The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [114]
Hell, Paulie. We didn't arrange for anything else.
And we've got to know.
Dark eyes doubtful.
Sure the idiot lights show the waste pipe connection is broken, but we've still got external power! That's all we need to know. We're safe.
For now.
Connie was inside, manning the communication console, watching the images from our helmet cams on TV. Even Julia'd finally gotten out of her fucking bunk, though she didn't seem to have much to say anymore. Hollow-eyed. Empty.
It'd been over quicker than we expected, one final blast more or less leveling the capsule again, the same blast that broke our sewer pipe, then there was just the wind, moaning and moaning, getting softer and softer until you could hardly hear it at all.
Then you couldn't.
Turned out the lighting system was fine, the fluorescent tubes had just broken. New tubes, and then we'd stood there, Paulie dressed in jeans, a coat, combat boots, like that'd do any fucking good if the capsule blew out, huh? Me naked again.
I flinched when he said, It's quiet outside 'cause the air's all gone.
Connie made me get dressed again, then we had supper, breaking into our TV dinners for the first time, appallingly salty stuff I wondered if I could get used to. Assuming there would be time to get used to anything. We cleaned up the mess, ate again, fucked around with the short wave radio. Ate again. Talked about what to do. No cameras. No satellite dish. No nothing.
The valve in the airlock squealed for a while as the air rushed out, then it got quiet in there as well, Paulie looking at me through the faceplates of our helmets, and I wondered which helmet cam Connie was looking through. Did she want to see me, or see what I saw?
"Well," I said, "no time like the present."
Paul grinned. "All of a sudden, I like the past a whole lot better."
I said, "Connie? How are your instrument readings?"
Her voice was grainy but reassuringly familiar in the helmet phones. "Pressure's holding steady in here, so I guess the seal's tight. You've got twenty-three millibars in the lock."
Paul's face screwed up a little. "A lot more than on Mars!"
"Probably being kept up by outgas-sing from the PLSS backpacks." I pronounced it pliss, just like the Apollo astronauts. Christ, listen to my fucking heart! Galloping like a horse. Scared? Excited? Or just from the weight of this fucking suit?
I started to work the lock-lever, withdrawing the deadbolts from their sockets. Nothing. I nodded to Paul.
"Okay."
He reached out one clumsily gloved hand, hesitated, then pulled the latch handle.
The door popped open and swung wide before we could catch it, hinges locking against their stops with a clack. Christ. Impossible.
Connie said, "I heard that! You guys okay? Your pressure went down to nine millibars all of a sudden."
Oh, Mir. The way they broke the airlock door that time. I said, "We're fine." Okay. Sound transmitted through the capsule structure and I heard it over the radio, that's all.
I expected it to be dark outside for some reason. Dark like outer space in all the movies ever made. The light out there was pale turquoise. Very pale. Very dim. But there. Mist hanging over a soft white landscape. Snow drifted here and there. Something like snow, anyway.
I got out first, bumping Paulie aside as I ducked through the door, backpack antenna scraping, though I cleared my helmet okay. I was standing on a little flat place, like a bit of front porch, with jagged edges, a piece of concrete still clinging to the capsule's hull. Beyond it, there was a long slope, gradually steepening into a canyon maybe two hundred yards away. Halfway down it, there was a big twisted hunk of something that kind of looked like a bulldozer blade.
No bulldozer, though.
The mist only went up a little ways. Above it, the sky was dark, punctured all over by the still white pinpoints of the stars. Lots of stars. Paul was standing beside me now, silent, looking around.
Little waxy snowflakes