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CHAPTER 34

January 12, 2091 (Earth timeline)

March 18, 2090 (Ship timeline)

approximately 6 light-months from Earth

3.64 light-years from Proxima

“Pankish, you ready in there?” Cindy Mastrano’s voice sounded in Roy’s helmet. He had to squint each time the red flashing light by the airlock egress illuminated because of the glare it made inside his bubble. “My screens show you are all in the green and good to go.”

“Copy, CHENG. My suit is good. Dr. Burbank has given me the second-party inspection. Seals are green. I’m good to go,” Patel replied. He turned and looked at Roy with a grin and a thumbs-up. Roy scanned the small light-emitting diodes at each seal once again to make certain they were green. All was good as far as he could tell.

“Roy, you ready?” Cindy asked him through the suit comms. It had taken him several attempts to have Nigel adjust the volume settings just right so that Cindy’s voice didn’t rupture an eardrum when she spoke. She was the type of personality that spoke loudly, always, so Roy had his AI put a filter on her voice. “Pankish is second-party checking my seals and systems right now. My suit shows all greens, Cindy. I am good to go as soon as Pank gives the thumbs-up.”

Patel patted the backpack of his suit twice and gave the thumbs-up as Roy turned around to face him. They both nodded to each other and held out a shiny metal carabiner in their left hands. They each pulled cable from the box harnessed to their suits and then snapped the fastener to the two-centimeter-diameter metal bar fashioned into a half loop moored to the inner bulkhead of the airlock. The fasteners snapped and then clicked, locking the connector mechanism into place. To remove it required depressing two spring-loaded hasps at the same time—it wasn’t easy to undo on purpose.

“Burbank, tether number one in place.” Roy tugged at it a couple times just to make certain.

“Patel, tether number one in place.” Roy watched as Pankish did the same.

They both then started pulling a second tether with a red carabiner on the end. Roy started working out the cable to give him a bit of slack and then he snapped it onto the metal half loop about twenty centimeters below the first one. Patel quickly repeated the same process.

“Burbank here, tether number two is in place and secured.” Roy stood still and waited. His mind was racing with all the things that could go wrong on an EVA like the one they were about to do. No human, as far as they knew, had ever attempted such an EVA that had such severe consequences for becoming detached from the ship. Back home in-system, if an astronaut fell off during an EVA, then they could use the EVA jets to pull back to the ship or a ship or shuttle could drop back and pick them up. There was no chance of a rescue here. No clever release of toolbelts, oxygen, or anything other than divine intervention would catch them back up to a nearly one-gravity accelerating ship if they fell off it in very deep space.

“Patel here, tether number two is in place and secured.”

Roy stood and waited and waited. It seemed like a while, almost too long, and just as he was about to say something over the comm network, Cindy’s voice broke the silence. She seemed all business and professional. Roy was glad for that.

“EVA Astronaut Roy Burbank, EVA Astronaut Pankish Patel, be alerted that Captain Crosby has given the authority to cycle the airlock,” she told them in a nearly monotonal voice. Roy thought an AI couldn’t have been more to the point. He suspected that it was more for the legal recording of the orders rather than pure professionalism. Roy had done EVAs before and this seemed pretty much standard as far as he could tell. That is, standard other than the fact that they were cruising through open very deep space and pushing the speed of light. “Depressurization will begin in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, depressurization sequence activated.”

There was no hissing that Roy had expected to hear at first. But then, he could feel a high-frequency vibration through the floor that was a high enough frequency that it actually tickled his feet within his EVA toe-boots. Then he could hear it—an air-handler pump was humming loudly. A pressure number appeared in his virtual view displayed through his smart contacts. It started at “1.00 ATM” and then started dropping at the second decimal point. Each time the number dropped by a tenth of an atmosphere Roy could feel his LCVCG squeeze his body just a bit tighter as the power source in his backpack excited the metamaterial carbon nanotube filaments with an electromagnetic field, making them tighten like a boa constrictor.

The suit constricted and kept the body from expanding and swelling in the low pressure. Modern suits worked through compression, not like the suits of the last century where the astronaut was actually inside an inflated body suit. Those were too clunky, cumbersome, and motion constricting. The modern compression spacesuits enabled astronauts to pretty much move about as well as they could while not wearing it. In fact, the compression suits worked so well in body function that there was an entire line of them sold to the fitness industry to remove body soreness, protect weak joints, and enhance athletic performance. All the Olympic and professional athletes wore them across almost every sport that required high stress and elite performance. The military had also implemented them as the undergarments for combat uniforms. The days of the “Michelin Man astronaut suits” were long gone. The only inflated space in the suit was the transparent bubble around the head.

By the time the number got to “0.35 ATM,” Roy could still feel the vibrations in the floor, but he could no longer hear the pump cycling the air out of the lock. While the suit continued to constrict him, his body got used to it. A few minutes into the process and Roy just felt like he was wearing a really tight pair of stretchy pants. After about ten minutes the airlock pressure showed that there was no atmosphere and they were at the point of opening the exterior hatch.

“Okay, guys, lock systems show that you are at zero-pressure differential on either side of the hatch. You are cleared to disengage the locking mechanism,” Cindy’s voice instructed them.

“Roger that, Cindy. The airlock-to-ingress light is red showing a one-atmosphere pressure delta. The airlock-to-egress light is green for zero delta pressure. Airlock shows we are clear to disengage the hatch locking mechanism,” Patel stated. “Dr. Burbank, do you concur?”

Per union rules of any shipping company back in the Sol system all members of an EVA party exiting a craft had to concur on opening an airlock door. It was and had been standard procedure pretty much since the beginning of commercial space travel. Roy wasn’t sure how he felt about union gigs, but as far as safety regs went, he didn’t mind so much.

“This is Burbank. I concur.” Roy watched as Pankish grasped the metal wheel of the door locking mechanism with both hands. His right on top of the wheel with an overhand grip and his left at the bottom with an underhand grip, he turned the wheel three complete revolutions until there was a clanking vibration through the door that translated across the floor and into Roy’s feet. Then there was another vibration as if some spring-loaded or electromechanical device had cycled. Patel pushed the door and it popped outward quickly and then cycled out of the way to the outside of the ship. It happened so quickly that Roy almost flinched.

“Hatch is open, we’re staring at space,” Patel said as he turned and gave Roy a big toothy grin. “Come on, Roy, it’s time to earn our pay today.”

“We get paid for this?” Roy chuckled.



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