Vosnesensky had objected strenuously.
“You are too sick to do it!” the Russian had insisted. “I am the only one remaining who has even half his normal strength…”
Jamie shut him down with an upraised hand. “Mikhail,” he said softly to the cosmonaut’s image on the comm screen, “if you get stuck out there too, then we’re all dead. If I get stuck, we still have Pete or even one of the women to try to get to you.”
“They are all in worse condition than you are!”
“You’ve got to stay with your vehicle,” Jamie said flatly, unemotionally, as if he were reading instructions from a printed form. “That is self-evident. The regulations are perfectly clear, and they’re entirely right, too.”
Vosnesensky scowled. But he no longer argued.
“I’m strong enough to make it around the perimeter of the crater,” Jamie said. “I’ll carry a line that we can use to bring the others across the lake.”
“Lake?”
“The crater full of sand.”
“It is more like a bog than a lake,” Vosnesensky grumbled.
“Whatever. That’s how we’ll do it,” said Jamie.
Vosnesensky muttered something in Russian.
“How’s Ivshenko?” Jamie asked.
The cosmonaut’s face went even darker. “Reed is taking care of his leg. Apparently it is not broken, but the knee is badly dislocated. He cannot walk. He can’t even stand up without support.”
“So it’s up to me.”
Now, after two hours of sweaty struggle, Jamie dogged down his helmet on the neck ring of his suit, trying to keep his doubts at bay. A couple of kilometers, he told himself. Two-three klicks, at most. I can do that. Yet his arms felt almost too heavy to lift; his legs were rubbery.
Connors had wanted to help him into the hard suit, but he was too weak to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Joanna and Ilona assisted him, tight-lipped and silent, while Connors read off the checklist.
“Not bad,” the astronaut quipped, “having two gorgeous women help you dress.”
He was sitting on the edge of his own bunk, the checklist trembling in his hand, trying to keep a smile on his sweaty, weary face. Through the open hatch of the airlock Jamie could see that Connors was having trouble breathing; his chest heaved painfully, his mouth hung open.
The two women were not much better off. They moved slowly, listlessly. Their faces were drawn and pale. How many mistakes are they making? Jamie wondered. Are they killing me because they’re too weak to know what they’re doing?
The climbing harness, its tripod stand and winch mechanism, and its massive drum of cable was set against the airlock’s side bulkhead. As he slid the harness over his shoulders and fastened it across his chest Jamie thought ruefully, We won’t be using this to climb the cliffs and see my village. I’ll never get to see whether it’s a real village or not.
Finally he was fully suited, his backpack cinched tight and checked out, his harness ready to be connected with the cable. All systems working, unless they had overlooked something.
“Okay,” Jamie said, already feeling the enormous weight of the suit, the backpack, the responsibility on his wobbly legs. “Clear the airlock.”
Joanna reached up and touched his cheek. “Shut your visor first,” she said tenderly. “And may god go with you.”
God? Jamie thought. He remembered that his fetish was still in his coverall pocket. Buttoned up inside the hard suit he could not reach the pocket to touch it. It’s there, he told himself. I’m not going without it. It’s there where it should be.
Ilona cast him a wan smile as she and Joanna backed out of the airlock compartment. Jamie pulled the hatch shut after a desultory wave to Connors. Once the hatch was sealed he reached out a finger to push the control button that started pumping the air out of the chamber.
And saw that he had not put on his gloves.
His stomach lurched. Four of us checking out everything and the damned gloves are still tucked in my belt pouch. What the hell else have we screwed up?
He pulled the gloves on and sealed them to the suit cuffs. Then he started the pumps. In what seemed like mere seconds the light on the little square control panel went red. Jamie unconsciously drew in a deep breath. His chest felt strange, rasping, the way it did sometimes in the chill mountain air of winter.