Rocket Girls Page 17

“There are some cots in the break room in the training center.”

  Director Nasuda left the control room grumbling about how he used to be able to stay up for two nights in a row when he was younger.

  [ACT 5]

  YUKARI WOKE TO the sound of voices. She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep. One of the voices was raised, angry. Nikolai, she thought. It seemed as though Oleg were defending himself against some accusation, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  The argument grew more heated. She heard a crash as two objects collided, followed by the sound of Oleg’s voice, uncharacteristically high. Yukari couldn’t sit still any longer. Whatever their reasons for fighting, a brawl at a time like this could only lead to trouble.

  Yukari fastened her suit, which she had opened to let her skin breathe, and pulled back the curtain covering the kayuta. The lights in the core module were still dimmed for sleep. She was alone.

  Light streamed through the open door leading to the docking port. Maybe they were in Kvant-2.

  Yukari pushed out of the kayuta and drifted in the direction of the voices. The docking port formed a cross, with the Kvant-2 module above, Kristall below, and Kristall-2 straight ahead. The source of the light was above her.

  As Yukari reached the docking port, the voices fell quiet. Had they heard her?

  She hesitated for an instant before realizing how foolish she was acting. She was only going to step in to mediate—there was no need to hide.

  She heard Nikolai’s voice again, softer than a moment before, ingratiating.

  Yukari poked her head into the module and froze. Nikolai and Oleg were locked in an embrace. They were kissing.

  Yukari’s wristwatch clattered against a pipe. The two cosmonauts quickly turned away from each other and faced her. They had both turned beet red.

  Nikolai moved first. He pushed off Oleg, propelling himself toward Yukari, his blood-darkened face contorted into a hideous grin.

  Yukari was terrified. What kind of trouble had she gotten herself in?

  Nikolai grasped Yukari by the shoulder, but she struggled free. Her fight-or-flight response had kicked in, and she was taking flight—but to where?

  She raced through the docking port, turning ninety degrees as she rushed into another module—Kristall-2. To her surprise, she found her helmet and backpack secured to the wall ahead of her with velcro—she was at the air lock.

  Yukari turned to see Nikolai’s massive body blocking the hatch back to the docking port.

  “Easy, Yukari. Calm down.”

  But Yukari was way past calm. She yanked her helmet and backpack off the wall and dove into the air lock.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” cried Nikolai.

  Ignoring him, Yukari began to turn the handle. The inner hatch caught Nikolai’s finger as it closed, but Yukari didn’t stop. Nikolai howled in pain, but somehow he managed to work his hand free. The hatch snapped closed. After ensuring it was locked, Yukari hurriedly put on her helmet and backpack.

  “What’s going on? Where’s Yukari?” Oleg was only a few seconds behind Nikolai.

  “She’s in the air lock. We can’t open it from this side.”

  “What does she think she’s doing?” Oleg grabbed on to the inner hatch and knocked loudly. There was no reply. “She’s going to get herself killed!”

  “We need to cut power to the air lock controls,” said Nikolai. “That will prevent the valve vent interlock from actuating. Then we can talk to her over the intercom.”

  “Let’s go!”

  Nikolai and Oleg raced to the core module. There in one corner was the power relay panel. A tangled skein of thick cables spilled out when they opened the panel.

  “What the—what happened here?” asked Oleg.

  “That’s right. This was repaired two years ago after the power failure.”

  “Is this your work?”

  “No. Vladimir and Viktor were on board then.”

  “What do we do? Is there a report detailing the repairs?”

  “It’s somewhere in Kvant-1 with the rest of the junk.”

  “We could search for a week and never find it in there! Maybe we should radio TsUP.”

  “The only people there now are the night watch. They won’t know anything about this. You’re an engineer—can’t you look at the wiring and figure something out?”

  Oleg clucked his tongue. “That may be fastest.” He brought out a toolbox and got down to work.

  The power relay was the heart of the space station. All sixteen kilowatts of power provided by the station’s massive solar arrays passed through the relay before being distributed to the batteries, inverters, and countless pieces of equipment on the station.

  Sweat beaded on Oleg’s forehead.

  The repair work on the cables had been crude at best, and the intervening years had left the insulation tape brittle and stiff. In addition, the breakers and fuses had been bypassed, so there was no telling what would happen if Oleg made a wrong move.

  “We’ve been living in a minefield.” A terminal caught Oleg’s eye. “Cutting this should do it—probably.” Oleg took a pair of nippers from the tool kit.

  “Not so fast. ‘Probably’ isn’t good enough,” protested Nikolai. “You need to be sure.”

  “We don’t have time. It’s now or never.”

  “Does this girl mean that much to you?”

  “Please.” Oleg turned around, a weary look on his face. “I am not your personal property, Nikolai. I accepted your love, true. And I accept it even now. But this is something I do of my own free will. Freely, you understand?”

  “Then why do you seem so happy to see her?”

  “I was just being nice to the girl. What is strange about this?”

  “Nothing. I only feared you might be…swinging back to the way you were before.”

  “You’re letting yourself get carried away. Again. How many times have I told you this?”

  Oleg looked away from the fuming Nikolai and went back to his work. Impatiently, he put his nippers to one cable. “And do not worry. This will work fine.”

  Snik.

  Then, an explosion in the distance.

  [ACT 6]

  YUKARI HEARD A tremendous bang, and her body slammed against the inner hatch. At the same instant, the lights on the air lock control panel went out, and Yukari was plunged into darkness.

  “Oww! What was that?”

  Yukari heard air leaking from somewhere nearby. Hurriedly she put on her helmet and lowered the visor. Turning on the light on her skinsuit, she spun to face the air lock controls—which were written in Cyrillic. She couldn’t read a word, and Oleg hadn’t bothered explaining the air lock’s emergency controls.

  “We’re moving…”

  The impulse that set the station in motion was large. The force of the acceleration would be enough to rip Mir apart at the seams.

  Yukari shuddered.

  The Russians had been trying to kill her, but something must have gone terribly wrong. It was the only explanation.

  Yukari turned her attention to getting out of the air lock. She had no intention of staying on a sinking ship. If she could get back to Tampopo, she could buy herself another two hours.

  Yukari rotated the handle on the outer hatch. As the hatch opened, air began to spill out. The black gulf of space did the rest of the work for her, forcing the hatch open.

  The tether Nikolai had used to secure Tampopo was nearby. Yukari’s eyes followed the cable to its end, then froze.

  “Tampopo…it’s gone!”

  The tether ended abruptly several meters from the air lock. Yukari leaned out and looked around. She froze again.

  “Where’s Mir?”

  [ACT 7]

  THE EMERGENCY CALL from TsUP came at 11:40 AM Solomon Islands time, the day after the launch.

  “What do you mean Mir is breaking up?” Director Nasuda shouted into the phone. “I want answers, and I want them now!”

  “We don’
t know what’s happened yet. All of the station’s systems are off-line, and the explosive bolts connecting the Kristall-2 module have fired.”

  “What kind of death trap are you people trying to pass off as a space station?”

  “Each module is designed so it can be jettisoned in the event of an emergency. At this stage we’re not sure why that’s happened.”

  “What about Yukari? Is she all right?”

  “Yukari…Yukari was in Kristall-2 when it was jettisoned.”

  “What?” Director Nasuda went pale. “Then get out there and rescue her! Your cosmonauts, they’re still alive?”

  “They underwent rapid decompression and suffered some burns, but they survived. They’re evacuating in the Soyuz capsule now. Yukari was in her space suit at the time of the incident, so there’s a chance she’s still alive too.”

  “You have to send your Soyuz to pick her up.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “The Soyuz has only enough fuel for the return trip. Even if she were right on top of them, you know how much fuel it takes to make a rendezvous.”

  “All you have to do is get her back to Mir. The next ship can bring them back.”

  “We don’t know what condition Mir is in. And even if we wanted to do an inspection, Nikolai and Oleg boarded the Soyuz without their space suits. With Mir off the table, we have to bring the Soyuz home.”

  “Dammit!” Director Nasuda slammed the phone down.

  “Yukari already used up twenty minutes of her backpack during the EVA,” said Kinoshita. “That leaves forty minutes. An hour if we stretch it.”

  “Can we send the third ship to get her?”

  Kinoshita nodded. “It’ll be close…We can just make a rendezvous. But without someone at the controls, we won’t be able to dock. If Mir can’t guide us in, the closest we can get is a couple of kilometers.”

  Yukari’s space suit wasn’t equipped with thrusters, so they would have to pull up right on top of her.

  “Hoi, then I can pilot the ship,” said Matsuri. “I just need to find Kristall-2 and take Yukari back to Mir. She can hold on to the outside of the capsule.”

  “But we don’t even know if Mir is safe,” said Director Nasuda.

  “The Soyuz can hold one more.”

  “It’s no good. The Soyuz doesn’t have an air lock, so they’d have to let the air out of the capsule to bring Yukari aboard, and the cosmonauts don’t have space suits.”

  “Right now, our only option is to use Mir as a lifeboat,” said Kinoshita. “It will take fifteen minutes to get Matsuri on board and launch the rocket, then another thirty to rendezvous if we wait until perigee for the main booster burn. Unorthodox, but it should work.”

  “Can the main booster handle that?”

  “Absolutely,” said Motoko. “It has an idle burn mode.”

  “When did you add that?” asked Director Nasuda. Brushing his own question aside, he continued. “You’re up, Matsuri. Sorry for the short notice. Satsuki, get her suited up and on the launchpad.”

  [ACT 8]

  YUKARI DRIFTED ALONGSIDE Kristall-2. From out here, the module resembled a large concrete mixer.

  They had jettisoned the whole module—but why? Had it been accidental or intentional? Were they really trying to kill her?

  Yukari considered the possibility of some international plot, but then it occurred to her that the cosmonauts would not have had time to get directives from their government. So had they tried to kill her just to keep their sex lives private?

  It didn’t seem likely, but she had no way of knowing now.

  She tried the wireless transmitter on her backpack, but there was no answer. She hadn’t expected one anyway. The signal was very weak. All long-distance communications had to be routed through Tampopo.

  Yukari felt her chest tighten. She looked down at the darkened earth below her, hoping she would get one last glimpse of the blue ocean. Nighttime only lasted thirty-five minutes at this orbit— she just wasn’t sure if she had that much oxygen.

  Her heart leapt momentarily when she looked up and noticed a glowing red fringe on the outer shell of the Kristall-2, until she decided she wasn’t seeing the first light of dawn but the impact of thinly dispersed oxygen molecules against the metal hull.

  “Looks like St. Elmo’s fire,” Yukari muttered to herself. “I thought that was supposed to signal the end of a storm.”

  Yukari’s thoughts drifted until she saw an arc of light appear around the edge of the earth ahead of her. This time, dawn was breaking for real. The light grew until she could see a reddish glow paint the tops of the clouds and blue returning to the ocean.

  She turned her eyes away from the suddenly brilliant light and noticed that she was surrounded by innumerable glowing particles, winking at her even in the vacuum of space.

  It’s the star children, come for me…Yukari thought, her mind drifting into a fog. She felt a sensation as if someone were hugging her.

  “Hoi, Yukari! You alive in there?”

  “Kind of.” Don’t spoil the mood, Matsuri. This is just getting good.

  Yukari shook her head. “Huh?” She looked over her shoulder and saw Matsuri with a capsule floating behind her. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Taking you back to Mir, that’s what.”

  “Mir’s okay?”

  “Not sure. Guess we’ll have to go see. I brought an extra backpack, so let’s swap yours out. Then you’ll have to hang on to the capsule’s nose.”

  “Oh—okay!” Yukari wasted no time in attaching the fresh backpack.

  The oxygenated air hit her like a blast of ice water, and her mind began to race, wondering how launch control had managed to get the third ship up here so quickly. It was very nearly a theoretical impossibility.

  Yet she looked at the side of the capsule and there it was—the nickname Coconut that Matsuri had given it.

  “Getting ready to fire thrusters here, Yukari. You good?” Matsuri asked from inside the capsule. Yukari was straddling the cone of the capsule like it was a horse.

  “I’m good. Keep it gentle.”

  “Hoi.”

  The capsule began to move. Gradually, they left the drifting fragments of Kristall-2 behind. Yukari waved goodbye to the star children, then turned toward the bright point of light shining in space ahead of them. “That Mir?”

  “Yup. Or so Space Command tells me. We’ve got another thirty kilometers or so to go.”

  “What happened to the two cosmonauts?”

  “They’re in the Soyuz. They don’t know what’s happened to Mir either.”

  Yukari frowned. She considered trying to contact the Soyuz on her radio but was hesitant. They were close enough to Mir to make out its shape when the Soyuz contacted them.

  “You read, Yukari?”

  It was Nikolai’s voice.

  Yukari tensed, then answered, “I read you,” as calmly as she could manage.

  “We are sorry about what has happened. I did not intend to frighten you. I…can look scary at times.”

  Yukari listened in silence.

  “We were trying to keep you from accidentally going outside, but we made an error and activated the module separation mechanism by mistake.”

  “I…see.”

  “Yukari, you must listen closely. If you see any light inside Mir through her windows, then there is a chance you can seek shelter there. If there is no light, then fixing the station is beyond our current capabilities.”

  “Okay.”

  “In that case, you will have to board the Soyuz. Know that we do not have space suits, so once you are aboard we will not be able to pilot the capsule for you.”

  “Excuse me? What?”

  “I have entered the return sequence into the computer. As long as you are able to communicate with the ground, you should be fine.”

  The meaning of what the Russian was saying gradually dawned on her. “Wait…no. Your offer is declined!”

&
nbsp; “You must accept, Yukari. Oleg feels this as strongly as I do. It is a matter of our pride as cosmonauts.”

  “But, but I’m—” Yukari gritted her teeth. “I’m an astronaut too! If it’s a question of one person dying or two, I know the answer!”

  “Yukari, you are still young.” Nikolai’s calm voice sounded in the speaker next to her ear. “We will not steal your future away from you. Especially considering the likely contribution you will make to space exploration.”

  “But this will be my only flight.”

  “This I doubt very much. Now, you are close enough to Mir. What do you see? Are there lights in any of the windows?”

  Yukari strained her eyes. Not even the faintest pinprick of light came from within the space station.

  “Yukari?”

  “Nothing. It’s completely dark,” she said, her voice choking.

  “Very well. Bring your craft alongside our Soyuz. We will be draining our air shortly.”

  “No, Nikolai! Please, don’t!”

  “Hoi, Nikolai?” It was Matsuri, her calm voice seeming almost comically out of place after Yukari’s panicked tension.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve thought of a way to get Yukari into my capsule. Then we can all go back home.”

  “You are sure?”

  “That’s impossible, Matsuri!”

  “No, no, it’ll work. I think. Trust me!”

  The hatch on the capsule opened. Matsuri was inside, stooped over, fiddling with some equipment.

  “What are you planning, Matsuri?”

  “First, I’m getting rid of this,” she replied, tossing something out through the hatch. When Yukari saw what it was, she felt her heart stop.

  “You can’t throw out the instrument panel!”

  “Hmm. Still not enough room. Guess the whole electrical system’s got to go.”

  “Whoa! Wait! Don’t tear the whole thing apart!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not that bad. We don’t need the computer. We can operate the fuse panel manually.”

  “Matsuri, this is a reentry capsule you’re talking about, not some rowboat—hey!”