He rotates himself around until he’s floating on his back and slowly guides his head and shoulders and torso inside, curling forward as he carefully pulls in his legs, folding them just enough to let the boots clear.
He pulls the inner plug-type door closed and works the locking mechanism until a small green light illuminates on a panel he barely can see.
There are several switches to be thrown before the pressure dump valve will motor open, and he goes through the sequence carefully until he’s down to the last button push.
Kip takes a deep breath, remembering almost too late to unfold the nylon tether strap and hook it into the metal loop within the lock. He assumes the outer door is supposed to remain open while he’s outside. Nothing else would make sense.
The button pushes easily and he takes a deep breath, as if the air in his suit was going to be sucked out as well. The pressure gauge begins dropping in pounds per square inch, moving toward zero, but nothing changes in the suit except the sudden increase in the rigidity of the arms and legs.
An orange zero-pressure light illuminates on the panel, and then a green light on the latch mechanism, and Kip begins rotating the vaultlike wheel to remove the latches, surprised at how easily the door just swings open into the void.
Chapter 37
Diana finds the couch and sits, sensing their immense frustration.
“We’ve thought through everything we know, boss,” Arleigh begins. “Using a laser to blink Morse code at him was about the last, most desperate suggestion. But there’s no way to tell him no fewer than two spacecraft are trying to get off their pads to reach him.”
“He’s going to die trying to spacewalk, right?” Richard asks.
The deeply weary breath Arleigh Kerr draws and exhales seems to answer the question.
“Not necessarily. We taught him—we teach all of them—the basics about a spacewalk. If he can’t get the suit on and get it inflated and tested to a green light status, he probably won’t try it.”
“But if he does?”
“There’s no way this guy can fix a spacecraft, and he doesn’t have a hand thruster, so if he forgets to connect his tether, he’ll… just float away. Or he’ll tear his suit and die trying.”
“Or he’ll just spend his final hour outside on purpose,” Richard adds, speaking their collective thoughts. “I know I probably would. With Bill’s body inside getting ripe and all.”
“Well, the view’s going to be better out there,” Arleigh agrees.
“So, bottom line, there’s no chance for him outside, and even if he succeeds in not floating off, there’s no way he can fix the ship. Right?”
Several of the men shrug and Arleigh voices the response. “We don’t have any idea what it would take to repair the ship, but the chances are slim to none. Anyway, if we figure an hour for him to get ready past the time he stopped typing, he should be heading for the airlock now. That means about one and a half hours and he’ll either be dead or back inside and typing again.”
Kip floats out of the airlock the same way he got in: head and shoulders first, checking to make sure the tether is tight before turning around and facing the surface of the Earth passing below without the constraint of
Words are failing him, even in his mind. With almost a hundred-and-eighty-degree view from his helmet, he’s simply flying along, his own satellite, as part of Texas slides along soundlessly beneath him. Only the fans and the small hiss of the air supply break the silence, and he turns starward, shocked by the moon hovering clear and bright above. For the longest time he just stares, floating, flying, incredulous, and wishing he’d done this days before.
He can see the Gulf Coast below, along with New Orleans, and thinks fondly of the times he’s enjoyed the chicory coffee and beignets with their snowstorm of powdered sugar at Cafe du Monde, in spite of being ignored by the waiters.
Pensacola is visible to the east, as is Panama City, which triggers a few more memories. A line of thunderstorms is marching toward Atlanta to the north and he can see lightning flashing, noiselessly visible from space. Not as impressive as the thunderstorms he’s seen over Africa in the darkness, lightning pulsing away over a thousand miles as if the storms were communicating in bursts. But the storms near Atlanta are impressive enough.
He knows there’s a depressurization safety sequence to be followed in order to blow the suit when it’s time. Or he can just cut off the oxygen. But he thinks a sudden depressurization might be better and quicker. The suit has approximately an hour and a half of air, and then the options expire. So he’ll have one and a half hours to take all this in and…
He sees no indication of meteor damage near the door, so he begins pulling himself upward and over the top of the spacecraft. But there are no handholds and suddenly he’s floating up and away slowly with no choice but to pull on the tether, which starts him back toward the door.
Kip floats motionless by the open hatch, while he figures out how to get to the other side. As far as he can tell, there is no handheld thruster to propel him, and no handholds on the fuselage to hang on to. But he has a tether at least as long as the spacecraft, and the nose is only fifteen or so feet in front of the hatch.
Kip uses the open door as a launching pad for propelling himself along the fuselage toward the nose. He waits until he’s just abeam of the tip of the nose before looping the tether over the top of the fuselage and around like a rodeo cowboy throwing a rope. With the line now going over the top from the door and coming back to him under the chin of the nose, he tightens his grip and pulls, letting his shoulder bounce off the left side of the nose. Suddenly he’s floating back toward the door, and he uses the structure to stop himself and turn upside down before starting to pull himself around beneath the fuselage using the tether that’s now snaking over the top and around the bottom. Carefully, making sure to keep his speed and momentum as slow and controllable as possible, he comes around to the right side and finds what he’s been looking for.
A hole approximately three inches wide of flared metal and fiberglass sits just next to where an inspection panel has been blown away, providing access inside. The cavity is just behind the point where the pressure bulkhead divides the livable capsule inside from the service areas behind. He carefully touches one of the edges, closing his fingers around it to stop his drift. There are wires visible just inside. He can see a major wiring bundle slit in half by whatever hit them as it exited the side at a shallow angle.
He stares at the damage, wondering whether to just go back, or try for a closer look.
The small tool kit in the leg pocket of his suit contains a knife and electrical tape, both on tethers of their own. Overcoming the momentary urge to just give up and return inside, he begins assembling what he thinks he’ll need as he floats to one side of the hole. He places the knife beside him and lets go, marveling at how it just sits there in mid-space gyrating slightly with each tug of the tether, its own tiny little satellite. He supposes if he disconnected it and batted it down toward Earth, it would eventually deorbit and burn up. But right now it’s obediently staying more or less where he wants it.
