It had started out as a game, a challenge. Which of the pilots aboard the station could breathe vacuum the longest? There were six Astro Corporation rocket jockeys waiting for transport back to Selene City: four guys, Pancho herself, and the new girl, Amanda Cunningham.
Pancho had egged them on, of course. That was part of the sting. They’d all been hanging around the galley, literally floating when they didn’t anchor themselves down with the footloops fastened to the floor around the table and its single pipestem-slim leg. The conversation had gotten around to vacuum breathing: how long can you hold your breath in space without damaging yourself?
“The record is four minutes,” one of the guys had claimed. “Harry Kirschbaum.”
“Harry Kirschbaum? Who the hell is he? I never heard of him.”
“He died young.” They all had laughed.
Amanda, who had just joined the team fresh from tech school in London, had the face of an angelic schoolgirl with soft curly blonde hair and big innocent blue eyes; but her curvaceous figure had all the men panting. She said, “I had to readjust my helmet once, during a school exercise in the vacuum tank.”
“How long did that take?”
She shrugged, and even Pancho noticed the way it made her coveralls jiggle. “Ten seconds, perhaps. Fifteen.”
Pancho didn’t like Amanda. She was a little tease who affected an upperclass British accent. One look at her and the men forgot about Pancho, which was a shame because a couple of the guys were really nice.
Pancho was lean and stringy, with the long slim legs of her African heritage. Her skin was no darker than a good tan would produce back in west Texas, but her face was just plain ordinary, with what she considered a lantern jaw and squinty little commonplace brown eyes. She always kept her hair cut so short that the rumor had gone around that she was a lesbian. Not true. But she had a man’s strength in her long, muscled arms and legs, and she never let a man beat her in anything—unless she wanted to.
The transfer buggy that was slated to take them all back to Selene was running late. Cracked nozzle on one of the thrusters, and the last thing the flight controllers wanted was a derelict transfer vehicle carrying six rocket jocks; they would be rebuilding the buggy forty-five ways from Sunday while they coasted Moonward.
So the six of them waited in the galley and talked about vacuum breathing. One of the guys claimed he’d sucked vacuum for a full minute.
“That explains your IQ,” said his buddy.
“Nobody’s made it for a full minute.”
“Sixty seconds,” the man maintained stubbornly.
“Your lungs would explode.”
“I’m telling you, sixty seconds. On the dot.”
“No damage?”
He hesitated, suddenly shamefaced.
“Well?”
With an attempt at a careless shrug, he admitted, “Left lung collapsed.”
They snickered at him.
“I could prob’ly do it for sixty seconds,” Pancho announced.
“You?” The man nearest her guffawed. “Now, Mandy here, she’s got the lung capacity for it.”
Amanda smiled shyly. But when she inhaled they all noticed it.
Pancho hid her anger at their ape-man attitude. “Ninety seconds,” she said flatly.
“Ninety seconds? Impossible!”
“You willin’ to bet on that?” Pancho asked.
“Nobody can stand vacuum for ninety seconds. It’d blow your eyeballs out.”
Pancho smiled toothily. “How much money are you ready to put against it?”
“How can we collect off you after you’re dead?”
“Or brain-damaged.”
“She’s already brain-damaged if she thinks she can suck vacuum for ninety seconds.”
“I’ll put my money in an escrow account for the five of you to withdraw in case of my death or incapacitation,” Pancho said calmly.
“Yeah, sure.”
Pointing to the phone on the wall, next to the sandwich dispenser, she said, “Electronic funds transfer. Takes all of two minutes to set up.”
They fell silent.
“How much?” Pancho said, watching their eyes.
“A week’s pay,” snapped one of the men.
“A month’s pay,” Pancho said.
“A whole month?”
“Why not? You’re so freakin’ sure I can’t do it, why not bet a month’s pay? I’ll put five months worth of mine in the escrow account, so you’ll each be covered.”