Adrift, page 4
“Pressure suits,” he explained matter-of-factly. “I looked, but there weren’t any small enough for you. We’re going to have to figure it out. And check out what else I found!” He lifted his newly free hand and shook a small red box. Heavy, metallic clunks followed the motion and Kivi felt a spark of excitement. It was a tool box.
She picked one up. It was really heavy. He was right, of course. Everything was too big for her. Kivi poked at the suit, examining how it fit together. There were lots of buckles. Tron knelt down beside her and pointed to a couple of places where they could detach a section and make it smaller. They went to work quickly. When they were done, it still didn’t fit. But at least she could see out of the bubble head, and the arms weren’t entirely impossible to work with. That meant she wasn’t useless.
Tron positioned himself to the left of the door, his own suit securely on and fitting exactly the way it was supposed to. Kivi stood right in front of it, ready to run inside when he opened it. The weight of the suit was incredible. She was pretty sure she’d only be able to manage a slow shuffling walk, but Kivi was determined to get into the airlock as fast as she could. It wasn’t going to be a slow leak of air this time, it would be a great blast. The faster they made it through, the better.
“It should just be me,” she announced, surprising herself as much as him.
“What?” His voice sounded funny. It was coming through an intercom like the ones in the ship, only better.
Tron asked that a lot. It was better than ignoring her. “I am good with machines,” she told him. That wasn’t really true. She was great with machines, and she knew it. But her momma told her it wasn’t good to brag. Kivi wasn’t exactly sure what constituted bragging, but she didn’t want to upset Tron and make him stop listening to her, so she was trying to be careful. “Are you?”
“No,” he admitted. “You can do this alone?”
That surprised Kivi. She was used to people questioning her. She didn’t talk much, and most people seemed to think that was because she didn’t know anything. When she realized that, she tried to talk more but she didn’t like it. So she stopped. Even when she did talk, everyone was so busy ignoring her or being uncomfortable that they never took the time to believe her. That’s why no one would give her a schematic of the engine. If they had, she never would’ve gone in there and maybe everything would still be okay. But Tron didn’t seem to be doubting her. It seemed like he was asking for her honest opinion.
She thought about his question for a while. Could she do it alone? She hadn’t seen the machine like he did, so she had no way of knowing. But she had never seen the inside of the intercom, the first time she pulled one apart. And she put that back together again without anyone ever knowing. The intercom might not be as important as this, but it had been amazingly complex. She’d daydreamed about all the circuits for almost a week before she taken it apart again. The hook might be more difficult to sort out than that, but Kivi didn’t think so. The intercom had to do two things: receive and transmit sounds, while filtering out as much background noise as possible. This attachment would only be doing one: staying attached. She thought.
Really though, even if she was wrong about how hard it was, Kivi knew she wasn’t wrong about the right way to do it. If he came in, that would be even more time that the door was open. Even if everything went right, until they figured out how to get the engine moving again that wasn’t something they should be risking. She needed less space to get through the door, even with the bulky suit on. Plus, he wasn’t good with machines. There wasn’t anything he could add to the work.
“Maybe.”
He made a face at her through the bubble head. “That’s not very convincing.”
“Having you there won’t make it more likely.”
Tron sighed. He did that a lot. Most people did. “Alright pipsqueak. Get it done.”
“You’ll be here?” She asked. “In case I need you?”
He considered her for a while. Then the bubble moved up and down in a strange sort of nod. “I’ll be in shouting distance. Promise.”
Kivi nodded too, though her bubble didn’t move. Her head wasn’t big enough to move the helmet. That was good. She might need to get out of there fast. She didn’t want to get sucked out into the black. Besides, she liked having Tron near. She didn’t worry about the bad things so much with him around. He was distracting.
She tensed herself, ready to run as hard as she could once the door opened. For a second nothing happened. Then, just like the last time he pulled the door, they were hit with a blast of air rushing past them into the vacuum of space. Kivi was surprised at how much this helped her move. She wasn’t running, not really, but she was going through at a pretty fast clip. Less than a minute later, she was through and he was pulling the door closed again.
Her stomach clenched as it slid closed behind her. For a second, she was going to call out and ask him to let her back in. It wasn’t necessarily the same people that attacked who had them, after all. For all they knew, this was a rescue ship filled with nice people who were going to make everything okay again.
Then she saw the machine. Kivi smiled as she scooted forward. She laid down the tool box Tron had found beside the contraption of red-painted metal plates and dark black wires and opened it almost reverantly. She couldn’t wait to run her hands over the insides and feel all the moving parts and how they fit together.
Kivi didn’t notice as she started humming.
Get It Done
Tron couldn’t help the smile as he heard the soft, tuneless melody coming through the speaker in the helmet. The girl was weird, there was no arguing that. He was glad for the sound, though. It kept the silence away.
He’d lied, when he said he would stay put. Well, he’d never actually said that. He promised to stay in ‘shouting distance’ which, with the mics in the helmets, meant within fifty feet. So technically that was misleading, not lying. He felt like a jerk for doing it, but Tron was not going to talk to Kivi about what he was doing.
Med bay was just barely within the range. He’d counted it out on his way to get the pressure suits. He’d also counted out the distance to the Mess Hall. That was more like twenty-five feet. Well within his range. Tron intended this even before she offered to go into the airlock on her own. He’d been trying to figure out how to suggest it when she did it for him. Weird, without doubt, but the girl was the best kind of weird. He could get his job done while Kivi worked on hers, and she would never need to know. It was better that way.
The boots of the pressure suit were too thick for the glass. He could hear it crunching beneath his feet, but the only pain was the stuff that was already there. It was a good change. He decided that once they were done here, he was going to dig his boots out of his trunk. He should’ve thought of it before.
Dr. Geddes was heavier than Tron expected. The man was so thin. It never occurred to him that it would be difficult to pull the body out of the corner, let alone across the room. He shifted the corpse around until he had locked his arms around Geddes’s chest, holding it against him like some kind of strange backward hug. Then he walked the body backward across the Med Bay and out the door.
The crunching glass followed them out into the corridor. Tron was nearly sick when he realized that it was ground into the dead man’s body. He didn’t let himself look down. He knew that if he saw the kind old man mutilated, he wouldn’t be able to swallow down the bile burning the back of his throat. So he kept walking. Ten feet to the Mess Hall.
Getting Geddes inside wasn’t too hard. He’d pulled the door open a crack when he’d passed by before. He just unlocked his hands and used the left one to push it the rest of the way. Then he was inside. But he wouldn’t look, not this time. If he looked, he was going to cry again. He couldn’t do that. Kivi would hear, just like he heard her humming. So instead of thinking about what was all around him, or about his mother’s face, he closed his eyes and just listened to that melody. Twelve steps. That should be enough. That would be all the way inside.
He cracked his eyes again, just enough to see the way out. He hurried through, closing the door without ever looking in. He leaned against the door across from the Mess for a minute, sucking in several ragged breaths. Kivi’s humming faltered, then stopped. Tron pulled off his helmet, afraid that anything she heard over the radio would give him away. For a second, there was no sound at all. Just his own gasps for air and a faint, almost inaudible hiss from the door behind him. Then the humming started again. Tron sagged with relief and put his helmet back on. He could hear her with it off, but it was easier to hear with it on. Besides, he liked the humming.
The next part was easier. It took him a little while to find a broom, which was amusing since there always seemed to be one at hand when someone wanted to punish him with cleaning duty. Rags were in abundant supply. Those he could just pull off of any bed he wanted. Still, he searched until he found one that someone else had designated for cleaning. It didn’t seem right, taking sheets off of the beds that people he knew had slept in just the night before. Once he had both, he headed back to Med Bay.
Tron had always hated sweeping. It seemed so pointless. They lived in an enclosed space. Any dirt he swept up would just end up back there again a few days later. They were dirty creatures, people, and spending time pretending that was otherwise just seemed like a waste of time. But this was different. This time, he wasn’t cleaning. He was fixing.
They were going to need the med bay. Tron knew that as surely as he knew that his heart was beating. Lucy wasn’t designed to be taken care of by two people, and even if they figured out how to get it running again, they wouldn’t be able to follow proper safety procedures to keep it working. If they even knew those procedures. It wasn’t like either one of them was trained for something like this. If they didn’t turn the engine back on, they would need to find some kind of drug that would kill them fast. Or he would. Tron had no intention of dying gasping. Either way, it was only a matter of time before this room was needed. Tron wasn’t going to walk through glass again.
Once the floor was clean, he did a more thorough search of every cabinet. It took a little work, getting them open, but he figured out the trick eventually. After that, the work went a lot quicker. There were more bottles with pills in them than he’d thought the first time. Tron didn’t know what any of them were, but it was a start. Maybe one of them would be useful, maybe even save one of their lives. It was worth looking. He just wished there were more of them. All of what was left fit into a single cabinet.
He collected more bandages and a salve that said it was for cuts and scrapes. He wasn’t sure that the deep cuts on his feet were exactly what the salve was designed for, but Tron figured it couldn’t hurt. Or rather, it could, but not much worse than it was already. These he tucked into a drawer near the door, so that he could find them later. He was sure he would want them before he slept, so he made sure they were easy to find. Finally, he straightened the chairs, placing them back in the same spots Geddes always had them in, and put the padded table back in corner where the doctor had died. He wasn’t sure he wanted to lay over that spot, but he couldn’t imagine putting it somewhere else. This place wasn’t his to rearrange. Once he was sure he had the med bay looking as good as it ever would, he headed back to the hatch.
Almost the moment he made it, the humming stopped again. Kivi made an odd sort of squeak, and Tron’s heart missed a beat. He tensed, expecting a scream as she was sucked out into space. He was so ready for it, that when she whooped, it took him a moment to realize the sound was victory rather than her death. It wasn’t until she started laughing that he recognized what he was really hearing.
“You got it?” He hoped he didn’t sound half as panicked as he felt.
“That was cool.”
Tron wondered if she’d ever sounded so much like a fifteen year old girl. Probably not. “Glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself. Does that mean you got it?”
“Yeah!” She sounded positively pleased. “I thought I needed to rewire the whole thing, but all I really had to cut the fuel line. I don’t know why the thing needed power. All it was doing was holding us. A rope does the same thing. But it needed power, and once all the fuel drained out it just kind of retracted. Then the outer door slammed shut and almost took off my hands. I wonder if it’s on a separate power circuit. Maybe I can tap into that and get us a little bit of atmo.”
It was, without a doubt, the most he’d ever heard her speak. Or heard of her speaking, for that matter. It might’ve been the door almost crushing her hands, and the adrenaline that was sure to produce, but Tron suspected it was her time fiddling with the machine that had her so excited.
“Well good for you, precious. Wanna come back in?”
She giggled, and he the sound almost struck him dead with shock. “Yes please.”
Tron jerked open the door the same small crack he had before, slamming it shut the instant she was back inside. There was another rush of air, but it didn’t seem as violent as the last time. He was glad for that, because he wasn’t sure the girl had the strength to walk against such a blast. He’d been prepared to go in and drag her out, but it wasn’t necessary at all. If she didn’t have the pressure suit on, he thought she might have skipped out of the airlock. Even with it, Kivi seemed to have a bounce to her step. “Have fun, did you?”
She tipped her head up, but she did it too quickly and the whole suit started toppling backward. Tron reached out and dropped a gloved hand on the top of her helmet before she could go crashing back. Kivi didn’t even seem to notice.
“Yes!” As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she seemed to remember where she was. He watched as the joy faded from her face, and the lines of worry reappeared on a face too young for such creases. “I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Don’t worry about it kid. You got the job done. That’s what we needed. Doesn’t matter if you loved every second or spent the whole time trying not to be sick all over yourself.”
She nodded gravely, as if it were the most profound thing she’d ever heard. Then she knocked his hand away and turned back to the door he’d just closed. She jerked off her helmet and leaned right up against the wall, her ear millimeters away from the metal.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Listening,” Kivi answered. “Quiet.”
Tron took off his own helmet, unhooked his gloves, and started unbuckling the collar of the suit while he waited for Kivi to explain what she was listening for. He started to worry that she’d lost it – assuming she’d had it to begin with – and was about to say so, when she turned back to him with a smile. “No more hissing.”
“Huh?”
“There was hissing before. Air, leaking past the seal of the door. But now the outer door is closed and the seal there is good. So no more hissing.”
Tron felt the color drain from his face as he remembered the sound that had barely registered as he leaned against the wall outside the mess. Was it just his imagination? It could’ve been. He was upset and trying not to give himself away. It might even have been a noise he was making himself. But he knew better. No amount of rationalizing was going to make it untrue.
“Shit,” he muttered. “We’ve got another problem.”
The Leak
Kivi kept tripping and catching herself on Tron as they went, which was doing horrible things to his balance. The suits were heavy. He almost dropped his gloves twice. Kivi slowed as they got close, until he was practically dragging her. He understood her reluctance. God, did he ever. But he didn’t want to leave her behind, only to find out that he needed her help. He also just didn’t want to leave her behind. Somehow, he managed to get them both to the mess and get himself put together.
Neither one of them had their helmets on as they leaned close to the door to food storage. Tron had barely heard it before, and they needed to make sure it was real before they went charging in. If it had been his imagination, there was nothing to worry about. Not any more then when they opened every other door in Lucy. Which, now that he was thinking about it, suddenly seemed a lot more dangerous.
It only took a few seconds to determine that it wasn’t all in his head. Tron swallowed most of the cursing, but a few words slipped out. The seals were supposed to protect them from stuff like this. The people that had built this ship were long dead. At one fifth light speed travel, every year for Lucy and her passengers equated to some fists full of decades back on Earth. He’d read the math once, but math was never something he’d cared about and so the equation was lost from his memory. Regardless, long dead. But if he could, he would go back there and pound on their bones until they were dust for being so bad at their jobs.
He took up the same position he’d used at the hatch as they both locked their helmets into place. “Ready?”
Kivi took a slow breath. “Are you coming in?”
Tron didn’t need to consider the answer. If there was something broken inside the room, something that wasn’t just a machine waiting to be poked at, there was no way Kivi would be able to handle it on her own. The girl was barely strong enough to hold her suit up. It would mean more of their life slipping out into the black. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to miss anything cool this time.” She nodded.
Tron silently counted to three. Then he jerked the door open. Just like at the hatch, a blast of air shot past them. It pushed them both inside quickly. It seemed like more of a struggle to close it than the hatch had been, but Kivi didn’t waste any time adding her own weight to his efforts. With the suit on, that amounted to something. Once the door was closed, he turned to look at the rest of the room.
In the place they’d once stored all their non-perishable food stores, there was now nothing but space. Almost without thinking about it, Tron slowly walked to look out the gaping hole in Lucy’s hull.
