Back to the Moon-ARC (29 page)

“I’ll help. First I need to open this access panel.” Zhi pointed to Hui’s right at one of the instrumentation panels that ran along the wall of the lander. He rose from the floor, picked up a screwdriver from where he’d left it after a previous power-scavenging activity, and moved toward the panel.

“And one of you will have to give me access to the batteries in your backpack. There isn’t much time, and whichever battery I use will have even less power remaining—perhaps none.”

“I understand.” Hui didn’t hesitate. “You will, of course, use mine.”

“Of course.”
 

Hui at that moment realized what she was committing to. Without power, not only would the temperature in the suit start to drop, but also the air would stop circulating. Unlike deep-water suits, spacesuits didn’t just let compressed air from the tanks in the backpack diffuse into the suit. That would have been too wasteful and would severely limit how long astronauts could remain in them. Spacesuits had fans and carbon-dioxide scrubbers that required continuous airflow—and power. Without power, the air in her suit would slowly become poisoned by carbon monoxide, and she would suffocate. That is, if she didn’t freeze to death first.

“Dr. Xu, get Ming ready to travel. We will need to move quickly.”

Zhi was good. In less than ten minutes he had the access panel open, some insulation removed from the wires providing power to the pump that would vent the cabin’s air, and had found the connectors and wires he would need to send power from Captain Hui’s spacesuit battery to the pump.

“Captain Hui. Step over here and face away from me. I need to connect your batteries to the pump.”

“Understood.” She complied, and he continued his work.
 

“I’m first going to shut off the power to the rest of your suit. Once I’ve done that, I’ll connect the pump, and we’ll see if it works. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

The next thing Hui heard was the sound of silence. She’d been hearing the spacesuit fans since sealing herself in as the
Harmony
’s cabin began to freeze, and she’d gotten quite used to their reassuring white noise. Now there was silence. The suit was well insulated, so she did not yet feel any colder. It was too soon for that.

Behind her was the rustling of the engineer as he scrambled to make the necessary connections. When he was on a technical task, it was easy to forget that he was also the ship’s political officer. All signs of his previous defeatist demeanor were now absent.

“Here goes,” the engineer said. The next thing they all heard was the whirring sound of the vent pump. As the air pressure began to drop, the crew could see some of the lighter objects in the cabin flutter in the ensuing wind. After just a few moments, the sound began to drop in frequency as the pump slowed and the air pressure dropped to the point that sounds would no longer propagate. The cabin pressure was now essentially the same as that of the lunar surface—zero.

Hui felt the engineer fiddling with something in her backpack. Then he tapped her on the shoulder and said something she could not hear.

“I can’t hear you! The air is gone, and we’ll have to use our suit radios.” She tried to turn on her radio, the one she’d used to speak with Tony Chow, and nothing happened. She was completely out of power. Her heart sank. Her life had only tens of minutes remaining unless she could either get more power or out of her spacesuit.

Hui moved quickly to the door and once again tried the emergency exit handle. This time it moved, and after just a few seconds the door was open. Standing on the other side was an American astronaut wearing a grin that only an American could possibly have conjured up under the circumstances.
 

He said something she could not hear. He then said it again, emphatically.

Not knowing the specifics, but understanding what he was probably saying, she turned and pointed toward Dr. Xu and the wounded pilot. She then made the universal hand motion indicating that they should leave first.

Not waiting for additional prompting, Stetson moved toward the doctor and the wounded pilot. He reached down and helped Dr. Xu lift Ming so that they could carry him out the door. With some effort, and guidance from Captain Hui, they were able to get him outside the cabin for the first time since they landed.
 

Captain Hui looked out and down at the remains of her beautiful lander and sighed.
We will be back,
she thought.
But for now, we will get home!
She shivered, and then she realized that her fingers and toes were starting to get cold.

She followed Stetson out and around the side of the lander and down what remained of the stairs to the lunar surface. This was the path she and Zhi had taken when they had built the makeshift furnace. This time it was much more difficult because Dr. Xu and the American astronaut were burdened by the limp mass of Ming Feng. Taking care to not drag Ming’s deadweight across anything sharp enough to puncture his suit, they finally reached the ground.

Hui’s feet were getting very, very cold, and she could no longer feel her fingers. Her head was also noticeably colder. She realized that her entire body was cooling rapidly, but the relatively poorly insulated extremities were the first things she noticed. In her mind, the pace was on one hand too slow—she would surely freeze to death or suffocate before getting to the American lander at this rate. On the other hand, if they were to rush and injure someone, then it could be a death sentence. She would have to be patient.

It was then that she noticed that Zhi was not with them. He was still in the lander. She ran up and tapped Dr. Xu on the shoulder to get his attention. He looked back at her as she pointed up to the lander’s now-open door and waved her arms. Xu looked back at her and grimaced. She could tell that he understood. There was nothing they could do. He could not go back because of his need to help carry Ming. If she went back, it would be a death sentence—she simply did not have time to spare.

“If he wishes to remain here and die, then that is
his
choice,” she said aloud to herself.
 

The group of four made their way around the boulders that separated them from the Altair and began their march across the lunar desert toward it.

In the distance sat the Altair, dimly illuminated from above by the reflected Earthlight and brightly lit from below by its own floodlights. To Hui, it was beautiful. It looked safe and warm. It was how they were going to get home. It was also intact. The four legs were upright, and there were no signs of any of the problems experienced by the
Harmony
.
 

Hui was now very cold. She was also getting light-headed. For a brief moment, she even forgot where she was.
Hypoxia,
she thought.
Oxygen deprivation
. But she was too relaxed to panic.

“Help!” she said aloud. “I’m starting to poison myself on my own carbon dioxide.”

No one could hear her.

Still, she trudged on toward the lander. Consciously putting one foot in front of the other, she kept up with the group. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot…”
A nap about now would be nice.
Darkness overcame her.

“Tony! We’ve got a problem. Captain Hui just collapsed. I’m about one hundred feet away, helping to carry one of their injured, and now we’ve got two down. I’m going back to see what happened,” Stetson said into his radio.

Stetson released his hold on the wounded pilot, forcing Dr. Xu to stop moving and simply hold him. Even on the Moon, carrying a limp deadweight like a person was almost impossible without help. This was especially true if the deadweight was encumbered with a two-hundred-pound spacesuit. Stetson cautiously quickly moved back toward the fallen Chinese captain, wondering what had happened.

He reached her and bent over to see if she was conscious. He then tried to figure out what might be the problem. Using his headlamp, he peered through her visor and saw that she was not conscious. She looked very pale. It was then that he noticed the status lights on her suit—they were not powered on.

“Tony! I’m with Captain Hui, and her suit is completely out of power. I don’t know how long it’s been that way, but long enough for her to pass out from oxygen deprivation. She has to be getting pretty damn cold. I’ve got to get her into the ship now. Can you talk to the other Chinese on the radio?”

“I don’t know. She’s been the only one to answer up until now. I’ll try. Stand by.” The signal went blank as Tony switched channels back in the lander.

Stetson left the fallen Hui and went back over to Dr. Xu. He grasped the shoulder of the only other person standing on the lunar surface and began to motion toward his fallen comrade. Looking into Xu’s face, Stetson realized he was talking to someone—it had to be Tony. Xu said something and then nodded his head in understanding.

Stetson helped lower the pilot to the cold and gray lunar surface. As he did so, he realized that the fallen Chinese would likely lie there, losing heat through his suit into the cold lunar surface for at least the thirty minutes it would take to get Hui to the Altair and into the airlock. He’d hoped to cycle two at a time into the Altair, but clearly Hui would not live long enough to get both her and the other stricken Chinese through the airlock at the same time. This was getting complicated.

Stetson and Xu quickly bounded back to Captain Hui, using a combination run and skipping motion. Once there, they picked her up, one man under each of her arms, and began carrying her toward the Altair. They passed the other injured man on their way, causing Stetson to wonder if they would be able to get back to him before his suit went dead.

After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the Altair and the lift that would carry Stetson and Hui up twenty feet to the airlock.

“Tony, tell the other taikonaut that the lift will only carry two people at a time and that I need to get Hui up and into the airlock as soon as possible. He needs to wait here for me to come back so we can get his other colleague. Okay?”

“Roger that.” Tony’s reply was brief. “I’m on it.”

Stetson eased Hui from Xu’s shoulders and dragged her onto the lift. He then gently pushed Xu away and closed the gate. It was clear from looking at Xu that the doctor understood, though he was starting to look worried.

Knowing that the man would not hear him, Stetson nonetheless said, “I’ll be back.”

With the push of a button, the lift moved upward toward the Altair’s airlock. Stetson took that brief moment to look back toward the man they’d left on the surface. He was lying there, unmoving—a silent testament to the frailty of man.

Stetson, with a scant few seconds available for self-reflection, thought to himself,
For all this hardware and technology, it all still comes down to this. People. With all our frailties and weaknesses, we still come and do the hard things. Let’s see those damned robotic probes do this! Thank God for our manned program.

The lift jolted and abruptly stopped.

Stetson was startled out of his introspection. He quickly pressed the start button. Nothing happened. The lift didn’t budge. He pressed the stop button and then the start button. Nothing.

“Come on! Does nothing work on this damn ship!” Bill slapped the wall of the lift in frustration. “Tony! The lift stopped. We’re almost to the top, perhaps eight feet from the platform. I messed with the buttons and nothing happens. It’s stuck.”

“Can you get the captain to the platform? Do I need to suit up and come help?”

“There’s no time for that. I’ll have to figure something out. Stand by.” He looked around him on the platform and didn’t immediately see any way to get the elevator working again. The eight feet between him and the platform that led to the airlock wouldn’t have been a huge problem if it had just been him stuck. He could easily jump up, grasp the platform’s ledge, and then pull himself up. But it wasn’t himself he was trying to save. It was the unconscious and likely suffocating Captain Hui that he was trying to save, and she was, at this point, no different than a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound sandbag.

“Tony, I’m going to try to hoist Hui up on the platform. In one-sixth gravity, she won’t really weigh all that much, maybe sixty pounds, but it’ll be a bulky sixty pounds to push up. Here goes.”

Stetson leaned forward and pulled Hui upright. He lifted her apparently lifeless body over his shoulder and maneuvered himself toward the side of the elevator closest to the platform above. He then took a deep breath and shoved. As he was lifting, his right foot slipped suddenly backward, causing him to lose his balance. He and Hui’s body wavered and slipped to one side, running into the wire wall of the elevator and then tumbling to its floor.

“That didn’t work so well,” Stetson muttered under his breath.

Without any more hesitation, he grabbed Hui and tried again. This time neither foot slipped and Hui’s upper body did land on the platform. But it didn’t stay there. As Stetson shifted his hands to push on her lower body, she slipped off and fell back on top of Stetson, once again causing him to lose his footing and fall backward into the wire wall.

“There’s got to be a better way. I need a rope or something.”

“A rope? We’ve got a rope. It’s with the surface-exploration kit that we’re throwing overboard. I can get it in the airlock in just a few minutes. Leave her on the platform and come on up. I’ll cycle the airlock so you can come in and get it.”

“I don’t see another way.” Stetson was already lowering Hui gently to the elevator floor. “On my way.”

Looking like a comic-book character, Stetson bent his knees and sprang upward toward the platform in a maneuver that would have been simply impossible to achieve under normal gravity conditions. The upper two-thirds of his body landed on the platform and bounced almost a foot in the air. He had to quickly reach out and grab one of the crisscrossed diagonal beams on the walkway next to where he landed to keep from falling back down to the elevator.

“I feel like the Michelin Man. Somebody’s got to invent a better damned spacesuit!”