The Next Continent (12 page)

“What? Oh, sure. The food was really good. Much better than we get in Chinatown back home.”

The others laughed nervously. Sohya was relieved. At least it now seemed unlikely that Cui would follow with more highflown phrases about the People's Republic.

Jiang glanced at Cui, urgently signaling him to begin. Cui gulped as if swallowing something hard and opened his mouth.

At that instant there was a loud bang, like a gunshot, from somewhere inside the base. Everyone froze and stared at each other. Perhaps ten seconds passed.

Then the cry of an alarm sounded. They flinched again. Almost simultaneously the two commanders shouted, “Pressure warning!” and sprinted toward the Topaz node, with Ma close behind. Jiang sprang to the equipment control panel. He took one look at the numbers streaming across the display and yelled, “Pressure drop! Azure Dragon! Cargo docking hatch sealed! Node junction nominal! It's not the air lock. Whipple shield—it's a meteor strike!”

Jiang's words were barely audible over the keening of the alarm. Feng and Ma, already out of the module, almost certainly could not hear him.

“Cui! Take care of her!” Sohya pushed Tae toward him.

“Sohya! Wait!” she called out, but he was already running, diving through the hatch to follow the others. He had trained for just this sort of emergency. The damaged module had to be identified immediately and sealed off.

But Peng, Feng, and Ma had not heard Jiang. Each had entered a different module, frantically searching for the location of the breach. Sohya found Peng in Azure Dragon, standing in the middle of a maze of supplies and training equipment. “Where is it? Where's the breach?” he shouted.

Sohya yelled back. “Here, Commander! It was a meteor!” Peng looked up at the ceiling, searching for where the meteor had hit. He saw it almost instantly. There was a circular hole, about three centimeters across, in the corner of one of the semiconductor illumination panels that covered the curved ceiling. The hole was surrounded by white mist, the signature of adiabatic cooling in the presence of an enormous pressure differential.

Sohya looked up and froze. He was seeing something no human had seen before: the black emptiness of naked space—with nothing between him and it.

As Sohya stood rooted to the spot, Peng did something astounding. “There it is!” he shouted. He flexed his knees and jumped with all his strength.

“Peng! No!” Sohya cried out.

Peng pressed his upper right arm against the hole. Even under the moon's low gravity, his mass was over ten kilos. With the fingers of his free hand clinging to a gap between two lighting panels, he struggled to hold himself in place.

“Don't worry! The suit will hold. What's the pressure? And shut off that alarm!”

Sohya called to Feng, who was looking through the hatch. “Peng is blocking the breach with his arm! What's the pressure?”

Feng shouted, “Jiang, pressure!”

“Nine oh seven!” Jiang called out. “Down more than a hundred millibars in two minutes. At this rate we'll lose all pressure within twenty minutes!”

“Is it still falling?” yelled Feng.

“Passing nine hundred! Wait…back at nine hundred now and holding. Looks like it's stabilizing.”

“Good! Shut down the alarm!”

Suddenly the base fell silent. Sohya rubbed his ears to stop the ringing. He looked up at Peng.

“Pressure stabilized at nine hundred millibars. What do we do now?”

“Get putty sealant and some kind of metal panel—anything will do. Wait, I need some support first. Get a length of drainage tubing from Red Phoenix.”

“No—it won't go past the angle. I'll check White Tiger!” Sohya brushed past Feng, who had just entered the module, and hurried into White Tiger where Ma was still searching for the leak. Sohya repeated Peng's orders and pulled a long length of conduit off one of the experiment cases. He carried it back through the node. Feng was opening the valves on one reserve oxygen tank after another. Sohya pushed the conduit against the hard torso of Peng's suit, giving him extra support. The flexible fabric on the arm of the suit was not designed to stand up to one atmosphere of pressure. Apparently his skin, pressed against the fabric, was helping to seal the breach. Peng's face was drained of blood.

“I'm glad I put my arm against it. The suction is terrific. If I'd used the palm of my hand, I might have broken some bones,” he laughed.

Sohya yelled, “Where's that putty?”

“Got it.” Ma entered the module, kneading a large chunk of fiber-reinforced putty and carrying an aluminum panel under his arm. Feng boosted Ma up on his shoulders. Sohya tightened his grip on the conduit.

“Okay, peel him off !”

As Ma called out, Peng gripped the conduit. Sohya wrapped his arms around Peng's legs and started to pull, slowly increasing his effort against the powerful suction. It took all of his strength. Peng separated from the hole with a loud pop. The air around the breach flashed into churning mist. Ma slapped the putty-covered panel over the hole and began sealing the edges with more putty. Feng called out: “Jiang! Pressure!”

“Nine zero five…nine fourteen…nine nineteen! The tanks are working. The leak's stopped!”

The men sat down heavily on the floor. Every face was deathly pale, bathed in cold sweat. Peng massaged his arm through the suit. The contusion must have been terrible. It hit Sohya again: just outside this tube, which in its own way represented comfort, reigned a vacuum with tremendous destructive power. If Peng had not acted in time, those wearing space suits could simply have lowered their visors. Feng and the others clad only in work clothes would have been doomed.

Yet even Peng did not take the right course of action. If the hole had been much larger, his arm might have been pulled through. If the edges of the breach had been ragged metal rather than plastic panel, he could have lost part of his suit and a chunk of his flesh. And if there had been more than one breach in the hull, even entering the module could have been suicidal.

“You could have gotten killed…” Sohya's breathing was ragged. Peng just smiled and mopped his brow through his open visor.

“This base is ours. Our own people don't give us adequate support. The place is falling apart. But we'll defend it with our lives.”

“How can you say it's falling apart?” said Sohya, momentarily chastened. “It's an unbelievable achievement.”

Peng raised his eyebrows. “Drop the pretense. You don't believe that. It's obvious.”

Sohya blushed. He had underestimated Peng. This genial taikonaut had seen right through him.

“The dreams and hopes of 1.8 billion Chinese—no, of the whole human species—are on our shoulders. Our presence here took a huge commitment of national wealth. Should we run away because of one meteor? And even if we wanted to run, where could we go?”

Sohya had been paralyzed with fear at his glimpse of naked space. Yet this man had confronted it without a moment's hesitation. He felt a yawning gap between the demands of the situation and his own reaction.

Peng turned to Feng, who was looking up at the aluminum panel. “It must've had a cross section of about twenty millimeters. The Whipple bumper would've vaporized it, but the gas jet punched through the hull. In Earth's atmosphere it would've burned up. If it had hit Black Tortoise or White Tiger, the regolith blanket would've kept us safe.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Feng. “I'm just glad it didn't hit the habitation module. In fact, maybe we're lucky it struck here.”

“You'll have to do permanent repair work on the hull after we leave. Looks like you've got something else on your plate, Commander.”

“It'll be good practice. Now we know we can handle a small strike without harm to the crew. We'll be fine.” The two officers seemed almost casual about this brush with death.

As Sohya hung his head, almost overcome with exhaustion, Tae timidly peeked in from the docking node.

“Sohya? Is everything okay?”

“Hey, Tae. Hole's been patched, for the moment. Don't worry, the danger's over.”

“Really? That's good news.” She sighed with relief.

Sohya rose, went to her side, and gave her a hug. “Pretty scary, huh? Sorry I left you back there. I had to do what I could to help.”

“I was really scared. Please don't do that again, ever. Maybe you didn't have a choice this time though.”

“Commander Peng blocked the hole with his body.”

“He what? No, I don't believe it…” Tae peeked out from behind Sohya and stared at Peng.

“It's true,” said Sohya.

“I don't understand how he could do that.” Her voice was calm, but she had begun to tremble. Sohya put his hands on her shoulders.

Jiang looked in from the Topaz node. “We patched the breach,” said Feng. “What's the word from Beijing?”

“I shut down the comm,” Jiang answered.

“Shut it down? Why?”

“I think you'd better come see for yourself.” Jiang looked more embarrassed than worried. The others exchanged puzzled glances and reentered the habitation module. There they found Cui sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, arms hanging limply at his sides. He was shaking all over.

“Cui! What is it? Are you injured?” Feng leaned over him.

“Send me home…please…”

“What?” Feng straightened up in bafflement. Cui lifted his face. It was streaked with tears.

“Send me back to Earth! I'm begging you!” It was a howl of desperation. “I can't take this anymore, this…this desert of nothing but rocks and sun, this vacuum. Beijing doesn't know a damn thing about this place. All they do is order us around. Dig, dig, day after day, don't stop digging…Control doesn't give a rat's ass about us. Pedal the bike, work till you drop, just don't ask why…”

“Cui…?”

“I want to see my kids in person, not on a damn screen. I want to swim all day. I want to eat home cooking till I explode. I want to sleep and not dream all night.
And I don't want to die!
” Cui was screaming now, his cheeks flecked with crimson. He glared at Sohya, eyes narrowed, and stood up. “You! If it wasn't for the two of
you
, I'd be going back to the smell of cool, fresh earth. You goddamn Jap!”

“That's enough!” shouted Peng. Feng and Ma pinned Cui's arms. “Look at you! You call yourself a taikonaut? You were selected over 18,000 candidates. Where are your guts and your courage? Have you forgotten your oath?”

“I don't care. I just want to go home.” Cui sagged against Feng and Ma and sobbed like a child.

“Can you get him back in shape?” said Peng. “I don't think he's far gone enough to send him home on the backup vehicle.”

“I agree,” said Feng. “The same thing happened on Mir. The presence of our guests caused more work and stress. With the meteor strike, he snapped. He needs extended rest and more personal family calls. That should be enough.”

Tae gripped Sohya's hand tightly. He knew what she was thinking. Cui was the cream of China's aerospace program, and his drive and energy had seemed heroic until a few moments ago. Now it had become something cold and inhuman.

Though he knew it was pointless, Sohya said to Feng, “We're sorry to have caused such a problem. If there's anything we can do—”

“Don't worry about it. Before launch, we all signed a contract agreeing to stay here as long as necessary.” Peng's voice was cold as he looked at Cui, who had slumped to the floor again. “He should be thankful. No one in history has spent two years on the moon. He'll be a hero when he gets home, with two years of back pay waiting. But we need your help.”

He peered at Sohya and Tae, eyes bright. “We hope you'll keep this confidential. We are a very proud people. We'll do anything to save face—even shut down the link with Beijing, which is strictly forbidden.”

The two Japanese nodded quickly. “Of course.” “I won't tell anyone either.”

“Thank you. Then let's prepare for departure. I'd better check my suit.” Peng left the module. Sohya and Tae looked down at Cui, who was silently weeping.

[7]

TAE TOOK
a last look at the lunar surface from the quartz window of the return module they had left in orbit.

“What a dangerous world…”

“Yes,” said Sohya. “Too dangerous for me.” He looked out the window, his head next to hers. “Those men down there are willing to sacrifice their lives. They're heroes. They give their all for their country, and they're all alone. It's almost scary to think how noble that is.”

“It won't work that way.” Tae spoke in Japanese. Sohya looked at her. She was rapidly inputting something into the wearcom pendant she wore around her neck. Since they had arrived on the moon, she had been using it during most of her spare time.

“What are you writing?” asked Sohya.

“It's my report for Grandfather.” She only glanced at the high-resolution display from time to time as her fingertips darted across it at dizzying speed.

“Kunlun Base was cramped, smelly, and scary. The crew had to work all day and never had time to really rest. They had almost nothing to look forward to or make them happy. The only people who can handle that are people doing it for their country. Regular people can't.”

Sohya frowned. “Isn't that a little too pessimistic? You don't want your grandfather to cancel his project, do you? Have you changed your mind about building a base on the moon?”

“No. Not at all.” She shook her head resolutely. “The moon is way more amazing than I thought. They showed us the layout of the base before we left, so I had an idea of what we'd find. But that's not what I want. I want to build something different.”

“Are you the one who decides what to build?” said Sohya, mystified.

“Oops.” Tae gave him a childlike smile. The tip of her tongue darted out between her lips with happy embarrassment. “We better keep that confidential.”