Taking Joy for a Spin
by Rado Dyne
|
Table of Contents, Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
Chapter 5: Any Landing You Can Walk Away From
We hit the ice very hard. At least it felt like it. Fortunately, I was not quite aware of the exact moment we hit, so I could not anticipate it. My helmet was faced up from the ice, while Cap was watching down, intently. I felt her start to give. Her legs flexed up into me. It was a slow push, so the shock absorbers must have done their job.
I was so relaxed, in fact, that I was not gripping firmly with my legs. As a result, Cap’s legs basically pushed me straight up, and I let go with my arms. I rose quite slowly, so I righted myself with my gas jets so I could see her. Cap was bent off to her left side. The left punchy had not anchored properly, so her left leg was free. The right side though looked like it had bit in and anchored.
“Cap, you OK?” I radioed.
“Yeah, I think I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine; your right leg is bent a little funny.”
“Oh, I... Owww! Yeah, you might be right.”
Then I came to the end of the tether. I bounced as it expanded a little, then contracted and I started drifting back towards Cap. It felt like forever, but it wasn’t. I wanted to make sure I landed softly and reined in my tether so I wouldn’t bounce again. Then I checked on her. I didn’t think she had broken her leg, but her ankle was sprained or broken from taking the full impact of our landing.
“Time,” she said.
I looked at both our panels.
“We’ve got a few minutes.”
She was trying to set up. I moved to stop her.
“No, we don’t. You need to get moving to those oxy bottles.”
“No, I don’t.” I wasn’t confident that I had time enough to skim along using only my gas jets. I would have to build up speed, get to base camp, then get back to her before she ran out of oxy. The only way I could see us doing this in time was to both move together. “We’ve both gotta get moving. We don’t have to Tarzan it anymore, gimpy, but I’m not breaking my tether to you, either.”
“Arg. You’re right. Help me up!”
I did. Cap is amazingly whiny when she’s hurt. I released the punchy, which made it a lot easier to get her up. I was hoping there was no internal bleeding. There was nothing I could do here if there was, but blood pooling is a real problem in low to no gravity. I drove in a punchy and tied down the winch cable. Neither of us wanted a free floating razor wire to cut any body parts off.
We both floated for a moment, then I righted myself with respect to base camp. It was easy to see from here. I gathered the tether in hand and goosed my jets. In the small rear view portion of my face shield I could see Cap orienting herself in similar fashion, and starting to follow me. We both got up to speed pretty quickly. We could afford to waste gas now, as the clock was still the only thing that counted.
Closing on base camp, I started goosing the opposite vector of my jets, slowing to a crawl so I could easily snag one of the lines set up around our supplies. Cap following and doing the same. I took one last glance at the timer I’d set and decided to ignore it. This was a race you either won or it didn’t matter. I started scanning for the crate with the oxy marker on it, found it and slightly corrected my course to it.
I slammed on full reverse jet, which isn’t as impressive as it sounds when you’re really not moving that fast, but I was optimizing everything at this point. I clipped in my quickdraw to the closest line and started rummaging. Thankfully, Erik had organized the important stuff in the important way, and I managed to get one oxy bottle out of the net and put it on my torso port and locked it in. I wanted to feed myself that oxy as fast as I could.
Then I felt a little shove on my shoulder. I turned to see Cap floating there, already clipped in but with her hand out and her head cocked.
“I suppose you want some of the good stuff, eh?”
She responded only by cocking her head the other way, but I was already fishing the next bottle out. We got it locked in and I watched her breathe heavily for about a minute. I think we both unconsciously had been holding our breath, which could be a good idea under the circumstances. We made up for it now with deep, refreshing breaths.
“We Tarzan,” I said at last, and we slapped hands.
The wait was going to be about two to three hours, as it turned out. We had plenty of oxygen now but needed to keep our eye on other resources. Cap was back on the radio with Erik, giving directions to her crew. Some of the others had been smarter than us, and had extra oxy on them when they went adrift. Our crew was adept at rescue, as it is a fact of life in our occupation, but it still takes time to match vectors and cast lines and cycle airlocks.
When it was apparent that the rest of the crew were safe, and everyone was except Trish, Erik told us that Krishnan was bringing the ship our way. Krishnan had taken the helm since Maxim was floating around on a pile of cargo.
I was dying to ask Erik to check on the status of the grav harness I had taken out of service, but I knew that could wait till I got back to the Lariat, and I didn’t want to interrupt Cap. At some point when things calmed down, Cap asked if anyone had any idea what had happened to ruin our grav harnesses. There was no response for a few moments, then Erik came back on.
“Uh... Cap... there’s no noise coming from Atlantis, over.”
“Maybe you’re just blocked, you haven’t been out of the cluster, over.”
“Could be, but normally even if bergs or rocks are interfering, I get some background noise. It might be scratchy and a weak signal, but I mean nada, dead air, nothing.”
Erik forgot to say “over.” Erik never forgets to say “over.”
Copyright © 2022 by Rado Dyne
