order to bring the tether close to him, Monkey would pass so close that his wide-open arms would touch her, put them both into a spin, and make the rescue impossible. Only after she passed could he open his arms to hug the line.
She drifted past him, slowly enough that she wasn’t a blur, he could see the elements of her suit. But not her face. He didn’t even try to see through her faceplate. His eyes were down, toward the tether.
The heads-up display was showing him the tether.
“Not helping,” he murmured to the suit. He looked past the display, through the faceplate. He couldn’t see the sparkles at all now. But she was past him, he flung his arms wide, and then he felt his left forearm hit the tether. It started to spin him but he immediately pulled against the tension and drew his body toward the tether, wrapped his arms around it. This was working. He had the tether. Still couldn’t see it, but the heads-up display confirmed that he was on the line, he was wrapped around it, and he glanced and gazed at the LOCK command. Now the suit would hold on even if he was unconscious. He could nap now, and Monkey would bring him in.
He could hear a whishing, humming sound inside the suit, and it took a moment for him to realize that the tether was now reversed. Instead of playing out to let Monkey catch him, it was reeling her in.
They would collide soon. He hoped that she had used her directionals to make her change of direction more gradual, that she would also make their collision gradual enough to pose no danger to them—
Then he realized that there were bright objects whizzing past him, and he felt a force suddenly hurtle him rapidly toward the station. Was this how fast Monkey was going when she hit him?
She hadn’t hit him. Instead, he saw her spacesuit flash past him. And then her new movement made the tether jerk in his arms. Without the strength of the locked suit he could never have held on. Why was she moving so fast?
Not her choice, Dabeet realized. The ship had blown up. All the force that would have torn apart the station had blasted in every direction from the ship. They were far enough to cut that force in half, maybe to a quarter of what it would have been, but they were still way too close, and the debris had hit them, most of it pulverized to dust, so it hit them like wind; but some of it was still in chunks, mostly tiny, but some the size of a leaf, some the size of a basketball—
Dabeet was now going the same speed as Monkey, dragging along behind her, moving toward the station. The tether was still reeling them in—whoever was controlling it must have sped it up to match and surpass their new velocity and it was pulling him a little sideways, so his angle changed, and now he could see that …
Monkey’s suit was torn. Not a big tear, but she was trying to cover it with her hand, and the glove wasn’t big enough. Atmo was escaping and turning instantly into a cloud of ice. Dabeet remembered the lecture they all heard about leaking spacesuits and it didn’t take any complicated math to realize that unless that leak could be slowed, Monkey would arrive at the station airlock door dead.
Dabeet didn’t even have to think about it. He pushed against the force of the suit-lock and his right arm came free. He found the tether with his glove and locked on to it. Found the tether with his other glove. Hand over hand, he climbed up the tether until he reached Monkey.
Then he climbed Monkey’s suit. Each grasp, he thought the name of the spot he was reaching for, he gripped and let the glove take hold, too much haste and he’d lose her completely, he had to stay close, stay attached.
Now he was almost even with her, his chest pressed against the abdominal tear in her suit. He wrapped his arms around her body and gripped. Tighter. Tighter. Tighter. Was this close enough that his suit was blocking the leak? Did his suit somehow know what he was trying to do? Was it helping him? Or had he missed, was he clinging to her dying body as atmo kept escaping because he wasn’t blocking the hole?
I won’t know, I can’t know till the tether brings us in, and I don’t dare let go to check because then atmo will definitely escape.
Do the suits self-seal at all? There’s no nanooze, but surely there’s some kind of self-sealing mechanism. Her suit couldn’t cope with the size of the tear, but maybe the two suits together could do it, especially if he was blocking the hole so that no more atmo was escaping.
There was a harsh jolt as the two of them collided with the hull of the station. His suit’s lock held, so they weren’t pulled apart. They slid along the nanooze only a little way, with only a couple of bounces, till they were dragged around the corner of the airlock doorframe and toward the tether’s root in the inside wall.
Hands grabbed at them, tried to pull them apart, but Dabeet held on to the locked position until he could see that the outer airlock door was closed. Then the inner door opened, atmo whooshed into the space, and now he unlocked his hold on Monkey and the other kids pulled the two of them apart.
He reached up and pulled off his helmet.
“Rip in her suit!”
“Get the helmet off!”
“Is she breathing? Is she conscious?”
So he wouldn’t have to tell them about the torn suit. He stood on the floor, grateful to be back with working gravitics. He made the suit loosen and drop down from his body, and he stepped out of it.
“Is she alive?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Zhang He. He had apparently been inside the station corridor, not in the open airlock, because he wasn’t wearing a spacesuit. Dabeet saw and instantly registered that it was Bartolomeo Ja who had been in the open airlock, wearing a suit, monitoring and controlling the tether. And also Timeon. Those were the catchers, there to pull them in.
They had Monkey out of her spacesuit. Ragnar was checking her pulse, her breathing; he put his hand flat on her chest, nodded. “Heartbeat strong, breathing strong. But who knows how long she was oxygen deprived?”
Monkey’s eyes opened. “The only thing depriving me of oxygen,” she said, “was D
abeet crushing the life out of me.”
“I was trying to block the hole in your suit, I didn’t mean to—”
“Saved my life, oomay, that’s what you did. Alarms going off in my suit, estimate of five seconds till total atmo loss when you plugged the hole, you saved my stupid life.”
“I let go of the tether, though,” said Dabeet.
“I forgive you,” said Monkey.
“And I used the directionals to reorient myself,” said Dabeet.
“If you hadn’t, would you have seen that my suit was torn?”
Zhang He spoke up. “Back from death for two seconds and she’s already arguing.”
“Thank you for saving me, Monkey,” said Dabeet.
“Felt like I was back with my family, on a real ship,” said Monkey.
And then silence. They were all breathing heavily. Coming down from an adrenaline high.
Finally somebody moved. Bartolomeo Ja. He walked toward Dabeet, held out his hand. Dabeet took it, not sure what was happening. “Thank you, sir,” said Ja. “For saving us all.”
“We saw the raiders’ ship blow up,” said Timeon. “If it had still been attached to the station when it blew…”
“Maybe two minutes at the most after you blew the airlock,” said Ja.
“Did you know how much time we had left?” asked Ignazio.
Dabeet shook his head. “I don’t think it was on a timer. I think it was detonated from Earth the moment they saw that the ship was detached from the station. The only thing that gave us the time we had was that the ship was moving mostly away from Earth so it took a minute before anybody on Earth could see that it had detached. Plus time to realize and push the button, plus the time lag for the electronic signal to reach the ship—”
“Shut up,” said Monkey. “We can all do the math.”
“I’m not telling you,” said Dabeet, “I’m just realizing it.”
“What took you so long to get out of the ship?” asked Ragnar.