“No,” I breathed. “No, I’m all right. It’s just a bit of an adjustment.” Jason chuckled, the laugh muted from inside the heavy hazmat suit.
“All right. It’s an open radio connection, okay? You don’t need to push any buttons or anything.” He turned to address the two of us. “Here’s how we’re going to run this. A couple of us will open the inner door for you and step back. You’ll go over the threshold and give us an all clear. Then we’ll seal the door behind you and it’s all on our friend Odysseus here. If you have a problem, you radio back to us and we’ll get the door open for you straight away.”
“You mean like if there’s a giant monster waiting out there for us?” Nicole joked, casting a quick look at me. The team laughed.
“Exactly. Now let us wish godspeed to our furry companion. May he journey safely and return to us in one piece!” More laughter from the team. I picked up Odysseus’s cage and turned to face the door. Two team members steeped in front of us and braced themselves hard against the door as they ratcheted the handle around. With a hiss, the inner door opened.
It was like stepping into nothingness. There were no lights in the airlock, of course, and the meager lighting attached to our suits only provided flashlight beams worth of illumination. Nicole touched my arm gently, and I nodded. We stepped through to the threshold of the door and I held my breath.
“We’re all good here, Jason. You can close ‘er back up.” Nicole radioed back to the team.
“Good luck out there, Odysseus.” The door slammed so forcefully that I jumped. I leaned down to shine my flashlight on the ground and gasped. Inches in front of me was earth. Real, earth. I bent down as carefully as I could in the bulky suit and ran my fingers through the dirt. A deep ache settled in my gut. I resolved that I would once again breathe the free air before I died. Even if we found that it was still toxic outside, I was determined to die in the light of the sun, not of the infirmary, when the time came.
“Holy shit.” I scooped up some dirt and showed it to Nicole, who marveled at it like it was a handful of gold. She was third generation. The children who had never seen the surface. I stepped off the steel plating that secured the doorway in place and heard the soft crunch of dirt and rocks under my feet. “My god.” Tears came to my eyes unbidden. I wished so much that I could take the damned helmet off. The urge to smell the fresh ground and feel it under my ungloved fingers was overwhelming. Before us lay a long stairwell, stretching away from the dim illumination of our headlamps. Made of the same thick metal of the shelter’s door, those steps would ferry us to our new destiny.
The climb felt endless. Nicole and I were breathless once we reached the outer door, the weight of the equipment heavy on our shoulders. Odysseus had noticed the change in altitude as well and squeaked furiously. Did the little mouse think we were getting ready to feed him to a predator? Or did he smell the freedom that generations of his ancestors never knew? I could relate to that feeling.
“Let’s get the door open.” Nicole took Odysseus’s cage from me and set it on the dirt. The mouse shot to the edge of the cage, his nose working furiously. We followed the example of the team and set our bodyweight against the cold steel while we pulled peg over peg. Just as I started to break a sweat, we heard a crack and a hiss as the chamber decompressed. We pushed the door open and took in the landscape before us.
There was so much more out here than I had seen in the cameras. Green grass covered the better part of the surrounding area. I could see mountains in the far distance. The sun was blindingly bright to our eyes, and I held up a hand to shield my face. We both glanced back at Odysseus who had now taken to squeaking madly, the upper half of his body raised from the cage’s floor as he sniffed the air. His little eyes squinted against the harsh light of the sunshine.
“I guess that’s a good sign,” Nicole laughed nervously. I went to my pack and pulled out the strip of sensor tape the team had designed, along with a small machine that would dispense a piece of bait as soon as we had visual confirmation of Odysseus’s return. We set them up and brought Odysseus to the edge of his new world.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready. Godspeed, little fellow.” She opened the cage door and we watched as Odysseus shot from its confines, sprinting into the grass.
“I envy him,” I said. We stayed a moment longer, watching the wind rustle through the landscape. Shutting the outer door again felt like sealing ourselves away in a casket. I knocked ‘shave and a haircut-two bits’ on the second door and it hissed as it opened again. This time there were only two people inside, clad in what looked like surgical gear. I recognized one of them as Jason.
“Okay folks, we’re going to do this nice and simple, all right? Hang tight right there while we spray you down. He and the other person stepped forward with two hoses that sprayed us down with an orange liquid. When that was finished, they instructed us to wait two minutes. “Right,” Jason said once the liquid had dried on our suits. “Nicole, you already know this but for Jacob’s benefit we’re gonna model for you what order the gear should come off in.” Jason and his comrade extended their arms in a T shape.
“Boots first. As soon as you get them off, you can
