In the distance sat the Altair, dimly illuminated from above by the reflected Earthlight and brightly lit from below by its own floodlights. To Hui, it was beautiful. It looked safe and warm. It was how they were going to get home. It was also intact. The four legs were upright, and there were no signs of any of the problems experienced by the
Hui was now very cold. She was also getting light-headed. For a brief moment, she even forgot where she was.
“Help!” she said aloud. “I’m starting to poison myself on my own carbon dioxide.”
No one could hear her.
Still, she trudged on toward the lander. Consciously putting one foot in front of the other, she kept up with the group. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot…”
“Tony! We’ve got a problem. Captain Hui just collapsed. I’m about one hundred feet away, helping to carry one of their injured, and now we’ve got two down. I’m going back to see what happened,” Stetson said into his radio.
Stetson released his hold on the wounded pilot, forcing Dr. Xu to stop moving and simply hold him. Even on the Moon, carrying a limp deadweight like a person was almost impossible without help. This was especially true if the deadweight was encumbered with a two-hundred-pound spacesuit. Stetson cautiously quickly moved back toward the fallen Chinese captain, wondering what had happened.
He reached her and bent over to see if she was conscious. He then tried to figure out what might be the problem. Using his headlamp, he peered through her visor and saw that she was not conscious. She looked very pale. It was then that he noticed the status lights on her suit—they were not powered on.
“Tony! I’m with Captain Hui, and her suit is completely out of power. I don’t know how long it’s been that way, but long enough for her to pass out from oxygen deprivation. She has to be getting pretty damn cold. I’ve got to get her into the ship now. Can you talk to the other Chinese on the radio?”
“I don’t know. She’s been the only one to answer up until now. I’ll try. Stand by.” The signal went blank as Tony switched channels back in the lander.
Stetson left the fallen Hui and went back over to Dr. Xu. He grasped the shoulder of the only other person standing on the lunar surface and began to motion toward his fallen comrade. Looking into Xu’s face, Stetson realized he was talking to someone—it had to be Tony. Xu said something and then nodded his head in understanding.
Stetson helped lower the pilot to the cold and gray lunar surface. As he did so, he realized that the fallen Chinese would likely lie there, losing heat through his suit into the cold lunar surface for at least the thirty minutes it would take to get Hui to the Altair and into the airlock. He’d hoped to cycle two at a time into the Altair, but clearly Hui would not live long enough to get both her and the other stricken Chinese through the airlock at the same time. This was getting complicated.
Stetson and Xu quickly bounded back to Captain Hui, using a combination run and skipping motion. Once there, they picked her up, one man under each of her arms, and began carrying her toward the Altair. They passed the other injured man on their way, causing Stetson to wonder if they would be able to get back to him before his suit went dead.
After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the Altair and the lift that would carry Stetson and Hui up twenty feet to the airlock.
“Tony, tell the other taikonaut that the lift will only carry two people at a time and that I need to get Hui up and into the airlock as soon as possible. He needs to wait here for me to come back so we can get his other colleague. Okay?”
“Roger that.” Tony’s reply was brief. “I’m on it.”
Stetson eased Hui from Xu’s shoulders and dragged her onto the lift. He then gently pushed Xu away and closed the gate. It was clear from looking at Xu that the doctor understood, though he was starting to look worried.
Knowing that the man would not hear him, Stetson nonetheless said, “I’ll be back.”
With the push of a button, the lift moved upward toward the Altair’s airlock. Stetson took that brief moment to look back toward the man they’d left on the surface. He was lying there, unmoving—a silent testament to the frailty of man.
Stetson, with a scant few seconds available for self-reflection, thought to himself,
The lift jolted and abruptly stopped.
Stetson was startled out of his introspection. He quickly pressed the start button. Nothing happened. The lift didn’t budge. He pressed the stop button and then the start button. Nothing.
“Come on! Does nothing work on this damn ship!” Bill slapped the wall of the lift in frustration. “Tony! The lift stopped. We’re almost to the top, perhaps eight feet from the platform. I messed with the buttons and nothing happens. It’s stuck.”
“Can you get the captain to the platform? Do I need to suit up and come help?”
“There’s no time for that. I’ll have to figure something out. Stand by.” He looked around him on the platform and didn’t immediately see any way to get the elevator working again. The eight feet between him and the platform that led to the airlock wouldn’t have been a huge problem if it had just been him stuck. He could easily jump up, grasp the platform’s ledge, and then pull himself up. But it wasn’t himself he was trying to save. It was the unconscious and likely suffocating Captain Hui that he was trying to save, and she was, at this point, no different than a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound sandbag.
“Tony, I’m going to try to hoist Hui up on the platform. In one-sixth gravity, she won’t really weigh all that much, maybe sixty pounds, but it’ll be a bulky sixty pounds to push up. Here goes.”
Stetson leaned forward and pulled Hui upright. He lifted her apparently lifeless body over his shoulder and maneuvered himself toward the side of the elevator closest to the platform above. He then took a deep breath and
