volatiles on Whirlygig, but the surface temperature at polar midwinter would be cold enough to liquefy methane.
Peron and Elissa had been too engrossed in their conversation to make the best speed from the equator, and they arrived last. The others were already landed, clustered around the dome. Sy, Lum and Rosanne were inspecting the entry airlock, without touching any part of the door. Kallen and Wilmer were away around the back, on the opposite side of the dome, looking at something on the wall.
Elissa stepped close to see what Sy was doing. “Problems?”
Lum turned and nodded. “Wondered when you two would get here. Problems. Maybe we won’t have a pleasant night out of our suits after all.”
Sy was still crouched over by the door. He seemed rather pleased to be faced with the new challenge.
“See, here’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said. “There’s an airlock with an inner and outer door. The outer door, this one here, has a fail-safe on it, so it won’t open when there’s any gas pressure in the airlock. First you have to pump out the lock to near vacuum, and you can do it from outside. That’s this control, on the outside wall. When we arrived, there was atmosphere in the airlock, so naturally it wouldn’t open. We pumped it out — the pumps work fine — but it still won’t open.”
“Motor failure?” asked Peron.
“Could be. The next step is to try to open it manually. But we want to be sure we know what we’re doing. Over on the other side of the dome there’s a big patch of black sealant. Suggests there was a meteor impact, and the self-repairing system took care of it. But we don’t know what that may have done to the inside until we get there. And we don’t know how much damage the mechanical systems may have suffered. Maybe the meteor hit the lock, too. We’ll have to get in and find out.”
Peron stepped forward to peer at the door. It appeared quite intact. “You’re sure there’s no pressure now in the airlock?”
“Positive. The gauge there is working. It showed pressure when we arrived, and as we pumped it went down to zero.”
“So it should be safe enough to open manually,” added Lum. “We were preparing to do that when you two arrived. Come on, another pair of hands may help a lot.” The outer door of the lock gave grudgingly, as Sy, Lum, and Peron jerked hard at it. Finally it was about halfway open, almost enough to admit a person. “My turn now,” said Rosanne. “I couldn’t be much use in the tugging and heaving part, but I’m thin enough to get in there where you fatties can’t, and see what’s going on. Give me room.”
She came to the lock door, turned sideways, and began to crab carefully into the opening.
Peron was standing just behind her. He heard Sy’s warning yell at the same moment as the thought came into his own head. Idiots! If we know the outer door isn’t working right, why assume that the controls for the inner one are any better?
He leaned forward, took Rosanne around the waist and with one movement propelled her back and sideways, away from the open outer door of the lock. He heard a gasp of surprise and annoyance over her radio as Rosanne skittered away across the silver-and-brown surface. Then before he could follow her, a great force took him and drove him end-over-end across the jagged rocks.
Even as he was jerked and battered inside his suit, his own thoughts remained quite clear. The inner door seal must have been already broken, ready to fail and hanging on a thread. So long as there was an equalizing pressure in airlock and dome, there was no problem. But once they had pumped down the pressure in the lock, the inner door had tons of air pressure exerted upon it. If it failed, all the dome’s gases would be released in one giant blow-out through the lock. And for anyone standing in the way…
Peron was spinning and ricocheting from one rock formation to the next. He felt three separate and shattering collisions, one on the chest, one on the head, and one across his hip. Then, quite suddenly, it was over. He was lying supine on the surface, staring at the ruby orb of Cassby and surprised to find that he was still alive.
The others came crowding round him, helping him to his feet. He was amazed to see that he was almost fifty meters away from the dome. Rosanne had picked herself up and was waving to show that she was all right.
“I’m all right, too,” said Peron.
There was a long, strange silence from the others. At last Peron noticed a faint, ominous chill on the lower left side of his abdomen. He looked down. His suit there was dreadfully buckled and splintered from chest to thighs, and over his abdomen it showed white instead of the usual metallic gray.
“Air supply working, but he’s lost two tanks.” That was Lum, his voice oddly distorted, from behind him. The suit radio had taken a beating, but it still functioned after a fashion.
“No problem, he can share ours.”
“Motor controls look all right.”
“Food containers gone.”
“We can cover for that.”
“Oh-oh. Thermal system is out. And most of the suit insulation is stripped from the lower torso.”
“That’s a worse problem.”
His radio’s distortion was so bad that Peron found it hard to identify the speakers. He cut to a privacy mode. While they inspected the condition of his equipment, his own mind raced on ahead of them.
Evaluate the options.
Think!
Fourteen hours back to the equator — say that could be shaved to ten hours at maximum speed. A few minutes in the launch catapult, then another six or seven hours to ship rendezvous. Hopeless. Even with full insulation, in these temperatures the suit would protect him for only three or four hours. He’d be dead of hypothermia long before he reached the equator.
Change to a new suit? There was none. They carried spare parts for small suit components, but not for the whole thing.
Think. Bundle him into something that would keep him warm for a long time? Fine — but what? There was nothing.
Take him into the dome, replace the lost atmosphere from tanks, and raise the temperature? Maybe. They could get air in there in less than an hour. But they couldn’t generate heat fast enough. He would be able to breathe, and still he’d freeze to death.
Signal for an emergency landing at the pole of Whirlygig by a small ship? It was probably the best hope — but still too slow. Say three or four hours to prepare, then another three before it arrived here. By then Peron would be an icy corpse. Other ideas? He could find none. His mind ran on, writing its own obituary: Peron of Turcanta, twenty years old, who survived the dunes of Talimantor Desert, the night woods of Villasylvia, the Hendrack Maze, the water caverns of Charant, the Capandor glaciers, the abyssal depths of the Lackro Trench… who had lived on, to freeze on Whirlygig. His name would be added to that list of names that the government never mentioned, the unfortunates who died in the off-planet final trials of the Planetfest games.
Peron turned his suit back to general receiving mode.
“We’re agreed, then,” a clear voice was saying. “Nothing any of us can think of would do it in time?”
The distortion of the damaged radio changed the tone of the voice. Peron came back from his own somber thoughts, and found to his surprise that the speaker was Wilmer.
“Looks that way.” That was obviously Lum speaking. “We called the ship and they’ll have something here as soon as they can, but it will probably be eight hours. Sy did a rough heat loss estimate from the condition of the suit, and calculates that we have a couple of hours to do something — three at the outside.” “Damnation.”
My thoughts exactly, said Peron to himself, amazed by his own calm. Damnation. But what was happening to Wilmer? After tagging along as a good-natured mystery and non-contestant through all the games, he was suddenly the dominant figure of the group. The others were actually deferring to him, letting him control them. Peron had a sudden insight. It was simple shock. Shock had overwhelmed all of them; but somehow Wilmer and he, Peron, the source of all the concern and the one who was condemned to die, could distance themselves from the emotion. He caught sight of Elissa’s horrified face through the faceplate of her suit, and gave her an encouraging smile. Kallen had tears in his eyes, and even Sy had lost that remote look of calm confidence.
“No other ideas?” went on Wilmer. “Right. Give me a hand. Peron, I want to talk to you. The rest of you, I
