Ascent by Jed Mercurio (20 page)

He keys the transmitter on his communications helmet.

“Moscow, come in,
Voskhodyeniye.
”

He waits. He tries again.

“Moscow, come in,
Voskhodyeniye.
”

He waits.

“Moscow,
Voskholdyeniye,
do you copy?”

The spacecraft is rolling slowly to port but none of the thrusters are firing. His mind begins to function again, to diagnose problems and calculate solutions. In a matter of seconds the shaking of his hands has diminished. He releases his straps and hovers. A band of sunlight streams through one of the portholes, illuminating a section of the BO to an unbearable intensity; the remainder lives in an eerie dusk created by the Sun’s reflections off glass and metalwork.

With a little push he glides into the sunlight, cutting the beam. Darkness falls across the control panel, and then he clears, and it’s lit again, so he can see to reset the communications system circuit breaker. The breaker won’t hold. It springs back when he throws it, and the power lights dotted on the radio control board won’t blink to life. A bus failure has disarmed nearly all of the ship’s electrical systems.

A deep worry grips him. He drags himself hand over hand to the environmental control system. He pulls himself close. He listens. He can hear a flow of oxygen, a hum of motors.

He swings to his left. The fluid in his ear sloshes at the sudden movement, and his stomach churns. He makes a tiny retching sound, but that’s all, and the wave of nausea passes.

Out of the portholes, through the constellation of ice crystals, he glimpses the Earth, now a disc that he can visualize from pole to pole in one scan. He pauses to absorb the view, and to ponder his predicament. The burn has accelerated the spacecraft far out of orbit; in the next hour the planet will become nearly 40,000 kilometres more remote. He’ll travel a distance roughly equivalent to the circumference of the globe. He forces himself through the moment, back to the task.

Yefgenii hauls himself down the tunnel into the SA. He felt a bang at the end of translunar injection and now he’s looking for the cause. Nothing in the SA appears changed from his previous orbital check, apart from the sporadic electrical paralysis. He returns to the BO and peers out of the portholes one by one. A trail of gas is running out from
Voskhodyeniye.
He can’t get a view of where it’s being vented from, but it’s snaking away from the spacecraft, a tiny thread of white cotton he missed the first time he looked out after the bang. The gas is already ice when he sees it.

Without guidance from Mission Control, he must think his way through the steps on his own. He assumes the material being vented from the spacecraft must be related to the bang and the subsequent electrical problems. He holds on to a hope that the fault is confined to the Block G engine. At this point in the flight plan, the engine is all but spent, and should be jettisoned. Yefgenii maneuvers to the control panel. The switch responds. He feels a rush of joy. He still wields some control over the ship and therefore over his fate. He jettisons the Block G.

Yefgenii presses himself against a porthole. Soon the dead rocket drifts into view, in a slow roll, travelling at almost the same velocity as
Voskhodyeniye.
It hangs aft of the stack, spraying crystals, the remnants of its fuel. As it rolls, he gets a sudden glimpse of a V-shaped rupture at the base of its aerocasing. The metal is bent and blackened. He concludes that a small explosion occurred in the Block G engine at the end of the translunar injection burn, possibly due to the sudden ignition of some uncombusted fuel, and that it must have caused collateral damage to the stack.

Loose items continue to drift round the cabin. He collects the larger objects and stows them, then begins the painstaking task of vacuuming up each of the little polystyrene balls. He can grab two or three at a time with the tiny battery-powered vacuum cleaner, then he must place them in a sealed bag or else they’ll float free again.

His best hope of contacting Moscow is to make an emergency EVA transfer to the LK to operate its communications system. From the remote command console he attempts to power up the LK but he has limited success, receiving a series of indifferent readings from the lander’s control systems. The surge of current has affected the entire
Voskhodyeniye
stack.

He decides to jettison the payload shroud while there’s still power to do so, and attempt to dock the LOK to the LK. He positions himself at the docking cupola. Through the viewport he gazes at the hexagonal array of docking receptacles on the leading edge of the lander. With the thrusters he maneuvers the LOK forward, closing the gap between the two ships, till the LOK’s docking probe pricks one of the hexagonal holes. He fires the forward thruster and the probe lurches into its home, bonding the two craft together.

Without time for a rest or refreshment break, he clears the flotsam from the cabin, knowing if he doesn’t it will all be vented to space when he depressurizes the BO. He is rushing. Sweat damps his brow and back. It takes him over an hour to clear all the objects away and then he hurries to pull on his Orlan space suit. He dons the main body, then the bubble helmet and gloves. He locks his EVA helmet to the space suit’s metal collar. He races to double-check the condition of the suit. Any error made in haste will cost him his life.

He depressurizes the BO. The system works, sparing him having to blow the hatch. He releases the sequence of levered locks on the hatch door. The hatch swings open and he floats on the threshold of deep space. He grips the handhold in sudden trepidation: no man has carried out a spacewalk this far from Earth. He cannot see either the Earth or the Moon, and the Sun blazes on the opposite side of the spacecraft such that the hatch opens into
Voskhodyeniye
’s shadow. Outside stretches vast black void.

Yefgenii pulls himself out of the port. The stiff suit resists his efforts. He is pushing himself harder and faster than on the first EVA. It isn’t daylight that’ll run out this time. It’s electrical power, the very life of his spacecraft, and with it his chance ever to return home.

He squeezes out of the hatch. He glimpses the payload shroud like the leaves of a closed tulip drifting away from the stack in a line of space debris backed by the blackened Block G engine. The giant metal staves of the shroud rotate in a slow dance with the other debris, glinting under incident sunlight.

Yefgenii fixes his position on the handrail to survey the stack. The explosion has damaged the part of
Voskhodyeniye
’s power module adjacent to the Block G. A crack punctures the tank of liquid oxygen feeding the fuel cells that produce electricity for the spacecraft. Gas is escaping into space, sublimating to ice in an instant. A tiny thread of crystals weaves back toward the shroud and the jettisoned Block G. Now he understands how the explosion has caused power fluctuations throughout the stack; in response to a loss of pressure, the fuel-cell safety valves have closed.

He changes direction and maneuvers along the handrails toward the power module. With every grab of a handhold, an equal and opposite force causes him to spin and topple. The tether snakes behind him, transmitting disorienting sinusoidal waves of force up and down the line. He strains to control his motion. His muscles ache. Sweat drips and stinks inside his suit.

The handrails run out before he reaches the power module, since no EVA has been planned to operate in this area of the spacecraft. The trailing edge of the engine curves beyond reach. Aft spreads the coiling filament of ice crystals venting from the lox tank, the payload shroud and the Block G. The Earth burns beyond. The blue disc is diminishing. His chances of returning home are diminishing.

He secures the tethering line in his hand and endeavors to push himself along the hull toward the tank. The first push carries him away from the spacecraft and now he drifts away in a slow backflip. He topples backward and when he is next upright he glimpses the hull more distant and the cord of his tether lengthening. He can gain no purchase to correct the topple so he can only wait till the line pulls taut. In midroll he reaches the end of the tether; he feels a tug as it snaps tight and then he’s sprung back toward the hull. Not only is he toppling but he has now been thrown into a slow cartwheel. As he approaches the hull he gathers in loops of tether, so, when he bounces off again, the shorter length wrenches on his hands and prevents him from drifting so far out into space on this oscillation; and so he continues, toppling and cartwheeling as he oscillates along the hull of the spacecraft making slow painful progress toward the leaking lox tank.

When at last he reaches the tank, his helmet strikes the hull and he bounces away again. By controlling the length of the tether he manages to reduce the amplitude of the oscillations, but in doing so he converts the energy into angular momentum. Yefgenii spins and topples faster, he hits the hull harder. He is nauseated and hyperventilating.

On his next bounce he attempts to grab a section of pipework, but his thick gloves glance off and he topples away again. His direction has changed; now when he draws in the tether he moves more or less in parallel to the line of the hull and back toward the hatch. He has been tumbling in space for almost half an hour and, at the end of it, he is floating back toward the handrails where his EVA commenced. He grabs the first rail but can’t close his grip fast enough. The contact twists him into a salchow but on the third rotation he grabs at the next rail and this time clings on.

Yefgenii feels his heart drumming inside his chest. He is hyperventilating. Sweat drips from his brow and stings his eyes. He decides he can’t afford to expend more time and effort inspecting the ruptured tank and must press on with his effort to enter the LK.

He attempts to activate the boom but the power supply has died. He moves hand over hand toward the LK. He is overheating inside his suit. The environmental controls can’t cope with the amount of sweat and CO
₂
he’s pumping out, and now his visor starts to fog. In patches the solar screen clouds. At first he can see through the gaps but soon the whole visor is misted. The LK hatch is ahead of him but, after his experience in trying to inspect the lox tank, he dare not risk attempting to float the short distance between the two ships. He pulls himself up toward the LOK’s docking probe and then transfers his grip to the hexagonal docking array on the roof of the lander. His gloved fingers just about squeeze into the holes.

Using this position as a base camp, he allows himself a minute’s rest to bring down his heart and respiratory rates. He runs a loop of his tethering line over a spacing bar of the docking probe. With the tip of his nose, he wipes an opening in the misted visor.

Now he eases along the lander’s hull toward the hatch. The LK is even more fragile than the LOK, so he resists the urge to grab on to any part of it save the handholds circling the hatch. The slightest push sets him in motion and he is no longer travelling parallel to the hull. He is drifting in the direction of the hatch but away from the lander. He reaches out in panic and clips the handrail with his fingertips. He enters a slow rotation. He gathers in his tether and it pulls tight on the docking probe, so that he is sprung back in the direction he has travelled but at a slightly slower rate, slow enough for him this time to grab the handhold and come to rest at the hatch of the LK.

Once again with the tip of his nose he wipes an iris in the mist of his visor. He activates the controls on the outside of the hatch to open the port and he is grateful that they work. The lander’s batteries should still retain much of the charge present when he switched the LK into its dormant mode for the transit to the Moon.

He struggles through the oval opening. His suit has swollen and stiffened, or so it seems, but more likely his muscles have weakened. He clambers into the lander and works the levers of the hatch closed. The lights are on, and he’s able to pressurize the cabin.

As the atmospheric pressure rises, he feels his spacesuit soften. The material becomes flexible again, but in moving with greater freedom he realizes the inner layers covering his armpits and lower back are soaked and so heavy with sweat they’re like wet rags.

With enormous relief he removes his gloves, EVA helmet and bubble helmet. Steam issues from his collar and cuffs. His face is bright red, his hands are swollen. He is gasping for breath but the heating system has yet to warm the LK, or it’s failed, so that his teeth and tongue are chilled by mouthfuls of frozen air.

At once he sets to work powering up the LK’s communications system. As with the LOK, sporadic electrical failures affect the vehicle’s control systems. A power surge has travelled throughout the stack, to the LK possibly from the LOK via the umbilical connection. In any event, he is unable to activate the radio.

Yefgenii toils through a sequence of procedures to open communications. The checklists in the LK offer him a number of alternatives. He tries them all, one by one. He resets switches. He shuts down related systems. He powers up related systems. He repeats the sequence again in its entirety, without success.

He drifts for a time in the cabin. Through the upper viewport he gazes at the arching back of the
Voskhodyeniye
stack. A curve of metal slices the Earth into a glowing crescent of blue and white. He decides to try once again to activate the radio. He turns all the control switches to off and then throws them on one by one. He trips and resets the circuit breaker. The lander’s radio is as dead as the LOK’s. The crescented Earth hangs in the upper viewport like the downturned mouth of a sorrowful cartoon.

Following a rapid assessment, Yefgenii concludes that while many of the lander’s essential operating systems show promise, in their present condition none of them gives him the option of relaying a message to Earth. The LK possesses no power supply of its own. Apart from the charge in its batteries, it depends on the LOK for electricity.

Yefgenii wipes his visor clean with his silk lining gloves and then relocks the helmets and outer gloves to the suit’s metal collar and cuffs. He is anxious and depressed but cannot afford to let himself get diverted. With as much haste as he can muster in his state of fatigue, he shuts down the LK’s systems. The lander returns to its dormant state, its batteries spared for another day.