“Yep. Just getting my toes lined up.” Gritting her teeth, Ruby tried to keep her face placid as she worked her foot through the leg of the suit. The swelling in her ankle made it feel as if the rubber bladder was grabbing her deliberately. Flares shot up from the protesting muscles as if warning her to back away. She tried to breathe through the pain, and kept wriggling past the folds of fabric and rubber while the two techs braced the legs.
A fishhook seemed to embed itself in between the talus and tibia bones of her ankle and dug in deeper as she worked her foot down through the leg. The moment when her foot popped into the boot at the end made her gasp with relief.
She couldn’t speak so she gave a thumbs-up and held out her hands for the men to help hoist her to her feet. Thank God standard procedure meant that they braced her because she wasn’t putting any weight on her right foot until she had to. All she needed to do now was walk five feet, wiggle into the hard torso of the EVA suit where it hung suspended on the donning stand, and that would be the last time she’d have to put significant weight on her ankle until the run was finished.
At least that was one good thing about her lindy-hop training—she knew how to smile through pain. Under the best of conditions, you were sore at the end of an NBL run. This was just different pain.
It also helped that everyone expected astronauts to grimace as they forced themselves into the hard upper torso assembly. But once inside the HUT assembly, she could let the donning stand support her weight and lean against the frame while the suit techs put the rest of the suit on. It wasn’t that it was comfortable, because the o-ring joints at the shoulders of the suit pushed her arms forward a little and dug into her armpits, but at least the donning stand took her weight.
As much as she wanted to tell everyone to hurry, the old aphorism “slow is fast” applied here, too. They wouldn’t help the crew on the station who would have to do the actual spacewalk if they started making mistakes by rushing.
They’d done things right this morning, taking the time to do the pre-run briefing so everyone knew what their jobs were. Broadly, their job was to work out safe procedures in the relatively benign environment of a 6.3-million-gallon pool of water so that when her colleagues in orbit went into the lethal environment of space, they didn’t have to take any unnecessary chances.
Specifically, she and Eugene were going to see if a life raft was possible while EV3 and 4 attempted a maneuver to see if it was possible to run air and power to the lunar rocket. To buy time. Ultimately, if they couldn’t get the hatch open, the rocket’s crew would still need a life raft to transfer safely inside the station.
So Ruby forced herself to relax, conserving energy for the run itself, while the techs checked the cooling system and slid her “Snoopy” cap on so she would have comms in her suit. The helmet followed after that and slid a barrier between her and the world.
This was what things would sound like for the folks trapped in the ship. Even without a breach, they’d have their emergency pressure suits on, which would protect them from a vacuum but not the temperature extremes outside the ship. All their communication would be filtered by comms, which were distancing and intimate all at the same time.
In her ears, the comforting litany of mission control almost made it sound like people weren’t in danger.
And then the litany broke. “We can’t get a good seal on EV1.”
Eugene’s voice followed from where he stood behind her on the donning stand. “It’s probably just a gauge.”
“You know we can’t risk that.”
Ruby opened her eyes. There was nothing she could do, strapped to the donning stand, but if they couldn’t seal Eugene’s suit it would take on water in the pool. Myrtle was up there. “Eugene— There will be three of us in the pool. They can add you as soon as they get a good seal.”
His breath hissed in her ears, but she could hear his fighter pilot training. He was heartbreakingly calm when he spoke. “Copy.”
Jason’s voice joined the mix. “We’ll start the run with EV2, 3, and 4 and add him as soon as you get a good seal.”
With Myrtle up there, it had to be killing him to be pulled at this point.
“Eugene?”
“Yeah, Ruby.”
“I’ve got this.”
His breath caught for just a second. “Copy. I’ll be with you on comm until they get me in the pool.”
As she glanced at the clock on the wall, her stomach twisted. Fourteen hours remaining for the crew on the lunar rocket.
Underwater, everything was blue. The big cylinders that made up the mockup Lunetta were punctured with even round holes to allow water to flow through. Cables snarled in ungainly swirls around the outside of the mock space station and the water pushed against Ruby’s suit, creating a resistance that she didn’t experience in space. Around her, support divers floated with bubbles drifting up from them, ready to help her compensate for the drag of water.
And she needed help. This was her third attempt to attach a spare expansion module of Lunetta to the aft end of the lunar rocket. In theory, with an oxygen pack and a CO2 scrubber, it would serve as a sort of “life raft” for the crew inside the ship. Assuming she could find a path to get it there without getting snarled in cables.
“All right, EV2…” Eugene’s voice was steady on the comm, as if he were in the pool with her. “Look for handrail 1175.”
She had no idea where handrail 1175 was on the lunar rocket. If she’d stayed in last night, instead of going to the rehearsal, then she would have gotten Jason Tsao’s phone call and been able to prep for the change of plans. Or to at least familiarize herself with the lunar rocket in more detail. Grimacing, Ruby peered around the ship.
“Can you give me a big picture of where that is?” She hated to ask for help navigating but the distortions from her helmet and the water made reading numbers a little dicey. Myrtle was not going to die because Ruby had gone to a dance practice last night.
“Oh sorry. We’d need you to go to just aft of the starboard external payload facility.” Eugene’s voice was steady as he guided her in, because he’d done his homework. “Past the grapple fixture, down the gap-spanner… It should be sandwiched between two WIFs.”
When she’d started with the IAC, the jargon had been daunting. Now it wasn’t much different from “over the river and through the woods.” She hauled herself forward, looking through the distortion that her helmet caused in the water. Behind her, the tether for the “life raft” trailed through the water.
A pair of support divers steadied it to compensate for Eugene’s absence. In the real spacewalk, another astronaut would be back there with tethers to hold it steady while she moved forward. If EV3 and 4 weren’t tied up trying to simulate running air and power to the rocket, they might have helped. But it was on her and a faux EV1.
Finally, she found the handrail label sandwiched, as advertised, between two of the sockets that peppered the rocket’s skin. “Got it.” Ruby secured her safety tether, making sure that the black lines on the latch lined up. “EV2’s anchor tether hook is on handrail 1175. Slider locked, black on black.”
She secured a local tether as well, trying to stabilize herself in relation to the rocket. Once she was steady, she snapped the crewlock bag onto the handrail so that it was ready for her.
The final tether was the long one that trailed back to the life raft. “Transferring life raft tether to handrail 1175.”
“Suggestion.” Eugene’s voice cut in. “Use the aft starboard stanchion. Otherwise, the tether might trap your safety line when you pull the life raft forward.”