A Step Beyond (37 page)

“Pressure adjustment complete.”

He typed in the command to open the outer hatch. The hatch slid back to reveal the metallic exterior of the hatch to the Russian supply ship. It was pitted with small craters created by micrometeoroids. Cyrillic letters were painted above and below the long red lever. The words were meaningless to Carter. But he knew how the lever worked and pulled down on it as he had done several times before in the simulation. He was surprised at how easily the hatch opened.

He turned on his flashlight and peered into the Russian airlock. It was slightly smaller than the one he was currently standing in. It was also very empty. He had a vivid memory of Vladimir calling out if anyone was home. He shuddered. Having gathered his equipment, he announced his intention to step inside. He proceeded with caution. At the opposite end of the compartment was another hatch, which he knew opened into the central corridor of the supply ship.

He pushed himself in the direction of the hatch. He had viewed Vladimir’s video of the ship that morning. Floating, with arms outstretched, he saw the rack upon which Vladimir had hung his MMU. It had made Carter uncomfortable watching Vladimir’s film so soon after his death—the perspective from the camera mounted on the cosmonaut’s space suit had given Carter the eerie sense of being inside his body. He could

hear Vladimir saying that he was going to stow his MMU.

He forced Vladimir and all other ghostly thoughts from his mind. He had to concentrate. When the pressure gauge reached one hundred kilopascals, he grabbed the hatch lever with both hands and pulled it to the open position. It gave easily. The hatch pivoted back on its hinges. He swung the beam of his flashlight into the dark opening and was astonished by what he saw. The long, white corridor was littered with floating objects. Many of them were flashing lights at him. The simulator had not prepared him for that, and he was momentarily confused. He stood his ground as he studied the lights. Several seconds passed before he realized that they were shards of ice from the hydroponic garden. He managed to contain a burst of laughter.

Carter stepped into the corridor. The walls were lined with black Cyrillic letters that gave the corridor a mythical appearance. He could only make out what fell within the circular beam of his flashlight. He directed the beam to the nearest set of letters. The scribble was meaningless to him, but he knew it described the contents of the container. Resisting the temptation to open the drawer, he allowed the beam slowly to travel the length of the corridor. There was no up or down. Each wall was exactly the same. There were several rows of containers, the lines of which converged at the far end. It seemed to Carter that the corridor resembled a mausoleum. He could hear the dull sound of ice striking his suit as he stepped cautiously toward the garden. He stopped and peered into an open drawer that he knew should not be open. It contained small plastic vials. He reached down to touch one. It squished under his finger. He picked up the vial, examined it, and to confirm his suspicions held it out in front of his camera for the others to view.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Vodka,” Komarov replied without having to read the label. “You have found Vladimir’s hoard.”

Carter quietly pocketed several vials. No one questioned him or tried to stop him. He walked to the end of the corridor and looked in upon the hydroponic garden. Inside hung suspended sheets of ice that looked like broken glass. Some of it was glass.

“Holy shit, what a mess. You see this?”

“Be careful, Al.”

“In this suit of armor. What, are you crazy? You could take a chain saw to this stuff.”

“Just be cautious.”

“You may want to use the drawers,” suggested Komarov. “But don’t—”

“I know,” Carter replied, thinking of the maelstrom Vladimir had created. “I just reviewed the tape.”

Carter went back to the drawers and pulled one out, dumping its contents into the corridor. Plastic packages joined the floating particles of ice and glass. Carter returned to the portal and examined the ice. He carved a path by slowly waving the drawer back and forth. It took several minutes to reach the far end of the room. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the path he had cleared was already closing. Before him was a broken container, with a fountain of ice emerging from a hole. He walked past the container and to the wall behind it. The ice was thickest there. A thump sounded inside his helmet.

“What was that?” Nelson demanded.

“Ice, I think,” Carter replied.

He pushed aside several clumps of ice and saw the panel to the electrical-control box. It was encased in ice. His first task was to remove the ice from the box. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead, and wanted to wipe it clear. He knew that the box might be live with current from the solar panels that fed it. He checked the metal casing with a voltmeter and the reading was zero. But still the box made him nervous. As a child, he had raced a friend to the top of a telephone pole. His friend had found him unconscious fifty meters from the pole with wisps of smoke rising from his clothes. A block of ice struck the back of his space suit.

He extracted a hammer and a small pick from the toolbox at his feet and began to chip away at the ice. He was careful not to strike so hard that he might damage the box. When he was finished, nearly an hour later, he collected what small chips he could and stored them in a bag so that they would be out of the way.

“Tatiana?” he said.

“Shut down all systems.” Her voice was hoarse.

The panel contained a series of breaker switches, each neatly marked in Cyrillic. The primary breaker and several of the other switches were already in the off position. He flipped the remaining switches.

“All systems have been shut down.”

“OK, let’s take a look behind the panel and see what sort of damage was done.”

He pried open the panel with a screwdriver. There was some ice behind the panel, but not nearly as much as there had been on the other side. It would not take long to clear it. He could see that several of the wires had been blackened by the sparks of an electrical short.

“I was expecting worse,” Tatiana said. “You should check the incoming circuit from the solar panels for current. It is the thick white cord connected to the top of the box.”

“I see it.” Carter retrieved the voltmeter and checked the circuit. “I’m getting a reading.”

“Good,” Tatiana replied. “I want you to remove the ice and repair the damaged wires.”

He cautiously followed Tatiana’s instructions as he worked, and was watchful of the thick white cord. Removing the ice was not that difficult, since there was not that much of it, but he still had to be careful as it was a good conductor of electricity. In its liquid form it had been the cause of the short. He closed the panel and stared at the main breaker for a moment, wondering if it would actually restore power to the ship. The lives of those on the surface depended upon it. Holding his breath, he threw the breaker and a series of yellow lights lit up. Everything else remained dark. He reached for the switch that controlled the power for the garden and flipped it to the on position. The compartment was suddenly bathed in light from the recessed bulbs in the ceiling. A pair of hands clapped in the background.

“Restoring power,” he said, and flipped on the remaining switches. The lights came on in other parts of the ship. He adjusted the thermostat to a couple of degrees below freezing so that the ice would not melt.

“Congratulations, Al,” Nelson said. “Let’s check out the lander.” Carter lifted the drawer and made for a portal opposite the one he had just entered. He touched the upper of two buttons against the wall next to the portal, and watched the hatch unlock and swing back. He stepped into the small compartment on the other side. To his right there was an antiquated console with a computer display that covered nearly the entire wall, and to his left, a series of drawers similar in color and design to the drawers that lined the main corridor. Directly in front of him was the portal that led to the lander. He walked over to the console. A horizontal row of switches marked in Cyrillic were beneath the display.

“You will want,” Komarov said, “to flip the switch on the far left.”

Carter did so. Almost immediately the screen above the keyboard flickered, then expanded. Cyrillic appeared, a message of some sort, then an array of icons. He slipped his boots into the foot restraints. Komarov told him what to type. When Komarov said that they were finished, he turned around to verify that the portal to the lander was open. He stepped up to the opening and looked inside. The first thing he noticed was the lighted panels on the ceiling, which meant the lander’s electrical subsystem was functioning.

“I’m goin’ in.”

He rotated his body ninety degrees to orient himself with the lander’s floor, then entered the small airlock, which was nearly half the size of its American counterpart. The lander was intended only as a backup: it was to launch in the event of an emergency. Three decapitated space suits hung side by side against the wall. They were red except for the chest plates, which were yellow and bore the Russian flag.

“I’m inside the lander,” Carter announced.

“Open the interior hatch,” Komarov said, “and proceed to the flight station.”

Carter made for the portal at the other end of the airlock and opened it by pressing the upper button. Before him was a man-sized tunnel with a ladder. He grabbed a rung and pulled his weightless body upward. Moments later he emerged inside the flight station. The quarters were cramped. He had to maneuver around a chair and a control panel before he could find room to stand. The equipment that surrounded him was less sophisticated than that of the American lander: the flight console with its control stick and its vast array of switches more closely resembled the consoles he had seen in museums. The keyboard was a late-Japanese model. He plumped himself into the pilot’s chair and fingered the knobs and gauges.

“We will start with Checklist Alpha,” Komarov said. Fifteen minutes into Alpha, the growing euphoria abruptly vanished. Carter reset the reluctant switch and flipped it again. The light still did not appear.

“It could be the bulb,” he offered hopefully, not fully realizing what system had just failed.

“Check the computer,” Komarov urged.

Carter looked desperately at the foreign keyboard. Several seconds passed in awkward silence before Komarov provided

the necessary instructions.

“What does it mean?” Endicott asked.

“One moment please,” Komarov said.

A schematic of the plug nozzle appeared on the screen, and even for someone who did not understand Cyrillic the red flashing lines in the small section at the top of the diagram clearly indicated something was wrong with the main fuel line.

“The purge-line check valve,” Komarov finally replied. “The valve bleeds excess gas from the main line.”

“Could be a malfunction in the sensor?” Carter offered. “Usually it is,” Komarov replied, “but you can’t take that chance. You must check it out.”

“That may take several days,” Carter objected.

“We’ve got the time,” Nelson said.

“OK. But I want to finish the diagnostics first.” Carter flipped the switch several more times before moving on to the next test. They would probably have him check the bulb first, he thought. It was the most likely component to fail. He scanned the control panel as he continued his testing and decided that it would only require a screwdriver to dismantle.

“T
hey have named the crater Pavlov,” Komarov said to no one in particular. He made the announcement with a false enthusiasm. It stirred little notice.

Satomura was absorbed with a series of calculations he had asked the computer to perform, and the only sign he had heard the remark was a brief pause in his keystrokes. He was thinner than usual, having lost several pounds in the past few days. He leaned forward and placed his head in his hands. Tatiana stopped pacing, and Komarov turned to look at him. They waited for him to speak.

It was two days ago that the purge-line check valve had failed to pass the diagnostic test, and Carter was still unable to determine the cause. They had conducted several tests that seemed to indicate that the valve was fine. The error was believed to be the result of a faulty sensor. But the only way to know for certain was to ignite the engines. The valve itself was inaccessible. The Russian Space Agency and NASA were discussing whether or not the rescue should be attempted and had given themselves a deadline of twelve hours to make the decision.

Lifting his head, Satomura turned to meet their anxious eyes. “At quarter rations, the food will last twenty days,” he began bluntly. “We can stretch it to thirty, but we would have to keep physical activity to a minimum. Oxygen and water are not a concern. One hundred and eighty days if we continue to consume at the present rate. The power supply should last one, maybe two years. A shutdown of certain systems could extend that.” He stopped to consider how best to proceed without sounding too callous, because what he had to say next was something they would not at first understand. “Certain measures could extend the life of any one individual.”

Komarov could feel his heartbeat quicken as he tried to think of measures other than the only one that had occurred to him. He turned to see if Tatiana was having the same thought.

“Certain measures?” she asked slowly.

“A significant discovery has been made,” Satomura continued. “Considerable research remains to be conducted. This research would be of the highest scientific value. It could perhaps change man’s understanding of life forever.”

“Certain measures?” Tatiana repeated, her voice rising to a dangerous pitch.

“It would be painless, of course.” “What would be painless?”

Komarov was rising from his chair as he looked nervously at Tatiana. She was standing absolutely straight, her arms rigid at her side.

“Euthanasia,” Satomura said.

“For what purpose?”

“Nutrition—so to speak.”

Tatiana’s reaction was immediate. She pounced upon Satomura and struck him several times in the face before Komarov wrapped his arms around her. She was pleased to see that she had drawn blood. As Komarov dragged her away, she kicked Satomura squarely in the groin. The scientist fell to the ground, his hands between his legs, his face pale white.