Monster storm, he thought as he opened the oxy tank’s valve and went jetting after the drifting figure. But instead of flying straight and true, the tank started spinning wildly, whirling around like an insane pinwheel. Harry hung on like a cowboy clinging to a bucking bronco.
The earphones were absolutely silent, nothing but a background hiss. Harry guessed that the super had blanked all their outgoing calls, keeping the frequency available for himself to give orders. He tried to talk to the super, but he was speaking into a dead microphone.
He’s cut me off. He doesn’t want me in this, Harry realized.
Then the earphones erupted. “Who the hell is that? Harry, you shithead, is that you? Get your ass back here!”
Harry really wanted to, but he couldn’t. He was clinging as hard as he could to the whirling oxy tank, his eyes squeezed tight shut again. The bile was burning up his throat. When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was riding the spinning tank into the eye of the monster storm down on Earth.
He gagged. Then retched. Dry heaves, hot acid bile spattering against the inside of his bubble helmet. Death’ll be easy after this, Harry thought.
The spacesuited figure of the other worker was closer, though. Close enough to grab, almost. Desperately, Harry fired a few quick squirts of the oxygen, trying to stop his own spinning or at least slow it down some.
It didn’t help much, but then he rammed into the other worker and grabbed with both hands. The oxygen tank almost slipped out from between his legs, but Harry clamped hard onto it. His life depended on it. His, and the other guy’s.
“Harry? Is that you?”
It was Marta Santos, Harry saw, looking into her helmet. With their helmets touching, Harry could hear her trembling voice, shocked and scared.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
He had to swallow down acid before he could say, “Hold on.”
She clung to him as if they were racing a Harley through heavy traffic. Harry fumbled with the oxy tank’s nozzle, trying to get them moving back toward the habitat. At his back the mammoth tropical storm swirled and pulsated like a thing alive, beckoning to Harry, trying to pull him down into its spinning heart.
“For chrissake,” the super’s voice screeched, “how long does it take to get a rescue flitter going? I got four injured people here and two more streakin’ out to friggin’ Costa Rica!”
Harry couldn’t be certain, but it seemed that the habitat was getting larger. Maybe we’re getting closer to it, he thought. At least we’re heading in the right direction. I think.
He couldn’t really control the oxygen tank. Every time he opened the valve for another squirt of gas, the damned tank started spinning wildly. Harry heard Marta sobbing as she clung to him. The habitat was whirling around, from Harry’s point of view, but it was getting closer.
“Whattaya mean it’ll take another ten minutes?” the super’s voice snarled. “You’re supposed to be a rescue vehicle. Get out there and rescue them!”
Whoever was talking to the super, Harry couldn’t hear it. The supervisor had blocked out everything except his own outgoing calls.
“By the time you shitheads get into your friggin’ suits, my guys’ll be dead!” the super shrieked. Harry wished he could turn off the radio altogether but to do that he’d have to let go of the tank and if he did that, he’d probably go flying off the tank completely. So he held on and listened to the super screaming at the rescue team.
The habitat was definitely getting closer. Harry could see spacesuited figures floating near the endcap and the big mess of girders jammed into the skeletal structure there. Some of the girders were still floating loose, tumbling slowly end over end like enormous throwing sticks.
“Harry!”
Marta’s shriek of warning came too late. Harry turned his head inside the fishbowl helmet and saw one of those big, massive girders looming off to his left, slightly behind him, swinging down on him like a giant tree falling.
Automatically, Harry opened the oxy tank valve again. It was the only thing he could think to do as the ponderous steel girder swung down on him like the arm of an avenging god. He felt the tank spurt briefly, then the shadow of the girder blotted out everything, and Marta was screaming behind him, and then he could feel his leg crush like a berry bursting between his teeth, and the pain hit so hard that he felt like he was being roasted alive, and he had one last glimpse of the mammoth storm down on Earth before everything went black.
When Harry woke, he was pretty sure he was dead. But if this was the next world, he slowly realized, it smelled an awful lot like a hospital. Then he heard the faint, regular beeps of monitors and saw that he was in a hospital, or at least, the habitat’s infirmary. Must be the infirmary, Harry decided, once he recognized that he was floating without support, tethered only by a light cord tied around his waist.
And his left leg was gone.
His leg ended halfway down the thigh. Just a bandaged stump there. His right leg was heavily bandaged too, but it was all there, down to his toes.
Harry Sixtoes now, he said to himself. For the first time since his mother had died, he felt like crying. But he didn’t. He felt like screaming or pounding the walls. But he didn’t do that either. He just lay there, floating in the middle of the antiseptic white cubicle, and listened to the beeping of the monitors that were keeping watch over him.
He drifted into sleep, and when he awoke the supervisor was standing beside him, feet encased in the floor loops, his wiry body bobbing slightly, the expression on his face grim.
Harry blinked several times. “Hi, chief.”
“That was a damned fool thing you
