Chapter 23
When the coolant purge inlet valve finally began to click open, it was anticlimactic. The fluid barely trickled out at first, like an overflowing kitchen sink. The fluid was robin egg blue and warm enough as it covered our shoes the suits took notice. The LCD screen on my sleeve came up with a flashing air conditioner symbol. I started hoping the fluid wasn’t actually hotter than the suit could handle.
As usual, Pell had been exactly on time. We sat with our hands in our laps watching the liquid come up to our ankles, knowing the tube would have to fill completely before the inner valves would close so the outer door could open. As it reached upward to knee-high, the inlet valve suddenly jumped the rest of the way open and the strong gush of incoming fluid made a wave that pushed us both out of position. We held to the ceiling and walls, trying not to get too close to the big outer door. Through the small round inspection windows, Brenna and Terra continued to watch.
As the fill came up to our helmets, Perk gave me a thumbs up. A second later, I could barely make out his form from beneath the river of blue. The current forced us to sway back and forth. As we continued to wait, it suddenly occurred to me if there was a purge system malfunction we’d have a bitch of a time getting out of it. It also occurred to me if the outer door opened only part way we could be sucked into the opening and held there. This was a pressurized purge. There would be no going against it. Next, I realized if we flushed out successfully, we’d be going from warm or hot fluid to harshly cold space, another kind of profile our suits were not designed for. Why hadn’t I thought of these things beforehand? At least then I could have dreamed up some absurd mitigations to comfort myself.
As I tried to decide which problem to worry about, the outer door snapped open in less than a second. The coolant gushed out the hole, into the emptiness. Ungracefully, I was yanked backward, my feet sticking straight out, arms held in close to avoid the side walls of the outer door. The hatch walls went by so fast I barely saw their faint outline. Outside the ship, the universe came sporadically into view in between globs of the antifreeze fluid. The ejection speed was too fast. As the spray dissipated around me the hulk of the ship came into view. It was moving away too quickly. I scrambled to find the station-keeping key on my sleeve, praying the suit mini-jets would still function. Mercifully, the rearward thrusters kicked in hard, pushing me against the back of the suit, bringing me to a stop a good fifty meters from Electra. To my amazement, suit systems quickly came back to nominal.
There was an intimidating feeling of vulnerability from being in a flight suit in open space. Though much less bulky than an EVA suit, it felt equally less protective. Flight suits carry only an emergency air supply which will give you about an hour of air, though at least it’s the same safety gas mix EVA suits use. Most of the comforting little pockets, compartments, and tools are absent. The maneuvering system is token by comparison, intended at most to allow a pilot to perform minor tasks on his ship, not travel away from it. Fortunately we did not need to go far.
I strained to find Perk and finally spotted him off to my right. He was stationary, hanging in the nothingness, fidgeting with his sleeve controls. I blew into my mike to be sure the squelch would cut out.
“How’s your bio-matter?”
“Stand by, Adrian.”
It was not the response I was hoping for. I found my belt control and squeezed in some forward thrust toward him. Halfway there, he squelched back on.
“I lost the pack, Adrian. It caught going out the door and ripped off my arm.”
“We can live with that. Are you injured?”
“No, but that pack had my charges.”
“We still have six in mine. I’ll share.” I pulled up beside him and visually checked over his suit. “You look good from here. How’s the readouts?”
“They went berserk for a few seconds but everything’s coming back in limits now.”
“What a ride.”
“Yeah, two kinds of floating in less than a minute.”
“Time to go play with some big Este’s rockets.”
I took a moment to get my bearings. The view was dreamlike. Electra, with her exterior lighting still on, hung weightlessly, a massive construct of the human desire to understand. To our right, the alien ship loomed. It looked like a stinging bug that anyone, though they be ten thousand times larger, would run shrieking from. Staring at it gave me a sick feeling in my stomach, quite a change in perception since my previous visit.
Together we jetted slowly toward the underside of Electra, with the impossible intention of deploying two large solid-fuel rocket motors which might help squash the ugly bug. Perk seemed to know where to go.
As we moved beneath the ship, I chanced a look down at that limitless blanket of stars you never get used to. The first glance always makes you want to stop whatever ride you’re on so you can take a moment to figure out what the hell is really going on. The answer has to be some evasive, ancient secret more profound than the mind-boggling vision itself. In open space there are so many stars they look crowded, but at the same time the gulf between you and them is so great, you surely must be outside looking in, except they are all around you.
We scooted along the irregular underside of Electra. The Hercules motor compartments were long barrels attached to a portion of her belly. They were designed to open like clamshells. That way, the motors could be coaxed away from the ship with the least chance of unwanted contact.
We found the stowage control panel midway beside the first tube. The cover slid open, white lighted buttons appeared, and a screen lit up demanding a level four security code or higher, or go home. Besides the keypad were two ominous looking buttons, one glowing orange, the other red. The orange one was labeled ‘Open’, the red one, ‘Release’. I typed in my Ex/O code, hit the enter key and the open button began rapidly flashing green and orange. Without waiting I pressed it. In the silence of space, the doors gently swung open, exposing the first motor. The Release button took over the flashing.
To our advantage, the motor casings were darker than amber. They blended with the shadows of space surprisingly well. The translation thruster fixtures were clearly visible at the nose and tail. Perk glided back to the tail, held on to the fixture, and waited.
I tapped the release button and at first thought the system had failed. A moment later it became apparent the motor was drifting free, leaving me to hurry to the nose and steady the front end. Using our weak suit thrust, we very slowly brought the behemoth down and away from Electra’s superstructure. We paused and got into position over the manual thruster control panels. There were, six buttons only: north, south, east, west, and pitch up, pitch down, all with reference to the thruster fixture itself.
I looked back in Perk’s direction. “Are you seeing this?”
The com switched on immediately. “Yep. It’s gonna be like dancing.”
“We both go left, or right, or forward or back.”
“And you’re doin’ the hoochey-coo.”
“At least it’s pointing in the right direction.”
“Yeah, away from Electra.”
“So we go straight ahead until we’re underneath them, then we move off to our left for attachment.”
“That’ll keep us out of visual range for most of it.”
“A quick tap of the north button on zero to see how it moves?”
“On zero.”
“Three, two, one, zero.”
We both gave our north button a short tap, and to my amazement jets on both sides of the fixture gave a brief burst. The huge beast began to drift gently forward, pulling us along with it. The control was so good, I felt like I needed to be doing more as we coasted toward the bow of Electra.
As we moved forward, something unexpected came into view up ahead. The gangway from Electra had been redeployed and mated with the alien ship. It should not have been. It had been retracted and stowed afte
r our return.
“Perk, the gangway is out.”
“Oh my God! They’re using it.”
“We’re right in line with it. We’ll pass directly underneath.”
“So, stop and try to check if the coast is clear, or chance it?”
“It’s a bad place to pull over. We’ll have to chance it.”
We floated out from beneath Electra and under the gangway, moving silently through the darkness. We were lucky. Through the grating of the walkway I could see that no one was above us. Electra’s hatch was closed, the alien’s entrance still open. We glided beneath the abstract bottom of the enemy ship until we approached midship.
I called to Perk. “One burst south on zero to stop.”
“On zero.”
“Three, two, one, zero.”
A quick tap of the south button and the lumbering motor slowed below us, swinging Perk and me around to face in the opposite direction as we held to the thruster fixture.
Much more confident in our ability, we moved the motor to one side and found the best place for attachment. When it was secured, we ejected the remote firing control, tucked it in my satchel, and headed back for number two, taking time at the gangway to check for the enemy.
With endearing patience and a stop to replenish O2, we placed the second motor without being discovered. When it was done, we hung for a moment to gloat over our work. The alien vessel was so obtuse and irregular the big, dark-amber motors looked like they belonged there. It would have been gratifying to back away and set those candles off right then, but the chance of the little old men regaining control of their ship and coming back all pissed off was too great. Both motors had destruct charges, but only in the nose cones. Solid rocket motors use a destruct that makes them burn at both ends. They spin without going too far and burn out really fast. We couldn’t be sure a destruct like that would do enough damage to save us, and we couldn’t take the chance of damaging Electra, our island in the emptiness. Setting them off was very tempting, but it wasn’t the way. While the beasties went about their business in Electra, we needed to go about ours in their ship. We needed to hurt them inside and then send them packing, all before they realized we weren’t the dumb bipeds they thought we were. I looked adoringly at those huge, beautiful motor casings and laughed to myself as I realized we had just finished the easy part.