Ishtar Rising (Book 2) - Michael A. Martin [3]
The airlock’s fans had only begun pumping out the Venusian air, enabling the Nasat to speak. Fortunately, the tympanic membrane with which her body produced sound did not require her to exhale any of her precious oxygen. Tapping her combadge, P8 said, “I’ve entered the outer airlock. Can you read me?”
A moment of silence passed, then another, and finally a crackling voice came through. It was Gomez. “—es we re—you—”
“Your signal is weak, but at least we can communicate.” She saw the green light that indicated the outer airlock’s atmosphere was now breathable, as well as the air beyond the inner lock. She realized that at least some of the internal bulkheads must have closed in time to prevent a complete environmental compromise, like that suffered by Ground Station Hesperus. There might be survivors here after all. But with the Venusian atmosphere now cooking many of the station’s interior spaces as well as the external ablative shielding, it was only a matter of time before the interior bulkheads succumbed to the inevitable.
Just like the da Vinci hull did at Galvan VI.
The ground rumbled, reminding P8 of the rising tide of lava outside, a danger that threatened to render all other hazards moot.
Putting thoughts of the da Vinci’s all-too-recent mission in which they’d lost over half their crew to the back of her mind, she said into her combadge, “I’m going in,” and opened the interior airlock and exited into a hallway. She found the air stale and ozone-laced, but at least marginally breathable. Life support must be down, she thought. Only a few of the lights were working. She passed what appeared to be someone’s personal quarters. The doors were open, but she didn’t see anyone inside.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” Her voice echoed in the corridor. Breaking a tricorder out of the sealed tool kit she carried, she activated the device. A smile came to her mandibles almost immediately. Tapping her combadge, she said. “I read eight life-signs, the entire station’s complement. They’re all grouped together. They seem to be stressed by failures in the air-recyclers and other life-support equipment.”
“—opy that,” Gomez’s voice crackled.
P8 made her way into the main control room, but nobody was there. She noticed that anything that wasn’t bolted down had been thrown about by the seismic disturbances. The groundquakes had obviously hit this place hard.
Up a short set of stairs, she saw movement through the broad window of what she assumed was an office. Squeezing her bulk up the stairs, she pounded on the door. Through the window, she saw a group of technicians clustered together in the dimly lit room. Four were fully conscious, two were a bit wobbly, one appeared delirious, and another was unconscious and bleeding from a laceration above his right eye.
When one of them opened the door, P8 entered and set her locker down on the floor. Opening it, she said, “We don’t have much time. I need each of you to get into these EV suits, and quickly.”
As the workers scrambled to don the lightweight emergency suits she pulled from the locker, P8 explained how to seal them. The first man to finish suiting up began pulling the unconscious man into a second suit, while a woman assisted her delirious coworker.
“How are we going to get out of here?” a woman asked, eyeing her suit skeptically. “These things won’t last long outside, even if the air is a bit thinner now.”
P8 wondered why it had taken so long for someone to point that out. But there was little time for explanations. She decided to keep it brief. “If I could get you outside, we might get a transporter lock on you all, if not for all the ionic distortions out there.” To the skeptical woman, she added, “And you’re right—you couldn’t survive long outside, even in an EV suit.”
“Then how—”
“Is that tank on top of the building what I think it is?” P8 interrupted, wishing the da Vinci’s sensors had been working reliably enough to have already answered her question.
“It’s water,” said one of