“Howard, I hear sound. But there’s no air to carry the waves.”
He stomped the ground. “The sound’s conducted through rock. The Projectile’s making noise.”
“It was supposed to be dead.”
He turned me, pulled the palm holo from the rucksack on my back, and held it against his suit. “Now we’re recording the sound.”
He dug the spectrometer out of the rucksack and clam-bered over gouged-up rubble toward the Projectile. He tugged me at the end of the cord that connected us like he was a poodle chasing a squirrel.
Pressing the spectrometer’s probe against the Projectile hull, he hummed along with the rhythmic, conducted sound, “Wah-aah, wah-aah.”
While he worked, I looked up. Forty feet above us, just a fraction of the thing’s height, I saw a circular, silver opening.
“Howard!” I pointed. “A maneuvering nozzle! Just like we found in Pittsburgh!”
He stopped humming and backed away from the hull. Standing beside me, he pointed, too. “Better. Look closer.”
I shaded my eyes with a gloved hand held above my visor. A spiral scratch crossed the nozzle and widened into a man-sized gash.
“Weakened hull section ruptured. There’s your way in, Jason.”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, the gesture invisible inside my helmet.
He just reached for my rucksack again.
I shook my whole body. “Howard, I hate heights. I hate tight, dark places worse.”
“Jason, if I could climb, I’d do it. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“Or the end of a lifetime!”
“But what a way to go!”
Four days ago I was feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t make a difference. The human race had shipped me a quarter million miles so I could make a difference. I couldn’t say no. I eyed forty feet of slick metal wall that separated me from the goal Howard had chosen and sighed. “I can’t climb that.” Pointing out impossibility wasn’t saying no.
Howard pulled from my rucksack two rubbery, black discs with looped cords on their backs. “Put these on over your gloves.”
“Howard, suction cups work on air-pressure differential. We’re in vacuum.” I was pretty proud I thought of that, even if it was an excuse to wuss.
“These are Attagrips. All-temperature temporary adhesive. You only weigh forty pounds. You’ll climb like a fly on a wall.”
“Oh.” I sighed and pressed one pad to the surface, then the other, forearms quivering. A thumb push released the right-hand pad so I could move it up the wall. Another push refastened the pad. Then I moved the left-hand pad. Howard was right. I scaled the Projectile like a holotoon superhero. Jason Wander, secret identity of Attaboy.
“Howard, what do I do when I get to the opening?”
“First, get inside. Then I’ll tell you what to get out of the rucksack and what to do with it.”
Howard couldn’t plan a coffee break. The other half of his team never finished high school. “Howard, is the human race just making this war up as we go?”
“We do our best work that way.”
The rip’s edge loomed a foot above my helmet visor. I looked down. Howard was only forty feet below, but he looked as small as a cake decoration. I took a deep breath, then another, and levered myself above the brink.
The ripped Projectile skin was two inches thick and the same blue-black color all the way through. I waited as my eyes adjusted to the dark opening. Below the skin, a six-foot lattice of metal as asymmetrical as drool strings made a sandwich filling that separated the outer skin from a second one. The inner skin wasn’t torn. I described it to Howard.
“It’s a pressure hull,” he said.
“What now?”
“Is there a door, a hatch?”
I shook my head.
“Jason? You okay?” Howard’s voice rose an octave.
Any fool who shakes his head at a microphone should be euthanized. “Howard, I don’t see—” Through the dimness I made out indented lines on the inner hull, a parasol pattern. “Wait. There’s something.”
“It’s a repair hatch. You’re in!”
“Forgot my key.”
“Oh.” He paused. “You may not need one. Crawl up to the hatch. It may fail-safe open to motion. So the repairman isn’t stranded in space in an emergency.”
What if the repairman was waiting for me on the other side of the hatch? My heart raced.
I pulled myself, all forty pounds, over the torn outer skin, careful not to snag my suit. The skin tear was three feet high. The rucksack and I were four feet thick. I pulled back outside and slipped the sack off. Then I rolled my body into the space between the hulls, dragging the sack behind me in one hand. Lying there, I felt the Projectile’s up-and-down sound vibrating through my thighs and belly.
I waved my free hand toward the parasol. Nothing. “Howard? The hatch didn’t open.”
“—whole body.”
“You’re breaking up.” Part of me hoped he’d say, well, then, come on back down. Good try. Let’s go back to the LEM and fly home. But I knew what he meant. I wormed my whole body closer to the parasol, like low- crawling under barbed wire on the infiltration course.
The parasol moved.
Its panels shot back into its rim, like a dilating camera iris.
“Howard, you were right. It opened.”
“Jas… hull interferes…”
The open hatch yawned dark and wide enough to admit me or the rucksack but not both at once. Six feet farther inside a closed door like the first sealed the tube. An air lock. I’d either have to crawl headfirst, pushing the rucksack ahead of me, or back in and drag the sack behind me. If I backed in I could see whether the outer door closed behind me. I’d be pointed the right direction to get the hell out. The inner hatch should open automatically in response to me, like the outer hatch had. Space beyond the air lock would surely be wide enough for me to turn around.
Feetfirst it was.
I got shoulder deep through the hatch, dragging the rucksack with instruments, survival gear, and the pistol, and spoke once more. “Howard? I’m going in.”
Only a crackle came back over the radio. It joined with the oddly familiar up-and-down whoop I had been listening to for the last half hour. The passage was inches wider than my space-suited shoulders. I could barely move my arms. At least backing in like this I would be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the way back outside. Headfirst into darkness would have terrified me.
I wrestled the rucksack past the outer hatch, and it snapped shut.
I shrank back into the passage and felt with my boots. The inner hatch had opened. I wormed backward, over the inner-hatch lip, then tugged the rucksack toward me. I gathered myself on knees and elbows and let go of the rucksack straps.
In the instant my hands drew back inside the hatch lip, the inner hatch snapped closed and sealed me in the dark.
Chapter Nineteen
I couldn’t see. All I could hear was my own breathing and the unceasing, rising and falling whoop. I pressed my hands on the hatch. It didn’t budge. I pounded, as hard as I dared without risking rupturing my suit. I ran my
