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rip in her suit
sleeve. She met me halfway, clutching the tear with her left hand,
a small stream of vapor spraying from the wound. There was a faint
tinge of red near the base of it. Vaporized blood. Her eyes were
wide and her teeth clenched, like a child who had just been bitten
by something. She was too frightened to speak, but she refused to
scream. I grabbed her left upper arm roughly and pulled her to me.
I wrapped my legs around her waist and together we went into a
slow, frantic turn. Globes of suit glue were escaping from between
her fingers as the Bell Standard tried to seal itself. Little balls
of it formed and floated in my way. With my right hand I reached
behind my waist and yanked out the octopus, and in the same motion
jammed it into the receptacle on her backpack. My suit sagged and
the pumps wined as air rushed to her. I tore open the pocket on my
right thigh and pulled out the flat-pack of suit tape and stuck the
red start line on her forearm just above her death grip. As
terrified as she was, she worked the problem with me. As I wrapped,
she inched her glove away. The suit tape melted into the dwindling
flow of glue. Bubbles formed and popped, but at a much slower rate.
Our suit pressures began to make gains. I realized someone had
taken hold of my left arm and was steadying us. Erin's voice came
in over the Com.
    "Captain, we have two medical emergencies.
We're on our way back. We'll need a med team in the airlock." The
voice that acknowledged Erin's transmission was that of an ensign.
It meant that Grey and Tolson were already on their way.
    We hurried from the hurtful realm of the
alien spacecraft and traversed the cold gap of space without ever
touching the gangway. Erin and Pete guided Frank's sleeping form
through the emptiness using skillful, complementary suit
maneuvering techniques. No one spoke. Nira and I clung together
like lovers. And in those fearful seconds in the empty, blackness
between ships, she became the most precious thing I had ever held.
Her heart was beating in my chest; her fear was in my mind.
    We crossed over like a wounded pack of stray
dogs who had ventured down the street and into the neighbor's yard
only to be run off by buckshot. We were hurrying home now, to lick
our wounds in a place that was familiar, safe and warm.
     
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    For the first time, the impersonal-gray
walls of my stateroom looked warm and inviting. Six hours of
grueling debriefing, replay after replay of every possible
helmet-cam view, and the telling and retelling of a chain of events
that seemed like a bad dream, had bottomed out my resolve. My mind
had turned to putty.
    They had not been vindictive or accusing. I
was surprised by that. Even more surprising, they had been
sympathetic and restrained. "You handled it well, Adrian. It could
have been a lot worse, Adrian. Good thing you were close by,
Adrian."
    The only consolation of it all was that my
presence at the inquiry put me at the receiving end of the
Captain's direct line to the med-lab. Both Nira and Frank were
reportedly doing very well. They would be okay.
    Somehow, I had remained calm and collected
through it all. Inquisitions that come about as a result of a
serious near-miss can be intimidating, intense affairs. It wasn't
until my stateroom door had swished closed behind me that I finally
let out the backlog of tension. Leaning against the door, I stooped
over, stood brainless for a minute or two, and then finally slapped
at the sleep key on the wall by my sofa. Slumped over and morose, I
stared blankly as the hum from some hidden little motor came to
life, and the spongy orange couch flattened itself out into a bed.
There’s a special kind of desperate fear that waits for you to be
alone when you’ve almost lost someone.
    I sat on the edge in the thinking man pose,
then, with the slow, deliberant march of a water buffalo chasing
away an intruding male, I went to the bathroom, knelt nobly beside
the toilet, and threw up