Anticopernicus Read Online Free PDF Page B

they had air, water and food for months, and energy for years. But Ange would much prefer not to have to go begging amongst other pilots for rescue.
    Clean, she went again to the medical room to explain to Ostriker what she was going to do. The patient was still asleep. So she went to the store space and began suiting up; elasticated leggings; elasticated arms; the padded torso unit. She was about to roll the helmet about her head when the whole ship gave a massive bucking-bronco kick and lurched wildly, sending her colliding painfully with the wall.
    Moving about inside the ship in the vacuum suit was not easy, but there was no time to disrobe. Ange went first to the medical room to see if Ostriker was OK—she was still asleep—and then to the nearest control nexus. A supply tubule had ruptured all along its length, and was feathering great sprays of sealant and fuel into the void. It must have been weakened by the earlier damage to that flank of the ship. Ange fiddled again with the attitudinals to try and calm the lurching, trembling aspect of the ship. It took a long time, and when she was finished one thing was clear: that the craft was in no shape to pilot itself back to Earth.
    Angry at fate, Ange sent out the SOS. It would be half an hour before anybody even heard it, and an hour at the quickest before she heard any reply, so she went back to the medical room. Ostriker was awake now.
    —You’re suited, she observed.
    —A tubule has ruptured, she said. I’m going to have to go into one of the voided rooms and see what’s what.
    —Will we need rescue? Ostriker asked. She seemed very matter of fact.
    —I’m afraid so. But I’ll see how bad things are. You OK?
    Ostriker took another sip of water, and smiled. I’m fine. If I’m thirsty, I’ll drink; if the pain comes back I’ll take some more painkiller.
    —Is the pain bad?
    —I can’t feel anything.
    —That’s good.
    Ange took herself forward, fitted the helmet and negotiated the bulkheads. Inside, the breached chamber was cold and messy, the twinkly detritus of floating dust in vacuum. To the gasping soundtrack of her own breathing Ange checked the pipes one after the other, tried rerouting the fluid network, and discovered she could not. She swore, to herself, quietly. The gaping hole in the side of the ship was panel-sized, and there was no patching it; Ange even stuck her head through it to take a look at the outer skin. It was sobering to consider that a projectile so small could have so large a set of consequences. The whole area was pitted and striated, not by the micrometeorite itself of course, but by the debris it threw off as it shot out of the ship. Her helmet headlamp drew witchy shadows from the gouges and shone brightly off the petals of twisted metal. Beyond that was the starless black.
    She had done what she could, at any rate. So she brought herself back in, moved laboriously up the corridor, lowered the bulkhead, pressurised the space, and came back through.
    Stripping out of her suit she realised she was hungry; so she heated some tagliatelle and drank some sugar water. Replies to her SOS had come in: the nearest craft cried-off rescue because the detour would impact too grievously on the commercial viability of their trip. Another ship replied but claimed to be too small to be able to help (it took Ange only a moment to pull the specs of the craft and see that this was only an excuse). There was nothing she could do, however; so she fired back acknowledgements and spent a frustrating half hour working the crippled controls to at least orient the ship in the direction of Earth. They were still falling sunward, although the sideswipe and rattle-roll had added months to their unaided ETA.
    Finally a third ship confirmed the SOS; another Mars freighter, similarly returning empty to Earth. If Ange’s parent company would reimburse the fuel, they would divert and accelerate, and lock trajectories within a fortnight. Ange agreed, hoping