Jamie checked the backpack monitoring gauges on Naguib’s wrist. Christ, he’s out of air! He must be breathing his own fumes in there.
Quickly, with the automatic reactions bred by long hours of training, Jamie reached to the side of his own backpack and yanked out the emergency air hose. He looked at the telltales on his own wrist. Not much to spare; we’ve all been out so damned long the regenerator filters are just about tapped out.
Plugging the free end of the hose into the emergency port in Naguib’s metal ring collar, he thumbed the release and let air flow from his own tank into Naguib’s battered helmet.
The Egyptian took in a deep, sighing breath, his whole body arching slightly. Then he coughed.
“Easy,” Jamie said. “Easy. Take it easy and everything will be all right.”
Coughing like a man who had been underwater too long, Naguib managed to ask weakly, “Waterman? You?”
“Yes. Alex and Rava are rigging the winch. We’ll have you out of here in a few minutes.”
“I… slipped. Going down… the rock gave way and I started to fall.”
“Can you sit up?”
“I think so.”
Gently Jamie helped him up to a sitting position. With the hard suit it was like bending a length of stiff plastic pipe.
“How do you feel?” Jamie could not hear Mironov or Patel; he guessed that they had switched to another radio frequency.
“I think my nose is broken. I can’t breathe through it.”
“Ribs? Arms, legs?”
Naguib was silent a moment, then, “Everything else seems to be in order. I think I can stand now.”
“Not yet. Just relax.” Looking up, Jamie saw that the sliver of sky above the ravine was still bright. There was still some daylight up there, although night could enfold them in a matter of minutes, he knew.
Don’t want to be out here with an injured man in the dark, he told himself, tapping on the control keys of his radio unit. His earphones erupted with Mironov’s snarling, growling Russian as he struggled to get the winch in place.
“Alex,” he called. The cosmonaut’s voice cut off immediately, although Jamie heard him panting in his earphones. “Dr. Naguib seems to be okay, except that he might have broken his nose in the fall he took. His regenerator is ruptured, though. I’m sharing air with him.”
Silence. Then Patel’s voice, high-pitched, frightened. “We do not have very much air left in any of our regenerators. We have been out all afternoon.”
“We can make do,” Mironov said. “We will all share, once we get the two of you back up here.”
The winch cable came snaking down with the climbing harness hanging like an empty vest. Jamie slung it around Naguib’s shoulders and began cinching up the straps.
The Egyptian said, “My scintillation meter… it began flashing… there may be a vein of uranium exposed by this ravine.”
“Is that why you climbed down here?” Jamie asked as he tightened the harness straps.
“I started down… then I fell. I must have blacked out.”
“You’ll be okay. Just save your breath. Don’t need to talk now. Wait till we’re back in the rover.”
Slowly the two men at the top of the ravine winched the green-suited geophysicist up to them. Jamie heard Mironov order Patel to share his air with Naguib while the Russian worked the winch back down to the bottom. Jamie quickly slipped the harness on, shouted that he was ready, and let the winch motor pull him up.
Then they started trekking back to the rover, Jamie carrying the winch, Mironov and Patel supporting Naguib. The Russian was sharing air with him now, Jamie saw.
The sun was touching the horizon when they reached the crevasse that they had all jumped across earlier. The sky was already so dark in the east that stars were twinkling.
“We could go around it,” Patel suggested, sounding as if he wanted to be contradicted.
“It would take too long,” said Mironov. “The fissure is many kilometers in length. We must jump across.”
“I’m not sure that I can,” said Naguib.
“We will hold your arms,” Mironov answered, “and all three of us will jump together. In this gravity it will not be difficult.”