“I can’t bite through,” said Father. “The metal’s impermeable.”
“What do we do?” said Toron.
“Vico, get the heat extractor here at the base of this grappling arm,” said Father. “We’ll suck the heat off of it. Freezing it will make it brittle.”
Victor moved quickly, attaching the claw of the heat extractor around the narrow grappling arm. Then he watched the meter as the heat of the arm quickly dropped.
After ten seconds, Father said, “Good enough. Take it off.”
Victor snapped the claw free, and pulled the extractor away. Father was instantly at the frozen spot with the shears again. This time the shears bit through, but instead of tearing, the metal cracked, splintered, and then shattered. The entire grappling arm snapped free and hovered there in space a moment before Father pushed it away from the ship.
One arm down. Three to go. Plus the drills.
“That one next,” said Father, indicating the grappling arm two meters to their right. Victor began crawling for it, following Father, sliding his knee magnets across the smooth surface, keeping himself low and his grip on the pod secure. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision stopped him. He turned toward the nose of the pod and saw a hatch open. A figure emerged wearing a pressure suit and helmet. It wasn’t human. It was three-quarters the size of a human, with a double set of arms and a pair of legs. All six appendages stuck to the surface as the creature shuffle-crawled forward with incredible speed, racing toward them, an air hose trailing behind it.
Victor couldn’t move. His whole body was rigid with fear.
The thing paused, lifted its head, and regarded them. Victor saw its face then. It wasn’t an insect exactly- there was skin and fur and musculature. But it was antlike. Large black eyes. Small mouth, with pincers and protuberances like teeth. Two superciliary antennae that bent downward across its face.
“Son hormigas,” said Toron. They’re ants.
The creature moved its head, eyeing their equipment. Then, seeing that Victor had the largest piece, the heat extractor, and perhaps the most threatening, the hormiga shot forward toward Victor with its first set of arms raised.
Victor cried out. And just before the arms seized him, the blunt end of a pair of shears struck the hormiga on the side of the head, knocking it away. It was Toron. “Help your father! I’ll hold it back.”
The creature slid away and then tumbled off the ship, spinning into space. Its air hose snapped taut and held firm, however, and as soon as the hormiga got its bearings, it shimmied up the hose like it was climbing a pole and was back on the surface of the pod. Toron hurried to the hose and severed it with a quick snip of the shears. Air poured from the hose, and the creature lunged at Toron, pinning him to the surface.
Victor moved to intercede, but Father was quicker, crawling past him and lunging at the creature. “Get the extractor on that grappling arm,” Father yelled. “Now!”
Victor moved for the arm and snapped the claw around the base of it. He cranked the setting up to maximum and pulled out as much heat as he could. He looked back to Father and Toron and saw that the creature was gone, knocked off the ship by one of them. Toron was on his back, his knee magnets turned around to the back of his legs, holding his lower body against the hull. Father was kneeling over him, clinging to the stomach of Toron’s suit.
“Victor. Help me,” said Father.
Victor hurried over and saw at once that Toron was badly wounded. The front of Toron’s suit over his abdomen was ripped and bloody. Father was trying desperately to hold the punctured suit closed. Toron was coughing up blood into his helmet, and his eyes weren’t focused.
“What do I do?” said Victor.
“We need to seal the suit,” said Father. “Hurry.”
Victor tore at his hip pouch for the tape.
Every suit had a fail-safe system inside it in case of a puncture: Straps would tighten and rings of airtight foam would inflate inside the suit to seal off the punctured area and prevent an oxygen leak. Without these emergency sealants, you’d quickly lose all air pressure and die in fifteen to thirty seconds. The problem was, the seals were never perfect. Air always seeped out, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but air always found a way. If anything, the sealants were designed to give you a few extra minutes at most to get back inside the ship before you asphyxiated or your body fluids began to boil. Tape could help seal the puncture if the hole was small enough, but it wasn’t the golden solution, especially on a puncture as big as Toron’s.
Victor found the tape and hit the mechanism on the side to eject a foot-long strip of adhesive.
“Put it here,” said Father, “where my fingers are. Hurry.”
The suit was red and wet, and the tape wasn’t sticking because of the fluid.
“We have to stop the bleeding first,” said Victor. “We have to put pressure on the wound.”
“He’s losing air,” said Father.
“He’ll bleed to death if we seal the suit,” said Victor.
A hand grabbed Victor’s arm. It was Toron, looking up at him. “You find my daughter. You keep looking. You make sure I don’t die in vain.”
“You’re not going to die. We’re going to get you back,” said Victor, though he knew it wasn’t true.
Toron tried to smile. “Don’t think so.”
“Put your hand on the wound and hold it there,” Father said to Victor. “I’ll try to seal your hand inside the suit.”
Toron turned his head to Father. “Always trying to fix things, eh, cousin? This one’s even beyond you.” He coughed again, and winced, then gasped from the pain of it. Father held his hand. The pain passed, and when Toron spoke again his voice was strained and weak. “Save the ship. Save Lola and Edimar. Promise me that.”
“I promise,” said Father.
“I was hard on Edimar. I was a bad father.”
“Stop talking,” said Father gently.
Toron winced again.
Father handed Victor the shears. “Cut the grappling arm.”
Victor hesitated. He didn’t want to leave Toron.
“Do it now, Vico,” said Father.
Victor moved, crawling across the surface. He pulled the claw of the heat extractor away. The metal was cracked and brittle. Victor turned on the shears, and the second grappling arm snapped away.
“Don’t stop,” said Father. “Take out one of the needle drills next. No matter what happens, keep going. Break off as much as you can.”
A second figure emerged from the hatch. Father had the other pair of shears in his hand. He rushed the creature, staying low, jabbing the shears forward. Victor reached the drill. It was narrower than the arm. He snapped the claw around it and waited for the heat extractor to do its work, sucking the heat away. Victor glanced to the side and saw Father fighting the creature. Father kept lunging with the shears, but the creature was easily swatting the attacks aside. If Victor didn’t help, the creature would soon get the upper hand.
Victor glanced back at the extractor. It was done. Victor quickly removed the claw and snipped with the shears. The drill snapped free, and Victor pushed it away before glancing again at Father. The creature was off the ship, dangling in space at the end of its hose, not moving, its body mangled from the shears. Father crawled forward and snipped the hose, severing the creature from the ship.
“Are you hurt?” asked Victor.
Father sounded winded. “No. Keep going.”
Victor went to the next drill. Froze it. Snipped it. Pushed it away.
They were approaching El Cavador. Victor could see it far ahead in the distance. Father was at the hatch, looking inside. It was a small hole, too narrow for his shoulders. “There’s another one inside,” he said.
Father reached in with the shears. There was a struggle. Father’s arms jerked right and left. The creature had incredible strength, and for a moment Victor feared that the magnets anchoring Father to the surface of the ship would break their hold and Father would be slung out into space.
But the magnets held, and Father continued to lunged downward, fierce and fast.
Finally the struggling stopped. Father exhaled, coughed, and sounded exhausted. “It’s dead,” he said. He shined a light down into the hole. “I think this is the cockpit. I don’t see any other way to get into this room except through this hatch. No doors. No access points. I think these three were the entire crew.”
