Time Window
by Doug Dawson
"We're under thirty-two minutes, Walt." John sounded worried.
"This job better go quick," responded Walt. "I won't last long out
he..." The Local-Com in his space suit cut out, though Walt had no way
of knowing that John could no longer hear him. His hands were freezing
cold and so was his body. Along with the intercom his temperature
regulator wasn't working, but there would be no excuses - he either
completed the job on time or he didn't. His heart sank as he surveyed
the damaged area. A micro-meteorite had hit his ship and left the
guidance system inoperable. Walt had seen what such impacts could do to
intricately ordered arrays of wiring and Navi-Com boards before - like
what a cigar burn did to the carefully applied dyes and woven threads
of a silk scarf. He unlatched his self-contained Accu-Torch from his
tool belt and tested the Flexi-Tether - it felt secure.
“Decaying orbits are a bitch,” said Walt, thinking John was still able
to hear him. “They're like bad dreams where you know you're in one but
you can't wake up. They keep accelerating and they're final.” His mind
wandered as he imagined the death spiral he might very soon find
himself in, then snapped back to the task at hand. Compu-Star’s
Time-Task-Management program had told Walt and his crew mate there was
a forty-minute time window before ignition, at which time the ship's
Auto-Navigator would fire at full thrust to save ship and crew from the
decaying orbit. If Walt was still outside the ship when ignition
commenced, the ship would lurch upward and away from IO and his tether
to the ship would most likely snap, leaving him most likely in said
decaying orbit, gradually spiraling toward the moon below. Of course,
John, endeavoring to save Walt, could put the ship on manual control,
which would leave Walt with more time to repair the ship and also might
leave all concerned too close to Jupiter’s moon to pull out of their
low orbit with the fuel they had left. But that forty-minute time frame
was back when he started, and now he had far less time than that.
Collecting tools, putting on a space suit and getting through the air
lock took time - now there was barely half an hour to locate the
rupture in the hull, survey the damage, cut through the ship's metal
skin and effect some sort of temporary repair. He knew that fixing a
smashed, burned-out guidance system with hand tools and a torch was a
joke. As he began to cut a hole around the charred metal, the
Holo-Watch in his visor projected a small 3-D pocket watch, beeped at
another of its prescribed three-minute intervals and told him audibly
there were now "twenty-four minutes" in its pleasing female alto voice.
Walt didn't sound like a name for a Tek-Ranger, but he'd been stuck
with it all his life - funny he should worry about a thing like that
now, with his life and John's on the line, not to mention one aging
United-Space-Service ship. This job was just a little too important for
his mind to be wandering and he wondered why he had such trouble
concentrating - it could only be a lack of oxygen. Not only were
communications with the ship out and frigid temperatures prevailing in
his suit, the oxygen regulator must be malfunctioning too. It was Space
Patrol's fault; nobody checked the suits anymore, as space walks were a
rarity these days. Just his luck to be flying around IO, disabled by
its halo of tiny meteorites, any of which could strike again at any
second. Not as scary as a decaying orbit around Jupiter, he thought,
but even when you circled one of its moons you were staring down at a
planetary body you could soon crash into at high speed and, let's face
it, dying is dying, no matter which orb you smash into. And just Walt
and John’s luck – to be spiraling into the most volcanically active
moon in the solar system; perhaps they’d be hurled into the open mouth
of an erupting volcano.
“Twenty-one minutes,” announced the holographic watch.
Walt managed to cut a hole around the damaged area. He looked at the
wires that connected to the ship's gyroscopes and attitude control
rockets. He couldn't believe their luck: only two wires and one
Navi-Com board looked fried - most of the meteorite apparently missed
all the complicated circuits, connections and gyros, and shattered on
one of the ship's supporting beams. With a little luck ... he felt a
searing pain in his right forearm. He'd never felt anything like it
before; it was like a bullet and a branding iron combined. He realized
it could only be another micro-meteorite, one most likely the size of a
grain of sand, but big enough to make a hole in his suit that would
aggravate the freezing temperature and lack of oxygen that were already
compromising his ability to function. As he held out his right arm and
looked at the burned wires of the guidance system, a spray of red
ice-bubbles blasted out of the tiny hole in his suit, reminding him of
a retro rocket firing. The blood from his wound was being forced out by
the air pressure still in his suit and instantly frozen into ice
crystals. His Holo-Watch announced "eighteen minutes." The atmospheric
pressure would be out of his suit and he knew he would both suffocate
and freeze to death before he heard the "six minutes" warning.
Walt instinctively reached over with his left hand to cover the hole in
his suit but before his hand could get there the spray stopped. He
stared in disbelief then realized enough blood had coagulated around
the tiny hole to block it and that the pressure inside his suit held
the blood in place the way the air inside a ship would seal an
Insta-Patch against any hull breach small enough to fix from inside the
ship. There was still enough air in his suit for him to breathe and he
went back to work as he heard "fifteen minutes." It was amazing how
complex some repair jobs could be and how simple others were. This one
consisted of sliding out one board, plugging in another and some
soldering - the kind of thing he did in secondary school, while
learning to fix the antique receiving devices called "radios" and
"TV's" that taught him basic electronics.
The burned-out board was replaced, one wire was sloppily but firmly
soldered and Walt was reaching for the other wire when he thought he
felt his Flexi-Tether cord holding him back. Just after he heard "nine
minutes," he let his Accu-Torch swing freely on its own tether to his
utility belt and yanked a little too hard on the main tether. As he
grabbed the torch, he turned it on accidentally and didn't even notice
it cut through a loop of the main tether, which was coiling like a whip
in the middle of a lash. Walt was now connected to his ship only by the
frail guidance system wire he held in his left hand. As he finished
soldering and go of the wire, he heard the "six minutes" warning. With
an inner surge of pride, he said “Forget your stupid warning, I’ve done
it!” too himself. There was just enough time to get back in the ship,
start the main engines and pull out of the decaying orbit. As he turned
toward the hatch and reached for the Flexi-Tether Walt felt himself
glide away from the ship. He didn't panic because tethers always had a
little play in them and he'd pulled on it because he wanted some slack.
His eyes bulged when he saw the cut end dangling and flailed to grab
it, which only catapulted him further from the ship. Now doing
somersaults and flying away from the ship at the same time, Walt
managed a brief look and saw John at the ship's port side window,
standing there helpless. In his panic Walt was distressed even more by
the Holo-Watch as it started to count down in one-minute intervals:
"Five minutes."
There wasn’t time for John to retrieve and enter the codes necessary to
activate the Auto-Navigator’s manual override subsystem, don a suit,
prepare and activate a Mini-Rocket, propel himself outside the ship,
locate and retrieve Walt, bring him back to the ship and still expect
to save them. The whole thing would probably take ten to fifteen
minutes at least - by then the time window would have expired, both
ship and rangers irretrievably lost to their decaying orbit and heading
for the surface of IO. Saving himself and the ship was the only thing
John could do now, and even in his despair Walt knew he'd do the same
thing in John's place. In his last look at the window Walt imagined
John mouthing the words "I'm sorry," just before igniting the engines.
Fortunately, Walt was far enough away from the ship and its engines to
avoid being burned to a crisp. With the air left in his suit ... hell,
he might live another …” He heard "Four minutes," accompanied by the
hologram of the pocket watch.
Before unconsciousness took him, Walt managed a few clear thoughts
through his panic. He imagined his suit's Auto-Life-Guard, monitoring
his life signs and beaming them out into space. Then a less pleasant
thought hit him - was Auto-Life-Guard working any better than the
Local-Com that – he had by now surmised by the total lack of response
from John - deserted him early on? He heard "Three minutes" and the
voice was louder now. Walt imagined John, standing before the
United-Space-Service examining board, having to answer for the loss of
his crewmate, as Walt was always thinking of others before himself. He
heard “Two Minutes” and just for a second imagined he saw a flash of
light, coming from the direction of the space station orbiting IO. That
could mean an Emergency-Rescue-Rocket, a little ship
United-Space-Service Local-Orbiting-Stations send out to do small jobs
or pick up stranded rangers. Maybe his suit's Auto-Life-Guard had
reached somebody after all. No, it was far too much to hope. The light
was probably his semi-conscious mind playing tricks on him, like one of
those "out-of-body" experiences people used to report, before it was
understood that under stress the brain releases chemicals which cause
such hallucinations. “He heard One Minute,” louder than the previous
warning. As he felt his mind slipping away Walt thought he saw another
flash of light, closer this time. He became unconscious briefly, then
experienced a few seconds of lucidity, coming from the last gasp of
breathable air left in his suit. He saw a bright blinding light,
directly in front of him; was it the end, or was it an
Emergency-Rescu-...? As he slipped into unconsciousness the last thing
Walt saw was the pocket watch, now larger and spinning around in front
of his face then stopping and disappearing, accompanied by the
announcement "Time's Up!"
He never saw two fellow astronauts pinpoint his location with their
Astro-Locator, bring their vessel alongside him via Navi-Guide and pull
him inside with their tiny ship’s Auto-Retriever-Arm. In his
semi-conscious state Walt couldn’t see them remove his helmet and apply
the Emergency-Medi-Gear oxygen mask and syringe containing adrenaline
and other chemicals to oxygenate his blood and revive him. He never saw
the rescue vessel pull away from their dangerous position and dock with
the main ship, now in a safe orbit. He never saw John, standing over
him, pleading for him to wake up.
THE END
© 2021 Doug Dawson
Bio: Doug Dawson hails from Brooklyn, New York, wrote extensively for the US Defense Dept. and as a freelancer
had some 40 articles and fiction published by car magazines (“Vette Vues,” “Corvette Enthusiast,” “Corvette” magazine).
He has had his stories accepted for publication by Academy of the Heart & Mind, Ariel Chart and Literary Yard.
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