Deems had been at his desk, performing a routine check of the surveillance cameras, when the automatic emergency announcement blared from the overhead speakers. The sound of the airtight hatches slamming shut all along the tunnel startled him, but he didn’t get too worried until Jinny Anson’s voice came on the speakers and ordered everyone to stay put, then ended with an ominous, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
Before Deems could get out of his desk chair Anson was on the phone, telling him tightly what had happened and what she expected him to accomplish. Deems swallowed twice to keep down the bitter bile that was suddenly burning its way up his throat, nodded once to Anson, and got busy. He punched into the loudspeaker system, startled to hear his own voice booming out in the tunnel as he said:
“THIS IS THE SECURITY CHIEF. WE NEED VOLUNTEERS TO HELP CLEAR UP THIS EMERGENCY. ANYBODY IN TUNNEL TWO WHO ISN’T INVOLVED IN LIFE SUPPORT WORK AND DOESN’T HAVE TO GET PAST ONE OF THE CLOSED HATCHES, REPORT TO THE SECURITY OFFICE RIGHT AWAY.”
Volunteers. Deems almost laughed. Anybody who could reach the security office without going through one of the closed hatches was a volunteer. By definition.
Now the three women and five men stood crowded, worried and uncertain before his desk.
“The base director’s locked himself in the EVC and is threatening to cut off our air,” Deems said to the assembled ’volunteers,” without preamble.
They gasped, shocked.
“We need to open the EVC’s hatch,” he went on, running a hand through his thinning hair, “and we don’t have time for prebreathing.”
“Whaddaya mean, “we?” Why do we hafta do it?”
“Yeah, aren’t there specialists for a problem like this?”
“Like who?” Deems asked, trying hard to scowl at them.
No one had an answer.
“Listen,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest, “we can sit here on our rumps and let the cuckoo sonofabitch choke off our air or we can try to do something about it. Which is it gonna be?”
“You mean we need to get into suits?”
“It’s that bad?”
“Air pressure in tunnel four is ’way down, unbreathable,” said Deems, actually beginning to enjoy the feeling of authority, “and the pressure’s dropping in tunnel three.”
“Christ! My wife’s in three!”
Deems raised a chubby hand. “Don’t panic. We’ve already got safety people evacuating three. She’ll be okay.”
“But we have to get into suits?” one of the women asked, not certain she had heard him correctly.
“That’s right. No time for prebreathing, either.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Not if we do it right,” said Deems. “We’re going to the suit rack at the end of this tunnel and purge a half-dozen backpack tanks. Get rid of the low-pressure mix that’s in ’em and refill them with regular base air. Then you won’t need prebreathing and there’s no danger of the bends.”
“But if you pump up the suits to room-normal pressure they’ll get so stiff we won’t be able to move in them,” said one of the men. Deems recognized him as an engineer from the mining group.
“You won’t have to do any delicate work,” he countered. “Just set up a laser torch to burn through the hatch.”
The engineer looked dubious and muttered something too low for Deems to catch.
“But we’ve gotta move fast,” Deems said, starting to feel like a real leader. “No time to waste. We’ve gotta get into the EVC before he knocks out all the pumps and recyclers.”
“Isn’t there any other way to get to the EVC?”
They don’t like this, Deems could tell by looking at their faces. Not any of it. Can’t say I blame them.
“Doug Stavenger is working his way through the old plasma vents,” he said, “but we don’t know if he can make it all the way to the EVC or not. In the meantime, we gotta get that locked hatch open.”
“Wait a minute,” said one of the engineers. “If the pressure’s down in tunnel four and we burn through the hatch, won’t that blow the air out of the EVC?”
“Right”
“And anybody in there gets killed.”
“Most likely.”
“Then what about Stavenger? What if he’s in there when we blow the hatch?”
Deems shrugged. “We’ll carry extra suits and try to get them on all three of the people in there before decompression get them.”
“Fat chance,” grumbled the engineer.
Deems knew he was right.
“Shouldn’t we be taking the recyclers apart?” Melissa asked. Her arms hurt from exertion and she could feel blisters welling up painfully on the palms of her hands.
Greg snorted impatiently, kneeling over one of the pumps. “What good’s the recycling equipment if the pumps aren’t moving fresh air? Kill the pumps and you kill the people.”
He seemed calmer now. Methodical. When they had first burst into the EVC Greg was frenzied, wild-eyed. Now he worked with the deliberate, meticulous care of a man who was totally dedicated to his task. He’s really going to do it, Melissa said to herself for the hundredth time. He’s going to kill them all. He’s going to kill himself. He’s going to kill me.
For the first time, she realized that there was no way to stop Greg. If she tried to interfere with his dismantling of the pumps, he would calmly brain her with one of the wrenches.
She shuddered.
“Haven’t heard that booming noise again,” Greg said absently as he worked, head bent over the inner works of the pump.
“No,” said Melissa. “It’s stopped.”
“What do you think they’re doing, outside?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Getting into spacesuits, maybe?”
Greg laughed. “Fat lot of good it’ll do them. There aren’t enough to go around. Oh, I suppose my mother and her little circle of sycophants are in suits. But the others — no.”
“Maybe they’re calling for help.”
Greg looked up at her. His face was smeared with grime, but he smiled brightly at Melissa. “I’m sure they are. They must be screaming for help. But the quickest any help can come from Earth is six hours or more, and that’s only if they have an LTV all ready to go and it’s programmed for a high-energy boost.”
“They could be calling to the other bases here on the Moon, couldn’t they?”
“My mother, ask Yamagata or the Europeans for help? She’d sooner die.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
His dark eyes snapped at her. “Don’t tell me what I believe! If she asked Yamagata or the Europeans for help, they’d end up owning Moonbase. She’d never do that. She wouldn’t even think of it.”
“But that’s better than dying, isn’t it?”
Greg pulled a section of pipe away from the dismantled pump and let it drop to the rock floor with a clang. “Besides, what could anybody do to help her? Before anybody can break through the hatch to get to us, everybody out there’ll be dead.”
Melissa paced back and forth along the narrow walkway between pumps, arms folded across her chest, massaging her aching muscles.
“They must be doing something,” she said.
Greg snorted disdainfully. “If I know my mother, she’s spending her last moments writing me out of her will.”
Doug’s sneeze rang along the length of the metal-walled vent like a raucous gong. The dust was filling his nose, choking his throat whenever he inadvertently opened his mouth. The vent was big enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees, but still the dust floated languidly up to his face with every step he took.
How on Earth could dust get into these closed vents? With a shake of his head he reminded himself that he wasn’t on Earth and lunar dust got into everything, its burnt-gunpowder smell was as common in Moonbase as the odor of frying oil in a hamburger joint back Earthside.
I wonder what the nanomachines are doing with the dust particles that get down to my lungs, he asked himself. Despite the sneezing and coughing, he seemed to be breathing well enough.
He had passed three partitions. Two of them had opened up on the electrical signal from the control center, when Doug had phoned Anson. The third refused to budge, and Doug had to drill off its hinges, which were caked solid with lunar dust.