Prologue: Luna
Keep breathing.
Human nature deceives us into taking our body’s routine exchange of oxygen for granted until that fundamental task becomes impossible.
Simon Poole could barely think of anything else now, despite having spent much of his adult life at the mercy of machinery that protected his fragile body and provided for its every need. He’d learned how to escape from a crippled submarine and to survive rapid decompressions in space, but throughout it all the simple act of breathing had always been something that just was.
Until now.
His skin stung from a million needle pricks, a warning from his capillaries of the rapidly evacuating air. His lungs strained to absorb the pitifully scarce oxygen molecules, and soon the ambient pressure would be so low that reflexively holding his breath would rupture them like overinflated balloons. He forced himself to exhale, an act of will against the animal panic that would come before hypoxia and delirium set in.
He just hoped his eyeballs didn’t freeze first.
Simon pulled at release clamps surrounding the airlock hatch and cursed the engineers who made them so overcomplicated. What a damned stupid place to store the emergency patch kits in the first place. More items for his flight debrief when (if?) they returned to Denver.
Sidewalls fluttered behind him as the supporting air escaped. Built around a central utility tunnel, the hab module was essentially a big cylindrical Kevlar balloon which now threatened to deflate like a worn party favor. The cylinder walls began to collapse inward, something his vacuum-addled brain oddly welcomed. It was getting awfully cold in here. A blanket would be nice.
Keep breathing.
His focus returned along with a sudden, piercing headache. Simon braced himself against the hatch rim and gave the lever a final, frantic pull. He recoiled from a stinging blow as the stubborn portal flew open and connected with his forearm. With higher air pressure on the other side, the simple act of breaking the seal had been enough to spring the hatch as if it had been kicked open by some invisible giant. Simon ignored the pain to push ahead, inhaling deeply as the compartment emptied into the void behind him. The near-blinding migraine mercifully disappeared with it.
Thinking clearly again, he moved to shut the hatch with his good arm. It was much harder now, having to work against the torrent of air. Grunting from the strain, he finally felt the door seat itself against the rim. There was a satisfying whistle as the pressure stabilized.
Peering back through a small porthole, he watched helplessly as the hab collapsed around its core. Now fully exposed to space, its once-rigid fabric hung like loose sails in doldrum seas.
Simon turned away to numbly take stock of his surroundings: emergency rations, first aid kit...and the caulk gun from the emergency patch kit. Fat lot of good that’d do now.
He took another luxurious lungful of air and exhaled with a sigh as he realized this tiny compartment was likely to become his sarcophagus. As the ancient Egyptian kings had once commanded their servants to face eternity buried with them beneath the great pyramids, so would he spend it in this small aluminum cylinder, doomed to forever circle the Moon.
Keep breathing.