shoved. As he was lifting, his right foot slipped suddenly backward, causing him to lose his balance. He and Hui’s body wavered and slipped to one side, running into the wire wall of the elevator and then tumbling to its floor.
“That didn’t work so well,” Stetson muttered under his breath.
Without any more hesitation, he grabbed Hui and tried again. This time neither foot slipped and Hui’s upper body did land on the platform. But it didn’t stay there. As Stetson shifted his hands to push on her lower body, she slipped off and fell back on top of Stetson, once again causing him to lose his footing and fall backward into the wire wall.
“There’s got to be a better way. I need a rope or something.”
“A rope? We’ve got a rope. It’s with the surface-exploration kit that we’re throwing overboard. I can get it in the airlock in just a few minutes. Leave her on the platform and come on up. I’ll cycle the airlock so you can come in and get it.”
“I don’t see another way.” Stetson was already lowering Hui gently to the elevator floor. “On my way.”
Looking like a comic-book character, Stetson bent his knees and sprang upward toward the platform in a maneuver that would have been simply impossible to achieve under normal gravity conditions. The upper two-thirds of his body landed on the platform and bounced almost a foot in the air. He had to quickly reach out and grab one of the crisscrossed diagonal beams on the walkway next to where he landed to keep from falling back down to the elevator.
“I feel like the Michelin Man. Somebody’s got to invent a better damned spacesuit!”
Stetson pulled himself up and walked quickly toward the closed airlock door. Just as he arrived, the door opened slightly, and he saw a cloud of dust poof outward around the edges. Tony had vented the airlock so Stetson could quickly get the tether he needed to save Captain Hui. He reached down, grabbed the tether, and started back toward the stuck elevator.
“Bill, I just lost communication with Dr. Xu. He just lost power in his suit while we were talking. I bet that probably means that the injured pilot has lost power also.”
“Great. Just great. Thanks for telling me. We’ve got to move faster.”
While talking, Stetson maneuvered himself back to the upper portion of the platform and clipped one end of the tether to a support strut. He tossed the other end down onto the elevator platform next to Hui’s body. Taking a pose that would appear very awkward on the live television feed from the external cameras, Stetson dropped onto his stomach with his legs dangling in the open space above the elevator platform. He then lowered himself back down. It was not graceful, but it worked.
He quickly secured the tether to Hui’s suit and attached it to where he thought its Chinese equivalent tether would be designed to attach. Though he was tempted to peer again through the visor to assess Hui’s condition, he did not. There was simply no time.
He again hoisted himself up from the elevator and onto the platform. This time, he was not so ungainly. Once there, he looped the tether around a nearby strut to provide some mechanical advantage, and began to pull. It was not the smoothest of ascents—Hui’s body dangled to and fro and even banged into the sides of the elevator cage as it rose toward the open top and to within Stetson’s reach. Once she was just below the platform, he secured the tether.
Since she was now tied into position, he didn’t have to worry about dropping her, and he could concentrate on grabbing her suit in the right place to hoist her up and to safety. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he was able to get her up and on the platform with him. He was out of breath.
He disconnected her from the tether and carried her to the airlock. Once she was inside, propped against the inner door like a rag doll, he quickly backed out and closed the outer door. He then said into his radio, “Tony. She’s in the airlock. Get her inside as quickly as you can.”
“Roger.”
Stetson grabbed the tether and moved quickly to the ladder that led to the ground. Looking down and wondering how he and Dr. Xu were going to get the pilot up to the top deck, he again cursed the engineers who designed the lander with the crew compartment so far off the ground, this time with the microphone off. “Jackasses.”
By the time Stetson reached Dr. Xu and the motionless pilot, they had been without power for about twenty minutes.
Tony’s voice coming through the radio startled him. “Bill, I believe the captain is going to be okay. I put her on oxygen the minute I could get to her, and her color is starting to return. It was close. She’s still out cold, though.”
“That’s good news, Tony. I wish we could tell her friend here. Let’s hope we are as lucky with these two. I don’t know how long she was without power, but it can’t have been very long or she would have been dead.”
Not wasting any time, Stetson had been working with the doctor in pulling Ming Feng up from the lunar surface and placing his bulky spacesuit arms over their shoulders. He looked over at the Chinese doctor and saw from the look on his face through the suit’s visor that he was ready to go.
Hearing only his breathing, Stetson and Dr. Xu walked across the dimly lit lunar surface toward the Altair lander. The walk seemed to be taking a long time to Stetson; he could only imagine how long it seemed to the doctor. Finally, they reached the base of the lander.
“Tony. I’m trying to tell the doctor to take the end of the tether and to start climbing the ladder. But without a radio, I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Bill! Touch your faceplates and scream!”
“Think that’ll work?”
“Try it.”
“Okay.” Bill faced the Chinese astronaut and leaned his faceshield over until they touched. At first Dr. Xu started to back away, but Stetson shouted as they came into contact, and the man paused. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, but barely.”
