Chapter 3

On her way back to Luna Base from the research station orbiting Saturn, the U.E.F. supply ship Harry Harrison had been struck by a micrometeorite directly amidships. Such a thing wasn't uncommon; despite the thickness of the hull plating and the best electronic detection equipment that could be installed, ships traversing the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars rarely made it through a round trip without having to patch at least one hole made by what was, for all the damage it did, just a highly accelerated dust mote. In this instance, the crew was in pressure suits and had that section of the ship sealed within 60 seconds. Normally, that would be the end of the problem until they reached space dock around Mars, since there was generally no need to keep the cargo areas pressurized throughout the entire trip. If this were the ship's normal "milk run," the crew would wait until after its Mars cargo was offloaded; only then would the affected section be re-pressurized, the leak found, and the necessary patches put into place. More permanent repairs would have to wait until the ship reached Earth, when entire sections of the hull could be cut out and replaced.

However, the Harry Harrison had been the only U.E.F. ship returning to the inner system within the timeline given 2nd Lieutenant Petersen to report for her next assignment. Moreover, due to normal staff rotation, 5 of members of the station's scientific staff and its former chief of medicine were being ferried to Mars for debriefing and reassignment. Last, but certainly not least, two senior members of the Space Miner's Guild were returning to Earth to petition the world government to open bidding for mining contracts both on the moons and in the rings of Saturn. Their hope was that inner system miners, having flooded Mars and the Asteroid Belt and found little of interest, would flock to what appeared to be a mother lode of valuable materials. Working in concert with the U.E.F., the Miner's Guild was certain that, with the right equipment in place, they could mine and refine all the raw materials the U.E.F. needed to establish what, up to now, had been only a dream - a fully Earth-independent military/civilian base that could be both the staging point for exploration outside the solar system, as well as a pivotal trading post for permanent manned settlements on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. One night, Esme had encountered the two Miner's Guild representatives in the ship's mess, and, though reticent at first, eventually they revealed that they were going to throw the full support of their guild behind developing mines and refineries on Saturn's moons, and selling the finished products to the U.E.F. They envisioned a fully independent spaceport and trading center, as well as an entire shipbuilding industry coming to fruition around the planet within 25 to 30 years. Esme knew that, if only because of the two Miner's Guild members, the Harry Harrison had likely been instructed to put on all due haste to deliver its passengers as quickly as possible.

Esme tried to tell herself that haste was not the reason for what happened, but, somehow, she was never quite able to convince herself of that. Haste had not caused the micrometeorite to impact with the hull. But perhaps haste in preparing the area of the ship where Esme and the eight other passengers were quartered had helped lead to the tragedy that happened afterward.

The drill for passengers in a U.E.F. ship losing air is fairly simple. Since space is at a premium, no space suits are provided for supercargo. Instead, in the "non-enlisted personnel" quarters, there are always two things provided: 1) a small, double-hulled shelter equipped with space heaters and oxygen, enough to last 10 people up to 5 hours; and 2) a small oxygen bottle in each room, enough to last 10 minutes... since, if you didn't reach the shelter within 10 minutes, you'd likely be dead from some combination of exposure or pressure drop, even if you had air.

Esme, as a commissioned officer, had her own suit in her cabin; having spent nearly a year traveling to and from the various moons, asteroids, and rocks that made up the rings of Saturn, she had spent more time in her suit than out of it. Even before the alarm klaxons sounded, when she felt the vibration from the collision, followed by the wrenching BOOM of explosive decompression, she had put on her pressure suit before she was even fully awake.

Plugging into the ship's communication network, she found out that she was the only actual U.E.F. crewmember inside the affected area, and that all hatches between compartments had been sealed automatically at impact. All she could do was make sure that the rest of the passengers got into the shelter, where they could stay warm and safe until the hole was sealed and the deck repressurized.

In all, the time she took to shrug on her suit, check-in, and be told to take charge of the survivors took about one minute.

It proved to be one minute too long for all but one person. Her.

As she would write later in her report on the disaster, at least one of the scientists was apparently inside his cabin when the meteorite punctured the hull plate that corresponded with the wall next to his bed. The gaping hole produced by explosive decompression insured that his body would never be found. A second scientist was lost to space as well, as he was standing too close to the affected cabin when its door imploded from the decompression, and was sucked out into the void.

By the time Esme was able to manually disable the automatic lock on her door, the breathable air left inside the passageway was next to nil. There was just enough air left to carry to her the sound of a clamor coming from the area of the emergency shelter. She hurried down the hall, glad that the artificial gravity generators had not been affected by the meteor impact.

When she reached the middle of the compartment, Esme found five men banging furiously on the sides of the emergency shelter. Each was wearing an emergency tank of oxygen, still three-quarters full. The reason they were banging on the door instead of huddling inside stood peeking through a porthole in the side of the shelter. It was the Terran, Dr. Lewis, who apparently had reached the shelter first and then locked the doors behind him.

Normally, this would not be an issue, even in a depressurized compartment. The shelter was built with an airlock, so that emergency personnel could enter and exit as needed during whatever crisis might be happening. However, as several of the civilians had already discovered, the outside hatch had been disabled, its electronic keypad flashing a red "lock-out" signal. Communicating with her hands, Esme motioned one of the miners away from the door and plugged her suit into the intercom jack.

"Dr. Lewis, can you hear me?" she asked into her suit microphone. "If you can, push the button labeled 'intercom' near the keypad by the door."

There was no sound for a moment, but then Esme heard the faint electronic crackle which signaled the keying of a microphone. "Hello?" came the shaky voice from inside the shelter.

"Doctor, this is Lt. Petersen. I need you to unlock the door to the shelter, so we can begin letting in the rest of the passengers. There should be a large green button at the bottom of the keypad. That button will electronically release the locks on the doors. Push it now."

Esme waited, counting silently. After 15 seconds with no change in the status outside, she keyed her mic again. "Doctor, there is no change here. Are you pushing the green button?"

The high, quavery voice shook as it came into her helmet. "Yes, I've pushed it several times. It doesn't seem to do anything." The doctor's next words turned her blood cold. "When are they going to turn on the air in here? It's starting to get a little stuffy."

The emergency shelter was designed to automatically begin pumping air once the door was closed and locked. If the doctor was sealed inside and no air was circulating...

Esme turned to look at the men standing with her outside the shelter. Each still had at least six minutes of air left in their bottles, but that was not their biggest problem. The deck was now empty of air, but that meant that it was also without air pressure. And a body that went long without being pressurized by the air around it would quickly become a corpse. Moreover, the men were visibly shivering; heat was also absent within the cabin, and Esme knew that she had very little time before hypothermia began to incapacitate those around her.

She keyed her remote mic to the Harry Harrison's internal communications frequency. "Captain, this is Lt. Petersen. I have a serious problem down here." She took a minute to explain the situation to the captain, watching the tremors of the men around increase as the cold affected them more and more.

There was no answer in her helmet, no acknowledgement of her report, and for a moment Esme thought that she had lost radio contact with captain. Balling up her fist and smacking the side of the shelter, Esme yelled into her helmet, "Damn it! Is nothing going to go right today?"

Very quietly in her ear, a voice she recognized as the captain's said, "Steady down there, Lieutenant. Don't let your emotions overcome your reason, because right now that might be all that you have to try and save those men."

Esme steadied herself, taking a deep breath. "Understood, sir."

"Good man. We've discussed it up here, and there is nothing you can do to help those men survive if they are outside the emergency shelter. But for some reason the outside door will not unlock, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well, Petersen. Take something and break the glass porthole in the outside door. If you can break the glass, you can likely reach in and open the door by hand. Do you understand?"