I checked my Gizmo while Dale worked. Ten minutes.
“Sanchez, how accurate is that one-hour estimate on chloroform toxicity?”
“Quite accurate,” she said. “Some people will already be in critical condition.”
Dale redoubled his pace. “Done. Next.”
“Just one more,” I said. I led him away from the pipe maze to a half-meter-wide outflow pipe and pointed to a valve that controlled it. “Turn this to full-open and we’re done.”
He grabbed the handle and tried to crank it. It didn’t budge.
“Dale, you have to turn the handle,” I said.
“The hell you think I’m trying to do?”
“Try harder!”
He turned around, gripped with both hands, and pushed against the ground with his legs. The crank still refused to move.
“Dammit!” Dale said.
My heart nearly beat out of my chest. I looked at my useless hands. With the hamster ball surrounding me I had no way to grip the valve. All I could do was watch.
Dale strained as hard as he could. “God…damn…it…”
“Does the rover have a toolbox?” I asked. “A wrench or something?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “I took it out to make room for the inflatable.”
That meant the nearest wrench was in town. It would take way too long to retrieve one.
“What about me?” Sanchez said over the radio. “Can I help?”
“No good,” said Dale. “It takes hours to learn how to climb in an EVA suit. I’d have to go get you and carry you here. That would take a long time and even then you’re not very strong. You wouldn’t help much.”
This was it. This was as far as we’d get. One valve away from victory, but no further. Two thousand people would die. Maybe we could get back into town and save a few by dragging them into air shelters? Probably not. By the time we got in, everyone would be dead.
I looked around for anything that could help. But the surface around Artemis is the definition of “nothing.” Lots of regolith and dust. Not even a friendly rock to hit the valve with. Nothing.
Dale fell to his knees. I couldn’t see his face through the visor but I heard his sobs over the radio.
My stomach tied into knots. I was about to throw up. I welled up—about to cry. That just made my throat hurt even more. That pipe had really done a number on me and…
And…
And then I knew what I had to do.
The realization should have panicked me. I don’t know why it didn’t. But instead I just felt a great calm. The problem was solved.
“Dale,” I said softly.
“Oh God…” Dale rasped.
“Dale, I need you to do something for me.”
“W-What?”
I pulled the pipe from my belt. “I need you to tell everyone I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything I did.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And I need you to tell Dad I love him. Okay, that’s the most important thing. Tell Dad I love him.”
“Jazz.” He stood up. “What are you doing with that pipe?”
“We need leverage.” I gripped the pipe with both hands and pointed the sharp end forward. “And I’ve got it. If this won’t turn it, nothing will.”
I rolled my ball over to the handle.
“But the pipe’s inside your hamster ba—oh. No!”
“I probably won’t last long enough to turn the handle. You’ll have to grab the pipe and finish for me.”
“Jazz!” He reached toward me.
It was now or never. Dale had lost focus. I can’t blame him. It’s hard to watch your best friend die, even if it is for the greater good.
“I forgive you, buddy. For everything. Goodbye.”
I thrust the sharp end of the pipe through the edge of my ball. Air hissed out through the pipe—I’d just given the vacuum a straw to suck on. The pipe grew cold in my hands. I pushed harder and wedged the pipe into the valve handle’s spokes.
My hamster ball stretched and ripped near the puncture site. I had a fraction of a second left, at best.
With all my strength, I shoved the pipe to the side and felt the handle give.
Then physics showed up with a vengeance.
The ball ripped itself to shreds. One second I was pushing on the pipe, the next I was flying through the void.
All noise stopped immediately. Blinding sunlight assaulted my eyes—I squinted in pain. The air fled from my lungs. I gasped for more—I could expand my chest but nothing came in. Weird feeling.
I landed faceup on the ground. My hands and neck burned while the rest of my body, protected by clothing, roasted more slowly. My face ached from the onslaught of burning light. My mouth and eyes bubbled—the fluids boiling off in the vacuum.
The world went black and consciousness slipped away. The pain stopped.
Dear Jazz,
According to the news, something’s very wrong with Artemis. They say the whole city went offline. There’s been no contact at all. I don’t know why my email would be the exception but I have to try.
Are you there? Are you okay? What happened?
I awoke to darkness.
Wait a minute. I awoke?
“How am I not dead?” I tried to say.
“Huu m uh nn’ d’d?” I actually said.
“Daughter?!” It was Dad’s voice. “Can you hear me?”
“Mmf.”
He took my hand. It didn’t feel right, though. The sensation was dulled.
“C…can not…see…”
“You have bandages over your eyes.”
I tried to hold his hand, but it hurt.
“No. Don’t use your hands,” he said. “They’re also injured.”
“She shouldn’t be awake,” said a woman’s voice. It was Doc Roussel. “Jazz? Can you hear me?”
“How bad is it?” I asked her.
“You’re speaking Arabic,” she said. “I can’t understand you.”
“She asked how bad it is,” Dad said.
“It’s going to be a painful recovery, but you’ll survive.”
“N…not me…the city. How bad is it?”
I felt a pinprick on my arm.
“What are you doing?” Dad asked.
“She shouldn’t be awake,” Roussel said.
And then I wasn’t.
—
I drifted in and out of consciousness for a full day. I remember snippets here and there. Reflex tests, someone changing my bandages, injections, and so on. But I was only semi-alert until they stopped groping me, then I’d return to the void.
“Jazz?”
“Huh?”
“Jazz, are you awake?” It was Doc Roussel.
“…yes?”
“I’m going to take the bandages off your eyes.”
“Okay.”
I felt her hands on my head. The padding on my face unwrapped and I could finally see. I winced at the light. As my eyes adjusted, I saw more of the room.
I was in a small hospital-like room. I say “hospital-like” because Artemis doesn’t have a hospital. Just Doc Roussel’s sick bay. This was a room in the back somewhere.
My hands were still bandaged. They felt awful. They hurt, but not too bad.
The doc, a sixtysomething woman with gray hair, shined a flashlight in each of my eyes. Then she held up three fingers. “How many fingers?”
“Is the city okay?”
She wiggled her hand. “One thing at a time. How many fingers.”
“Three?”
“Okay. What do you remember?”
I looked down at my body. Everything seemed to be there. I wore a hospital smock and I’d been tucked into the bed. My hands were still bandaged. “I remember popping a hamster ball. I expected to die.”
“By all rights, you should have,” she said. “But Dale Shapiro and Loretta Sanchez saved you. From what I hear, he threw your body over the Armstrong–Shepard Connector. Sanchez was on the ot
her side. She dragged you into a rover and pressurized it. You were in vacuum for a total of three minutes.”
I looked at my gauze mittens. “And that didn’t kill me?”
“The human body can survive a few minutes of vacuum. Artemis’s air pressure is low enough that you didn’t get decompression sickness. The main threat is oxygen starvation—same as drowning. They saved you just in time. Another minute and you’d be dead.”
She put her fingers on my throat and watched a clock on the wall. “You have second-degree burns on your hands and the back of your neck. I’m assuming they directly contacted the lunar surface. And you have a pretty bad sunburn on your face. We’ll have to check you for skin cancer once a month for a while, but you’ll be all right.”
“What about the city?” I asked.
“You should talk to Rudy about that. He’s right outside—I’ll get him.”
I grabbed her sleeve. “But—”
“Jazz, I’m your doctor, so I’ll take good care of you. But we’re not friends. Let go of me.”
I released her. She opened the door and stepped out.
I caught a glimpse of Svoboda in the room beyond. He craned his neck to look in. Then Rudy’s impressive build blocked the view.
“Hello, Jazz,” Rudy said. “How do you feel?”
“Did anyone die?”
He closed the door behind him. “No. No one died.”
I gasped in relief and my head fell to the pillow. Only then did I realize how clenched up I’d been. “Thank fucking God.”
“You’re still in enormous trouble.”
“I figured.”
“If this had happened anywhere else, there would have been deaths.” He clasped his arms behind him. “As it is, everything worked in our favor. We don’t have cars, so no one was operating vehicles at the time. Thanks to our low gravity, no one got hurt falling to the ground. A few scrapes and bruises is all.”
“No harm, no foul.”
He shot me a glare. “Three people went into cardiac arrest from chloroform poisoning. All three were elderly with preexisting lung conditions.”
“But they’re okay now, right?”
“Yes, but only through luck. Once people woke up they checked on their neighbors. If it weren’t for our tight-knit community, that wouldn’t have happened. Plus, it’s easy to carry an unconscious person in our gravity. And no part of town is far away from Dr. Roussel.” He cocked his head toward the doorway. “She’s not thrilled with you, by the way.”
“I noticed.”
“She takes public health seriously.”
“Yeah.”
He stood quietly for a moment. “Care to tell me who was in on this with you?”
“Nope.”
“I know Dale Shapiro was involved.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Dale just happened to be out on a drive at the time.”
“In Bob Lewis’s rover?”
“They’re buddies. They lend each other stuff.”
“With Loretta Sanchez?”
“Maybe they’re dating,” I said.
“Shapiro’s gay.”
“Maybe he’s not very good at it.”
“I see,” Rudy said. “Can you explain why Lene Landvik transferred a million slugs to your account this morning?”
Good to know! But I kept a poker face. “Small business loan. She’s investing in my EVA tour company.”
“You failed the EVA exam.”
“Long-term investment.”
“That’s definitely a lie.”
“Whatever. I’m tired.”
“I’ll let you rest.” He walked back to the door. “The administrator wants to see you as soon as you’re up and about. You might want to pack some light clothes—it’s summer in Saudi Arabia right now.”
Svoboda slipped in through the door as Rudy left.
“Hey, Jazz!” Svoboda pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. “Doc says you’re doing great!”
“Hey, Svobo. Sorry about the chloroform.”
“Eh, no big.” He shrugged.
“I’m guessing the rest of town isn’t as forgiving?”
“People don’t seem that mad. Well, some are. But most aren’t.”
“Seriously?” I said. “I knocked the whole town out.”
He wiggled his hand. “That wasn’t just you. There were a lot of engineering failures. Like: Why aren’t there detectors in the air pipeline for complex toxins? Why did Sanchez store methane, oxygen, and chlorine in a room with an oven? Why doesn’t Life Support have its own separate air partition to make sure they’ll stay awake if the rest of the city has a problem? Why is Life Support centralized instead of having a separate zone for each bubble? These are the questions people are asking.”
He put his hand on my arm. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
I put my hand on his. The effect was kind of lost with all the bandaging.
“Anyway,” he said. “The whole thing gave me a chance to bond with your dad.”
“Really?”
“Yeah!” he said. “After we woke up we formed a two-man team to check on my neighbors. It was cool. He bought me a beer afterward.”
I widened my eyes. “Dad…bought a beer?”
“For me, yeah. He drank juice. We spent an hour talking about metallurgy! Awesome guy.”
I tried to imagine Dad and Svoboda hanging out. I failed.
“Awesome guy,” Svoboda repeated, a little quieter this time. His smile faded.
“Svobo?” I said.
He looked down. “Are you…leaving, Jazz? Are they going to deport you? I’d hate that.”
I put my mittened hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be all right. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I have a plan.”
“A plan?” He looked concerned. “Your plans are…uh…should I hide somewhere?”
I laughed. “Not this time.”
“Okay…” He was clearly not convinced. “But how are you going to get out of this one? Like…you knocked out the whole town.”
I smiled at him. “Don’t worry. I got this.”
“Okay, good.” He leaned down and kissed my cheek, almost as an afterthought. I had no idea what possessed him to do that—honestly I didn’t think he had it in him. His bravery didn’t last long, though. Once he realized what he’d done, his face became a mask of terror. “Oh shit! I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking—”
I laughed. The look in the poor guy’s eyes…I couldn’t help it. “Relax, Svobo. It’s just a peck on the cheek. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”
“R-Right. Yeah.”
I put my hand on the nape of his neck, pulled his head to mine, and kissed him full on the lips. A good, long kiss with no ambiguity. When we disengaged, he looked hopelessly confused.
“Now, that,” I said. “That you can get worked up about.”
—
I waited in a blank, gray hallway next to a door labeled CD2-5186. Conrad Down 2 was a little classier than the usual Conrad Down fare, but not much. Strictly blue-collar, but without that smell of desperation the lower levels had.
I opened and closed my hands a few times. The bandages were off, but both hands were littered with red blisters. I looked like a leper. Or a hooker who gave handjobs exclusively to lepers.
Dad rounded the corner, following his Gizmo’s directions. He finally noticed me. “Ah. There you are.”
“Thanks for meeting me, Dad,” I said.
He took my right hand and inspected it. He winced at the damage. “How are you feeling? Does it hurt? If it hurts, you should go to Dr. Roussel.”
“It’s okay. Looks worse than it feels.” There I was, lying to Dad again.
“So I’m here.” He pointed to the door. “CD2-5186. What is it?”
I waved my Gizmo across the panel and opened the door. “Come in.”
The large, mostly bare workshop had stark metal walls. Our footsteps echoed as we wa
lked. A worktable stood in the center covered with industrial equipment. Farther back, gas cylinders mounted along the wall fed pipes leading throughout the room. A standard air shelter stood in the corner.
“One hundred forty-one square meters,” I said. “Used to be a bakery. Fully fireproof and certified by the city for high-temperature use. Self-contained air-filtration system, and the air shelter seats four people.”
I walked over to the tanks. “I just had these installed. Central acetylene, oxygen, and neon lines accessible from anywhere in the shop. Full tanks, of course.”
I pointed to the worktable. “Five torch heads, twenty meters of feeder line, and four sparkers. Also, three full sets of protective gear, five masks, and three filter-shade kits.”
“Jasmine,” Dad said. “I—”
“Under the table: twenty-three aluminum stock rods, five steel rods, and one copper rod. I don’t know why you had that copper rod back then, but you had one, so there it is. Rent’s pre-paid for a year, and the door panel’s already keyed to accept your Gizmo.”
I shrugged and let my arms fall to my sides. “So, yeah. Everything I destroyed back on that day.”
“It was your idiot boyfriend who destroyed it.”
“I’m responsible,” I said.
“Yes, you are.” He ran his hand along the worktable. “This must have been very expensive.”
“It was 416,922 slugs.”
He frowned. “Jasmine…you bought this with money that—”
“Dad…please, just…” I slumped down and sat on the floor. “I know you don’t like where the money came from. But…”
Dad clasped his hands behind his back. “My father—your grandfather—had severe depression. He committed suicide when I was eight.”
I nodded. A dark corner of our family history. Dad rarely discussed it.
“Even when he was alive, he wasn’t really ‘alive.’ I didn’t grow up with a father. I don’t even know what it is. So I’ve tried my best—”
“Dad, you’re not a bad father. I’m just a shitty daughter—”
“Let me finish.” He got to his knees then sat on his heels. He’d prayed in that position five times a day for sixty years—he knew how to make it comfortable. “I’ve been winging it, you know. As a father. I had nothing to work from. No blueprint. And I chose a hard life for us. An immigrant’s life in a frontier town.”