“Are you sure?” asked Tapestry. “Malcolm… I have a bad feeling about this.”
“One of us has to do it,” he replied. “And you’re more detail oriented then me. You’ll be more helpful giving me instructions.”
She slowly nodded, though she wore her concern openly on her face. She’d put her hair onto a pony tail instead of a bun that morning, and the end of it moved freely in zero gravity. Malcolm felt a sudden, unbidden urge to hug her, and he gave into it. Tapestry hugged him back.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll fix the ship, reach Europa, and rescue Savior.”
Tapestry sighed.
“This is so far outside the realm of how I imagined things going,” she said. “But I guess there is no turning back now, is there?”
“Is that a rhetorical question, or…?”
Tapestry flicked him in the shoulder.
“Do you need help getting into your spacesuit?” she asked.
“From you?” He grinned. “Of course.”
CHAPTER 21
Climbing into the bulky space suit was, in fact, a two-person process. It wasn’t a heavy as he’d imagined it would be, but it still felt a bit like putting himself into a futuristic version of medieval armor.
“I’ll be able to communicate with you through your ear piece,” said Tapestry. “It will be just like when we used those Bluetooth headsets as champions.”
“Yeah,” said Malcolm, with a slight eye roll. “Just like that.”
Tapestry frowned, carefully checking the seals on the suit. She had found a manual of shuttle procedures, and was carefully going down the list, making sure they didn’t make any stupid mistakes.
“Malcolm…” she said. “I’d understand if you backed out of doing this.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “This is our only chance, Tapestry. For rescuing Savior and for getting back to Earth. And it will be a piece of cake compared to facing off against a bank robbery, or a demon.”
She smiled, but it was more for show than genuine. The helmet was next, and Tapestry carefully pulled it into place over his head.
“Oh!” she said, remembering something. “You put the diaper on already, right?”
Malcolm was glad that the radiation protection of the helmet’s face shield obscured the color of his face from her.
“Yes, Tapestry,” he said. “I put the diaper on. But I cleared myself out already, so hopefully… it won’t be necessary.”
This is less glamorous than I imagined it, watching astronauts in historical footage.
“The manual says that there’s a safety line that you’ll need to connect to once you’re in the airlock,” said Tapestry. “Let me know once you’ve done that and I’ll initiate the opening sequence.”
Malcolm tried to nod, but the helmet made it impossible.
“Will do,” he said. “Alright, let’s get this started.”
He pulled himself into the airlock. The inner airlock door closed behind him with such solidity that Malcolm half expected it never to open again. He took a calming breath, keeping his emotions where he needed them.
Moving in the suit was about as difficult as he’d expected. The arms and legs were bulky and not really designed for quick movements. The hands had surprising mobility, but Malcolm still struggled for a minute while getting the safety line attached.
“Safety line connected,” he said to Tapestry, over the radio. “I’m ready for you to open the door.”
“Got it.”
He heard air whooshing past him and out into the vacuum as the airlock depressurized, and then nothing at all as the door leading out into empty, black space slid open. Well, it wasn’t entirely empty, Malcolm silently conceded.
Jupiter stood out against the abyss of stars like the angry god who it took its name from. Malcolm didn’t have to look at the planet to see it. They were nearing the end of the first half of the crew’s original journey, and Jupiter was larger than the moon, larger than the sun, larger than anything he’d seen in the night sky back on Earth.
He could see a couple of moons, one of them probably Europa, their destination, but they were like sparks in the light of a bonfire. It was the most majestic thing Malcolm had ever seen. It felt like Jupiter was challenging him, a massive hole just waiting to suck them in.
“Wind Runner?” said Tapestry, over the speaker in his helmet. “Are you okay? You’re just standing there.”
“I’m… taking in the scenery,” he said.
Terrifying. This is beyond terrifying.
Malcolm edged his way forward to the spaceship’s outer airlock door. The fact that he was weightless did not make pushing himself into the vast, empty void any easier. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and wondered what Tapestry must think, observing his vitals from back in the cockpit.
“The replacement solar panels are in the second outer storage locker,” said Tapestry. “There are handholds leading around the side of the ship to the left, so you don’t have to search. Malcolm, are you okay?”
No. Not even a little.
“Fine!” he said. “Just give me a second or two.”
The only way they would be able to make it back home to Earth was if the ship had enough power. And the only way it would get enough power was with working solar panels. It was not a matter of choice, and that, more than courage or changing his perspective on the situation, was what pushed Malcolm to leave the ship.
He grabbed the first handhold to the left of the airlock door and hung onto it for dear life. He double checked that the safety line was still attached properly, which it was. He tried not to look down at Jupiter below him, much like a climber with a fear of heights would avoid looking at the ground.
Slowly, Malcolm pulled himself along the path of handholds. His fear faded enough to be manageable as he realized that he could let go without immediately falling away from the ship. They were still moving through space, of course, but without anything affecting his movement separately from that of his vessel, it felt no different from being stationary.
Looking at the ship from an outside perspective instilled a different kind of humble fear into Malcolm. It was so much smaller from the outside than it looked from the inside. It was so much more vulnerable than he’d realized.
Worst of all was when Malcolm risked a glance away from Jupiter, in the direction they’d come from. Back toward Earth. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t even see a hint of it. The thought that he was far enough away to require a telescope to see humanity’s home planet made him feel like throwing up.
Which would be a terrible idea while wearing a helmet.
He made it to the storage lockers after a minute or two of careful climbing. They didn’t have locks on them that he could see, but each one did have a handle that needed to be twisted before the door could slide freely open. It was a frustrating experience in zero gravity, like trying to open a jar with a stubborn lid. Except that unlike a stuck jar, his future survival depended on getting it open, and his oxygen was limited.
When the door finally gave way and slid open, Malcolm breathed a sigh of relief. There was a motion activated LED light on the inside, which was a helpful touch, since he wasn’t sure how to activate his space suit’s head lamp.
“Alright,” he said. “Which ones are the solar panels?”
Tapestry instructed him more directly from that point forward. The panels were smaller than Malcolm had been expecting, small enough so that he could carry one in a single hand while pulling himself along the handholds with the other.
All of the installed panels were on a massive contraption that could be adjusted from inside the ship to keep it angled toward the sun. Malcolm immediately spotted the broken panels. A few of them were scored by black dust, which probably meant a small asteroid had been responsible for the damage.