COLLAPSE
Her gloved hands shaking, Trudy punched the Farside frequency on the keypad built into her suit’s left forearm and yelled, “Emergency! Emergency!”
It took two heartbeats—an eternity—before the flight controller’s voice snapped, “What’s wrong?”
“Win … he’s down! Collapsed!”
The woman’s voice took on an edge of tension. “Where are you? What happened?”
“We’re outside, between the shelter and the hopper. I don’t think he’s breathing!”
“Can you get him back inside the shelter?”
“I’ll try.”
It wasn’t easy dragging Winston’s inert body across the dusty ground to the airlock set into the mound of rubble that served as shielding for the shelter. Trudy was awash with perspiration as she tugged him inside the airlock, then banged the control panel to close the outer hatch. It slid shut with painful slowness.
As the airlock cycled, pumping air into the steel-walled chamber, Grant Simpson’s voice came through Trudy’s speakers:
“What happened, Trudy?”
“I don’t know! We were going back to the hopper when Win said he couldn’t breathe and then he keeled over. I think he’s dead!”
His voice calm and even, Grant instructed her, “Get him inside the shelter, then take off his helmet. It might be a glitch in his suit’s air supply.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll come out in a hopper, with Dr. Kapstein. You just sit tight.”
“Okay.”
The airlock’s inner hatch sighed open and Trudy hauled Winston’s body inside the low-ceilinged, narrow shelter. Fumbling in the suit’s gloves, she tried to remove his helmet, then ripped her gloves off and finally got the helmet unlatched. Winston’s eyes gazed sightlessly at her.
“He’s dead,” Trudy sobbed. “He’s dead.”
No reply from Farside. Suddenly Trudy felt totally alone, impossibly far from help, abandoned in the middle of a stark airless nowhere.
“Are you all right?” the flight controller’s voice asked sharply.
“Yes. I think so,” Trudy replied, glad to have someone to talk to.
“Grant’s gone out to the hopper. He’ll be with you in less than an hour.”
Nodding inside her helmet, Trudy said, “That’s good.” In a frightened little girl’s voice.
Then she noticed that it was getting difficult for her to breathe. Nonsense! she snapped at herself. It’s your imagination.
Still, she unfastened her helmet and lifted it off her head. Then she took a deep breath. The canned air of the shelter felt wonderfully good.
It was the longest forty minutes of Trudy’s life, alone in the cramped shelter with Winston’s dead body. His eyes kept staring, and when she touched his face it felt cold. She sat on the springy little wheeled chair by the console, awkward in the space suit, and tried to avoid looking at Winston’s body—but she couldn’t help herself.
You can’t be dead, she pleaded with him. We’ve got good air in here, take a breath, move your arms—stop staring at me!
But Winston did not move, did not breathe, did not blink his unfocused eyes.
Stay calm, Trudy told herself. Stay calm, calm, calm.
“I’m on my way, Trudy.” Grant’s voice crackled from the shelter’s console. “Hang on, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Trudy had never been so grateful for the sound of a human voice in her life.
“How’s Win?” Grant asked.
“He’s dead.”
“You’re sure?”
There was no doubt of it in Trudy’s mind. “I’m sure.”
“I’ve got Dr. Kapstein with me. She’s upchucking in her helmet.”
Trudy supposed that Grant said that to lighten her tension, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
“The doctor’s coming out here for nothing,” she said to Grant. “There’s nothing anybody can do for him.”
“We’ll see.”
Grant kept talking to her and she felt enormously grateful for it. Something to do, someone to talk with, so she didn’t have to sit in this coffin of a buried shelter and stare at Winston’s dead body.
“We’re entering descent mode,” Grant said.
Trudy glanced at the clock on the console. Less than forty-five minutes had elapsed.
“You made it quick.”
“High-g burn. But the doc still got the heaves when we went weightless.”
“She really threw up?”
“Inside her helmet, yeah. Pretty messy.”
Trudy couldn’t see outside the shelter and the hopper’s landing was soundless in the lunar vacuum, but suddenly she heard the airlock pumps chugging. They’re here! She jumped to her feet.
The airlock hatch slid open and two space-suited figures clomped in. One of them pushed past Trudy and staggered to the shelter’s minuscule lavatory, nearly tripping over Winston’s body.
As the lav door slid shut with a heavy thump, Trudy turned and saw Grant Simpson lifting the tinted bubble helmet from his head. His hair and beard looked matted with perspiration, but his sad, dark eyes seemed filled with concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Trudy nodded tightly. “I’m okay. But Win…”
Grant dropped to his knees beside the lifeless body. “His suit hasn’t decompressed. But he’s dead all right.”
A retching, gargling noise came from the lav, followed by heartfelt cursing.
Grant broke into a grim smile. “The doc isn’t much of a flier.”
Thinking how her own stomach had gone queasy on the flight to Mendeleev, Trudy said, “Zero g can get to you.”
“Yeah. You’d think that a doctor would’ve popped an anti-nausea pill—”
The lavatory door slid open and a very unhappy Ida Kapstein stepped into the room, still encased in her bulky space suit, minus the helmet. She looked slightly green. The shelter suddenly felt unbearably crowded.
Glancing down at Winston’s body, Dr. Kapstein said, “So now we’ve got to fly him back to Farside. Just what I need, another good bout of vomiting.”