Hui said something to the engineer in Chinese that immediately drew an angry response. Zhi lashed out with the gun and hit Dr. Xu across the cheek, sending the doctor tumbling toward the outer edge of the ship’s interior. Small red droplets were now floating in the air around Dr. Xu.
Zhi spat while he steadied his motion and spoke, this time in English. “I will not be humiliated. I will not allow our great country to be humiliated. We should have just died a hero’s death on the Moon. Now the world will bestow upon you the honor that should have been ours! You failed us, Captain!” Zhi turned to face Captain Hui and said, “You never had the courage to do what was required.”
Stetson could tell from Zhi’s countenance and posture that he was not bluffing. While he was looking at the Chinese taikonaut, Stetson moved his hands behind his back and slightly to the right, skimming over the control panel until they found one of the few actual switches still used on human spaceflight—the one that would turn off the automatic pilot.
When the system beeped, acknowledging that the command had been received, Zhi abruptly turned toward Stetson and shouted something as his fingers tightened on the trigger of the handgun.
Before he was able to fire the gun, the ship’s attitude-control thrusters fired in rapid bang-bang succession, causing the entire ship to begin tumbling.
The gun discharged, and the bullet barely missed hitting Stetson. Instead, it struck the floor beneath his feet. As Zhi moved to reorient himself and brought the gun up to fire again, Stetson launched himself across the room directly toward him. Simultaneously, Dr. Xu threw himself at Zhi, striking him on the side opposite his gun hand. With Stetson and Xu trying to disarm him, Zhi simply began rapidly pulling the trigger.
A bullet struck Dr. Xu in the leg, causing him to convulse and curl into a ball. The next bullet went wild and struck the floor like the first one. Before he could fire it again, Stetson cold-cocked him on the jaw, causing the enraged Zhi to let go of the gun and rebound toward the opposite wall.
Before Zhi could recover and reorient himself in the weightlessness of the Orion’s cabin, Hui had him in a choke hold.
Stetson quickly assessed the situation in the ship. The immediate threat posed by the Chinese engineer was neutralized—Hui had him pinned almost to the point of losing consciousnesses. Based on the amount of blood spheres floating through the cabin, Dr. Xu was severely injured. Tony Chow was already with Xu and working to stop the bleeding. The injured Chinese pilot was still out cold. The ship was tumbling, thanks to the distraction of the autopilot being turned off and Stetson’s engaging the attitude-control thrusters. The ship’s radio was signaling that mission control wanted to speak with them. And then there was the matter of the three gunshots.
He said, “Captain Hui. Use some duct tape from the mechanical kit to tie up your friend. It ought to hold him. I’ve got to figure out what’s happened and why the screen looks like a Christmas tree.”
“Bill! You need to see this.” Chow looked up from Dr. Xu’s injured leg and motioned toward the hundreds of perfectly spherical red balls of blood circling in the air near the center of the crew cabin.
Stetson looked toward the blood and didn’t like what he saw. The spheres were moving toward the center of the Orion and swirling slowly around each other as they also moved toward the floor. As they neared the floor, they swirled around each other in a tighter circle, moving faster and faster, until they finally disappeared. A miniature funnel cloud had formed in the Orion, with the tip of the funnel being a hole in the floor made by one of Zhi’s bullets. They were losing air.
Stetson quipped, “That explains one of the alarms.” He moved toward the hole to get a closer look.
“I’ll use the patch kit. We have it aboard in case of a micro-meteor strike.” He moved to one of the storage bins along the outside wall of the capsule and opened a compartment. Inside the compartment was a small container filled with what looked like Silly Putty. The kit was standard issue aboard the Orion and designed for the purpose of repairing damage caused by a tiny meteor or orbital debris. Space was filled with small meteors, and, over time, the probability of a spacecraft getting hit was large enough to consider it a serious threat. The sealant could patch a small hole and keep the Orion from losing atmosphere.
“This patch ought to work.” Stetson carefully removed the putty from the container and filled the hole. The remaining blood spheres slowly dispersed after the airflow out of the cabin stopped.
“Zhi is secure. How may I help?” asked Hui.
Stetson looked toward the Chinese captain and saw that she had not only securely bound the renegade engineer but had taped his mouth shut as well.
“Uh…” Stetson thought for a second. “Why don’t you answer the radio while I tend to the rest of the alerts? The headset is on the control panel.”
Hui moved out from her position on the upper deck toward the control panel, eased on the headset and activated the radio.
“This is Captain Hui, speaking for Captain Stetson. Umm, how may I be of assistance?”
Stetson had to laugh and then said, “I bet they didn’t expect her to answer.”
He moved to the control panel and positioned himself only a few inches from his Chinese counterpart as she described the violence that had transpired aboard the ship to the ground crew back in Texas.
Stetson looked at the myriad of ship-status alerts and slowly turned them off, one by one, until only a few orange lights remained. None of them were still red, which meant the ship was not in imminent danger.
“Captain Stetson, your mission controllers wish to speak with you.” Hui slipped the headset from her head and handed it to him.
Stetson declined the headset, switched the audio to the loudspeaker, and said, “This is Stetson.”
“Bill, we were more than a little surprised to hear Captain Hui answer our call. We’ve been trying to reach you for quite some time. She says that you have everything under control and that the hole in the floor is sealed. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
