Sea of Crises (24 page)

Over the next two minutes, he tried again several times to no avail.

From the rover, he retrieved the large bundle he’d assembled, and he made his way around to the far corner of the enclosure. He tossed the bundle in, noting with satisfaction as he did that the blue light above the interior hatchway door was still illuminated. Planting a boot on the upper edge of the damaged wall at the point where the jagged hole was closest to the ground and gripping the sides of the hole with both hands, he carefully lifted himself up and over the tear in the structure, being careful not to snag any part of his suit on the sharp edges.

Once inside, he collected his bundle and stepped over to the air lock, where he spent a couple of minutes studying the instrument panel. When he was satisfied, he again knelt and tapped on this door, listening intently with his helmet against it. As before, there was no answering tap.

When he felt he could no longer wait, he straightened, paused and said a silent prayer. It was not for himself, but for the man who lay on the other side of the air lock door, a man, Cartwright realized, who was probably already dead. And, Cartwright knew, if he wasn’t dead, what Cartwright was about to do would likely kill him. Still, it represented the only chance that the young man had to live. He had to give it a try.

With a concluding amen, Cartwright reached up and toggled a switch on the air lock instrument panel, opening the dump valve. As the atmosphere in the chamber began venting out into the lunar vacuum, the hand on the center dial started its slow crawl from right to left. Positioning himself to the side of the door, safely away from where it would swing open, Cartwright gripped the main handle. Just as the hand on the center dial passed out of the blue quadrant, Cartwright twisted the handle and quickly let go. With the force of at least four pounds-per-square-inch worth of pent up pressure behind it, the door blew open, swinging around on its hinges and slamming into the wall on the far side.

Cartwright hoped the violent motion and impact had not damaged the door. He would need it to function if his plan were to work.

He reached down, grabbed the bundle at his side with his left hand, paused, then swung it toward the opening. He realized he’d been premature when the still-escaping air from the chamber flung it back. Cartwright simply allowed his arm to swing behind his body and again brought the bundle around, trying to generate as much momentum as possible to push against the residual escaping atmosphere. The bundle fell through the opening and onto the floor just beyond. In a motion he’d practiced several times in his mind, Cartwright then stepped in front of the hatchway with his back turned to the air lock. He reached over, gripped the top of the door and pulled it toward him as he gingerly stepped backwards over the threshold and into the chamber. He grabbed the handle and, with what would have been a mighty bang but for the fact that there was no air pressure to transmit the sound, he silently slammed the hatch door shut, rotating the lever. As he straightened, he reached up, found the switch corresponding to the one he’d used to vent the air lock, and toggled it to re-pressurize the chamber.

As soon as he felt confident the air lock was again filling, he turned slowly and looked down. In the dim light provided by a single fixture in the center of the ceiling, he could see Kruchinkin’s body sprawled on its side, head up against the far door. Lying next to him, still clutched in his right hand, was a flashlight. Cartwright realized that it was probably what Kruchinkin had used to tap out his messages earlier. Kneeling awkwardly in his pressurized suit, Cartwright gently rolled the cosmonaut over on his back.

The man’s chest was covered with blood. His eyes were shut, so he didn’t have the telltale stare of death. But Cartwright had seen enough dead bodies over time, two in the last several hours, to know the young man was gone. He slumped inside his suit, head drooping forward. It had all been for naught.

After a few seconds, Cartwright placed a hand on Kruchinkin. He was about to say another prayer for the cosmonaut when he realized with a start that the man’s chest had risen slightly. He stared at his own gloved hand. Yes, the chest was, almost imperceptibly, rising and falling. Remarkably, the man was still breathing.

Breathing what?

Cartwright quickly stood, turned and looked at the instrument panel. The hand in the center dial had not yet reached the blue area, and the light above was not glowing. But it was damn close.

He quickly removed his outer EVA gloves and pulled the first aid kit from the bundle he’d previously tossed into the air lock. Returning to kneel by Kruchinkin, he tried gripping the zipper on the man’s coveralls. but his interior glove wouldn’t allow the necessary dexterity, so he pulled off that glove as well. He yanked down the zipper and pushed aside the flaps of the garment. Beneath the coveralls, the young man wore a gray t-shirt that was now drenched in blood. Arrayed across the front were letters that looked to have at one time been printed in yellow. In the center of the chest, just below the “a” in “Georgia Tech,” was an irregular hole.

Using a pair of scissors he’d removed from the first aid kit, Cartwright carefully cut open the t-shirt. He saw that, around his neck, Kruchinkin wore a metal chain. It extended down to a spot in the center of his chest, where the ends seemed to disappear into a bloody hole. Still visible a few millimeters below the level of the skin was a piece of metal. The hole was oozing blood, further evidence that the man’s heart was still beating.

Cartwright glanced over at the control panel. The blue light had illuminated. He reached up and adjusted a series of controllers on the breastplate of his suit. Then he twisted and pulled off his helmet. Leaning forward, he put his left hand behind Kruchinkin and carefully lifted the man’s upper torso off the floor. With his bare right hand, he pulled down the left top of the Russian’s coveralls, exposing the rest of the man’s chest and shoulders. He reached around, probing his back for an exit wound. There was nothing, which meant the bullet had not passed through the body. Given the point at which the bullet had struck, though, it should, by all rights, have pierced the man’s heart, and Kruchinkin, he knew, should be dead.

As Cartwright brought his hand forward, it slid over something unusual behind the left shoulder. He reached back and fingered the area. Something hard lay just below the surface of the skin. He puzzled over it for a moment, before realizing what it was. And then he knew what had happened.

The bullet fired by Gale must have struck the object that Kruchinkin wore on the chain around his neck. That object, whatever it was, had been driven into Kruchinkin’s torso, in the process disrupting the bullet’s path and diverting it up and to the right through Kruchinkin’s shoulder. Apparently, the combination of the object and whatever the bullet had subsequently encountered had spent its forward momentum, and the bullet had come to rest just below the surface of the skin in the cosmonaut’s back.

Cartwright wondered absently whether the ammunition used by Gale had been calibrated so that it would not pass through a body. That would make sense if there was the possibility Gale would be employing the weapon within a pressurized environment. Otherwise, a bullet leaving a victim’s body could pierce the shell of the enclosure and have the unintended effect of killing Gale as well. Of course, if Gale were to shoot and miss, he’d still have that problem. That, Cartwright reflected ruefully, was probably not a big concern. He doubted Gale had missed many targets in his life.

He remembered the shot that took down Petrov. Gale had fired it from behind Cartwright, just missing him and drilling the cosmonaut between the eyes. It had been a perfect bull’s-eye under challenging circumstances. More to the point, it hadn’t led to the discharge of blood and brain matter behind the man that would have accompanied an exit wound. Nor had there been any blood pooling around the dead man’s head.

The shot at Kruchinkin had been directed at the man’s heart and had also hit its target precisely. It should have killed the young cosmonaut, but it hadn’t. That was something of a miracle, attributable to whatever the man wore on the chain around his neck. But, Cartwright mused, as with the bullet that killed Petrov, it had not been delivered with enough force to exit the body.

Cartwright was no doctor, but he’d had training in emergency first aid. He quickly cleaned the wound with alcohol. He knew not to attempt removal of the bullet or the object that had altered the bullet’s course. Instead, he stuffed sterile gauze into the entry wound to help stem the flow of blood. Given the man’s still regular breathing, he didn’t think the bullet had ruptured a lung, but he wasn’t going to take a chance. He applied an occlusive dressing over the hole, binding it on three sides and leaving the fourth unbound to act as a potential flutter valve. Then he gave the cosmonaut an injection of antibiotics and a shot of adrenaline.

There was a small metallic thermal blanket in the first aid kit. Cartwright pulled it out, shook it open, and carefully wrapped it around the slight body of the young Russian. He lay the man’s head back against a makeshift pillow he’d created with his EVA gloves. Then he finally allowed himself a moment to relax.

They stayed that way for several minutes. Finally, Kruchinkin twitched. A hand flew up involuntarily, then dropped to the floor. A few seconds later, the young man’s eyelids fluttered and, after a short beat, suddenly flew open. It took the cosmonaut a moment to focus. When he did, a surprised expression crossed his face, and he opened his mouth to speak, the words faint, barely audible.

“Commander Cartwright, you are dead too?”

12

In the dim light, Cartwright studied the dials above the air lock hatchway. The readout on the large one in the center was holding steady, but two of the others had dropped noticeably from the time he’d last checked an hour earlier, indicating that whatever those dials measured was diminishing. It reaffirmed what his body had already told him. The quality of the atmosphere in the chamber was degrading. They couldn’t stay much longer.

He looked back down at the body of Kruchinkin, still wrapped in the thermal blanket. The young man was asleep, though it was a fitful one. A heavy sheen of sweat coated his face, reflecting light from the overhead fixture. As Cartwright watched, the man’s lips parted in a slight grimace and a brief moan escaped. Head turning slowly side to side, he seemed to mumble something. Cartwright couldn’t make out the words, though it didn’t matter. He knew they were in Russian, and he wouldn’t understand them.

For the last several hours, Kruchinkin had hovered in a semi-conscious state, alternating between short periods of wakefulness, when the chills tended to overtake him, and longer periods of restless sleep. He was running a high fever, and Cartwright didn’t want to have to try to move him unless and until it broke. Cartwright’s options, however, were beginning to shrink, and not just because of the pending failure of the air lock environmental system. The launch window for their return to earth would be opening in a few hours. They needed to start back to the lunar module soon.

Cartwright knelt down next to the young cosmonaut, laying the back of a hand on the man’s forehead, then on one cheek. Still burning up. He sighed heavily. Can’t be helped, he said to himself.

He reached out, gripped the large bundle he’d brought with him and slid it closer. It was bound by the tethers he’d used earlier to tie up Gale. He undid the package and began separating the items. His first order of business was going to be getting Kruchinkin into the A7LB space suit he’d previously removed from Gale’s body.

As Cartwright pulled away the blanket surrounding the young cosmonaut, Kruchinkin again swung his head side to side, this time more rapidly. He expelled another string of Russian. Fortunately, he did not open his eyes or regain consciousness. Just as well, Cartwright thought.

He started with the liquid cooled undergarment, essentially a pair of long johns fitted with narrow water tubes. Custom-fit for Gale’s body, it hung loosely around the cosmonaut’s slight figure. Not perfect, but it would do.

Then came the more rigid, and difficult, torso limb suit assembly.

Cartwright tried to be gentle, but it was simply not possible. The garment was difficult enough to get into under the best of circumstances. Cartwright gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the moans escaping the lips of the injured Russian. When he’d managed to force the young man into the suit, he was relieved to see that, while the thing was also large around the torso, the arms and legs at least fit reasonably well. It, too, would suffice for what they had to do.

Of course, for Gale’s suit to function at all, Cartwright would need to patch the hole in the right leg, a task to which he now set himself. There was also a nasty gash to the inside of the right arm, where the shattered ends of Gale’s ulna and radius bones had ripped through the undergarment and the first couple layers of material in the outer suit. Fortunately, the bones hadn’t pierced the exterior.

When he was done, Cartwright rolled Kruchinkin onto his side and horsed the large backpack into place. Then he returned the man to his back, now propped up against the bulky device, and he began attaching the various water and oxygen hoses to the front panel. After a moment, Cartwright realized that, through barely slitted eyes, Kruchinkin was looking at him.

“How are you feeling?” Cartwright asked.

Kruchinkin opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. He ran his tongue over cracked lips. Cartwright reached for the tube attached to the drink bag inside the neck ring and brought it to the cosmonaut’s mouth. The young man took a long sip and closed his eyes briefly. Then he again fixed Cartwright with a bleak look.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked faintly.

“Well,” Cartwright said in a light tone, “I know how much you like it in here, but I figure it’s good to get out now and again. Don’t you agree?”

Cartwright was pleased to see a faint smile touch the edges of Kruchinkin’s lips. But the Russian shook his head slowly.