A Robinson Tale

Part III

Tempus Fugit

Chapter 3

As someone grabbed his shoulders and rolled him to his back, John gasped for air and coughed and spit.

A blurry face appeared before his eyes. Dark hair. Fair skin.

Harris.

Her lips moved but waves roared in his ears and he couldn't hear anything she said.

John squeezed his eyes shut and breathed deeply, once, twice. They were in space, in an asteroid field, under attack. A discharge of adrenaline woke him up at once and he bounced to his feet.

The garage swirled before his eyes like he was on a merry-go-round turning at full speed. He jerked his left hand to a ladder rung to keep his balance. Pain radiated from his fingers up to his elbow. The tinnitus in his ears increased in intensity. The edges of his vision darkened and he collapsed on his knees at the bottom of the shaft, panting and retching.

Anyone wants to quit?* Instructor D.'s voice barked in his pounding head.

Shut the fuck up!

John hauled himself back to his feet. He was climbing up when he saw boots coming down.

"Watch out!"

The boots reversed at full speed.

As he stepped on the deck, Judy's hand reached for his elbow. Their eyes met. Her lips moved, but again, he heard nothing. Wonderful! He was deaf. But on the good side, his legs felt stronger by the second and the nausea ebbed.

"I'm good," he said, raising his hand to brush off Harris's unnecessary attention. The woman stumbled a few feet backwards, tripped and fell. "Sorry."

Embarrassed but too much in a hurry to stop, John resumed his way to the cockpit, trying not to look like a drunken sailor between two taverns.

And drunk John thought he truly was when he stepped in the Jupiter's flight deck.

They weren't in space anymore.

Under a brownish sky stretched a surreal landscape of grey and purple rocky mounds growing in the middle of swamps sweating white fumes.

"Where are we?"

The robot swivelled its sleek, globular, face of grey dots toward him, lifted its arm, and pointed one claw-like finger toward the exterior.

Wary of once again provoking the robot's defensive mechanisms, John held his hands up before pointing a finger toward the starboard consoles. "I just want to activate the ship's sensors."

The robot's dots remained grey and John took it as a permission to access the computers. The environmental data was already displayed on the main screen and they weren't encouraging: twice Earth's atmospheric pressure; minus one-hundred-eighty degrees Celsius, methane, nitrogen...

A sudden and strong vertigo forced him to lean on the console. John squinted and clenched his jaw. A diffuse feeling of panic grew, twisting his guts in knots. How was he going to rescue Maureen if he didn't even know where he was? Were they even in the same system? Were they safe from a subsequent attack?

A hand touched his arm.

John side glanced to his left. Judy was holding her mother's lucky whiteboard in front of his eyes.

INFIRMARY was written on it.

"Later."

Judy flinched. Was he shouting?

NOW.

She was. His shoulders sagged.

Since he'd regained consciousness, he felt like he was riding in a helo without ear protection. His left hand had tripled in size in his glove and he could barely bend his fingers. Weirdly, even as his stomach yo-yoed, he was hungry and thirsty, though he wouldn't dare to put anything in his stomach just now. All he could do was focusing on their new situation.

John returned his attention to the environmental datas when Judy grabbed his left arm. He jerked it away with a curse.

Judy stared back at him, eyes wide with concern and fear.

"All right," he whispered, pushing himself away from the console. The thorough geophysical analysis of this planet would take the computers another couple of hours anyway. In the meantime, he could use a break.

But he hadn't set foot on the ramp when the robot sprang forward to block his way. Then, under John's surprised eyes, the robot pointed its finger again toward the outside world.

Was this a rudimentary attempt to communicate through sign language? John pointed outside. "What's out there so important?"

The robot's lethargic silver dots suddenly animated like a bee hive.

Let's try again. John pointed toward the console. "We need telemetry to tell us what's outside." As he said outside, John pointed back to the windshield. "I won't go outside without telemetry." He pointed again at the console.

The robot tilted its head as if he processed the statements. Then, he straightened up and turned to the navigation console. As John moved closer to him, the robot brought up the Jupiter's layout and pointed to the engines.

No, not the engines.

John's eyes grew wider. "Fuel?" He pointed outside again. "There's fuel out there?"

The robot lowered its head in an apparent nod.

"I'll be damned," John muttered. The fog was basically gasoline fumes coming from methane lakes, like on Titan. But why did they need fuel? Wasn't the alien technology enough to power the ship? A more important question swept his previous interrogations. "Once we refuel, will you get us back to my wife and Don?"

A nod again. A heavy weight vanished from John's chest.

"Judy?"

His daughter jumped. John grabbed the pen and the whiteboard and wrote: 3D print splint left hand w/ fingers support. Above glove.

Judy mouthed "no" and shook her head vigorously. She took the pen from his fingers and wrote: permanent loss of hearing.

She underlined three times her words.

He didn't care. For all he knew, the damage was maybe already done. John circled his instruction. "You do your job so I can you do mine," he said, trying not to shout.

Then, he strode out of the cockpit, bumping into the pilot seat on his way. Arh!... His balance was definitely off.

He was searching through the infirmary drawers for painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs when Judy stormed in and held the whiteboard once more in front of him:

As a doctor you're asking me to break my oath to do no harm and as a daughter you're asking me to put mom's life above yours. How can you ask me to make that kind of choice?

John felt his patience wear thin.

"I'm not asking you. The choice is mine, not yours."

Judy's eyes wavered, but she maintained her glare, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Oh, god, she could be stubborn!

John dropped on the stool at the desk and scratched at his unshaven face. Going headlong into an argument with his daughter would not get him her cooperation. He needed that splint. It was going to be hard enough with it. But he'd do it.

"Look, Jude, if you see someone hurt on the road, you'd help, even if you're sick or late or if it comes at a bad time for you or your family. Nothing else will matter because being a doctor is not just a job. Like you said, you took an oath. I took an oath too. Twenty-four years ago when I joined the Navy and another six years later when I married your mother. To protect her and you, then your sister and your brother. In an hour or so, I'll go out to refuel the Jupiter so we can fly back to her. There's nothing you can do or say that will stop me. I just can't step aside. I'm a soldier, Jude. It's not just a job. It's who I am. God knows your mom understood it all too well."

John swallowed hard as he watched his daughter's gaze melt into tears as she listened to him.

"I can do this. It's pretty straight-forward. And I won't be alone. The robot will do much of the muscle work. I'll essentially supervise the operation."

Judy grabbed the pen again:

Supervise from inside.

John sighed. "It requires teamwork."

Judy clenched the pen in her fingers:

You don't understand. We're not your team. We're your family. And you're not expandable. You just suffered a concussion. If you go out there, the risk that you develop decompression sickness is too high.

"The atmospheric pressure's not strong enough for that. But I'll program the computer to purge the toxic air as soon as the door shuts and decompress the airlock at the slowest rate possible. It'll be fine."

Judy wrote hurriedly: I know nothing about hyperbaric medicine.

John pinched the bridge of his nose. Okay. Now he understood. He was dropping her right into a battlefield without the training to rely on.

"You read the specialist's reports in my medical files, all the protocols, everything's in there. You're a quick learner."

Judy removed her hand from his and walked a few steps away, her shoulders tense. No matter how mature and strong she was for an eighteen-year-old woman, if he died out there, she would never forgive herself, and John hated himself for placing her in this situation.

When his daughter faced him an instant later, all her emotions had been cut off and a detached, serious, professional expression replaced them.

I want your word you'll come back inside if you feel any symptoms, she wrote.

"Fair enough."

She stared at him like she was drilling a hole into his eyes to access his soul and see if he was sincere. John winced. "Painkillers, please?"

Three hours later, John paused at the airlock's internal doorframe.

In the middle of all their equipment stood the two most unusual teammates he'd ever had: the robot and Harris. Which one was the most reliable was anyone's guess. As cooperative as their mood was at that moment, it was hard to forget that both of them, at one point or another, had hurt him and his family. They also had saved their lives, multiple times. In any case, he'd better watch his back.

John tapped on Harris's shoulder to get her attention.

"Listen to me carefully. You're wearing a soft-shell space suit that was designed to maintain a standard pressure in a no-gravity environment. That won't work today. As soon as we step outside, our bodies will be subjected to the planet's strong pull. Everything, including us, will weigh twice more. There's no way I can put this mildly. It'll suck for your knees. If you need to take a break, tell me. It's alright. But I want you to stay on your feet. Don't sit down. Not only will it be a pain to get back up, but you might tear a hole in your suit. Don't drop anything, especially not on your toes. You'll crush your bones. Squat to put down or to lift stuff or you'll ruin your back. Get it?"

Harris's eyes widened but she nodded. "Don't sit down, don't drop anything, squat."

John leaned forward as she talked. Thankfully, his tinnitus had receded enough to get some hearing back in his left ear.

"Breathe deep and slow. We've got ten hours' worth of air for a job that will take us a bit over one, so no need to rush. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast."

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast*." Harris frowned. "What if I tear a hole in my suit?"

"Sorry. Say again."

Harris shouted her question. John pointed to the duct tape rolls on top of the tool drawer. "Hook one to your belt. Don't lose critical time trying to break up a piece. Just roll the tape around the gash. Got it?"

Harris's eyes darkened. "What if I tear it at several places?"

"Don't and you'll be fine. Now tell me: did you ever travel by plane?"

"A few times when I was a child. Why?"

"Remember your ears popping?"

"I think so."

"That's the pressure in your ears and sinuses equalizing with the changing ambient pressure. In a plane, those fluctuations are kept to a minimum. For us today, it'll be a hell of a different story, so listen carefully to what I'm about to say. Outside this door, there's a toxic atmosphere. But what's more likely to kill you is the decompression process when we get back inside the airlock."

Harris paled. John squeezed her shoulder and locked eyes with her.

"I programmed the computer to decompress the airlock at a very slow pace, so everything should be fine. But if for any reason we need to speed up the process, you need to remember one thing: don't hold your breath. Don't hold your breath or you'll blow your lungs out. Got it?"

"Don't hold my breath."

"Okay. Now, what do you know about the bends?"

"The what?"

"Our air is a mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Once outside, those two gases will compress and diffuse in our bodies. Oxygen's no worry at this pressure, but nitrogen for some people can be as nasty as a tequila shot on an empty stomach. You need to tell me if you start feeling light-headed, if you notice a decrease in coordination, or any difficulty focusing on your task, and I definitely need to know if you see pink elephants flying. Tell me and I'll get you back in the airlock, alright? Same thing, if I order you to go back inside, for whatever reason, you need to obey, understood?"

The woman's lips were pressed so tightly together they formed one thin straight line as she acknowledged his directive.

"It's getting darker outside. And with the constant fumes rising from the methane ponds, you want to watch where you put your feet down. I'll attach a thirty-foot-long life line to your belt and to the airlock. Under no circumstances do you detach yourself, hear me?"

Harris's head sank further into her shoulders as she nodded.

"Relax. We're not doing a halo jump above a war zone. It's going to be fine. Our friend here will do a lot of the work for us. Right, buddy?"

The robot tilted his head and the white dots contracted at the center of its face for a brief second when Harris said: "Relax. Got it."

John bit his lips to stop himself from smirking. "Now answer me: what's your job?"

"To secure both pipes together. Help you carry them to the edge of the methane lake. Wait for your signal before turning the pump on."

John almost expected a "Sir!" to punctuate her list. Harris would make a good recruit after all. "Perfect. Any other questions?"

"Is there a risk of explosion with all the methane?"

"The only oxygen for a combustion reaction is the one contained in our tanks. Don't pierce yours and I won't pierce mine, do we have a deal?"

"Deal."

"Good. Anything else?"

Harris shook her head.

John raised his eyes toward the camera centered above the outside door. "Will? You there, buddy?"

"Yes, dad."

"Time to pressurize the airlock."

"Understood. Beginning pressurizing to two bars in three, two, one. Now."

As the pressure increased, tears of pain ran down John's eyes. He blinked them away and stared at his wrist computer. Underneath it, safely wedged against his arm, was the picture of Maureen with the kids he'd taken on their last skiing trip to Lake Tahoe six years ago. Since he'd been reassigned to military intelligence, he'd stopped wearing the worn-out picture during his missions. At that moment, he was glad that he had taken the time to rekindle this tradition.

We're coming back, Maureen. We're coming back. I'll never leave you behind again.

Will's tiny voice pierced his ears like a white hot needle. "Pressure at one and a half bars."

"Tonight's special is meatballs. Try not to be late," Penny announced.

"I'll do my best."

"You be careful out there, okay?"

"And put you out of work?"

"I'm in stitches."

John laughed at Judy's crack.

"Two bars. Opening outside hatch. Good luck, dad!"

"Thanks, buddy. See you all in a while."

John rolled his shoulders back, tilted his head right and left. Then, as the hatch opened, he set his eyes straight and emptied his mind of everything that could go wrong.