Watertight, airtight…and gastight.
Canidy stood. He reached his right hand above him, carefully waving it back and forth in the dark in order to locate the main hatch handle. On the fourth pass, he rapped his knuckles on it. He turned his hand around, grasped the handle, and pulled, turning the handle counterclockwise.
The handle didn’t budge.
Shit!
I thought Jean said there’d be no pressurization problem.
He reached up with his left hand, found the other end of the V-handle, then pushed it while pulling again on the right handle. Still no movement. Using the palm of his left hand, he started pounding on the left handle, trying to jar it, while his right hand pulled on the right handle. Suddenly, the left handle moved, causing his left hand to hit the thick metal of the submarine structure.
“Dammit!” he said, aloud, shaking his left hand to try to ease the pain.
He noticed that his voice, muffled by the mask and in the small space of the tower, sounded very strange.
After a moment, he reached up and spun the now-loose V-handle. There then came the sound of air hissing, and Canidy knew that that meant the air he was in was soon to be the air from outside.
No turning back now.
Here goes nothing….
He pushed on the main hatch door and it swung upward on its hinge.
There was some light coming from the stars, and he reached down and found the pouch of mice. He reached up through the opening and put the squirming pouch on the wet deck.
Don’t need to let them out…. They can breathe through the top of the pouch, if not through the fabric itself.
They’d probably go overboard if I did let them out.
And then this whole damn thing would really have been an exercise in futility…
Canidy scanned the area as he waited for the mice to stop moving.
He saw nothing through the thick lenses of the mask.
The pouch continued to wiggle.
That’s good news.
After some minutes, Canidy got tired of standing in the hatch. He climbed up and out, then sat with his legs crossed, staring down at the pouch.
It stopped moving.
Whoooa! What the hell?
He picked up the pouch and, with great effort due to the thick, stiff gloves, loosened the pull-string closure.
He held it up to one of the thick lenses of his mask and peered inside.
He saw a pair of fuzzy pink noses and a small forest of whiskers looking back.
As best he could tell, the mice were not moving.
He loosened the string some more, tugging at the top of the pouch.
He peered back in—and suddenly Adolf and Eva lunged for their freedom.
Shit!