Martians Abroad

I looked up to see both him and Charles hanging on the door of the cabin. Gravity was vanishing, no such thing as up and down anymore.

I was sprawled on the floor in front of the pilot’s chair, Ethan was standing on a wall, Charles was just hanging there, keeping his place while the passenger cabin spun slowly around him. Made me dizzy, and I swallowed back nausea. Their breathing masks hid their expressions.

“We had to gain altitude to be able to release the lifeboat,” Charles explained, because of course he did.

“I lost contact with traffic control,” I said. Sweat was dripping down my face inside the mask, even though the cabin was getting cold. The air was thin, heat bleeding out.

“Surely they’ve sent help by now,” Ethan said.

“Polly, let’s get going,” Charles said.

I let go of the switch. Or I tried to let go of the switch, but it slammed back into place, turning the thrusters on again, throwing the shuttle into another corkscrewing spin. Fortunately, this time I was braced in place and was able to go through the process again, reaching the controls to turn on the counterthrust with one hand, stretching to reach the emergency switch with the other. Something in the mechanism had fried, and it wouldn’t stay where I put it. The spring-loaded pressure was pulling against me.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Netwon’s Third Law of Motion was going to kill us.

If the ship fell into a corkscrew spin, the lifeboat wouldn’t be able to launch. To keep the ship from spinning, I was going to have to hold the switch in place to keep the thrusters from firing.

“Um. Charles? Do you have any tape or adhesive or loose wire or something?” I looked around but couldn’t see much from where I sat. I didn’t dare get up again, because every time the shuttle went into a spin, the damage got worse, and the chances of successfully launching the lifeboat went down.

“Why?”

“The switch is stuck,” I said. He started digging through one of the emergency packs.

Ethan looked at me, and his eyes held despair. “We don’t have much time. The atmosphere’s almost gone, everyone else is in the boat, we have to go.”

“Here.” Charles shoved around him and threw me some white first-aid tape.

It wasn’t sticky enough. The switch’s pressure tore right through it.

“Can you make a run for it?” Ethan said.

Even my messing with the tape made the switch spring back, and the thrusters fired for a second, and the shuttle’s spin got faster. During the time it would take me to run from here to the lifeboat, the spin would become so fast, the g’s so forceful, we’d all get slammed into the hull and smeared into paste.

I shook my head.

Charles was still looking for tape, wire, glue. But we didn’t have any more time. They had to get out, or we’d all be stuck in a vacuum.

“Go,” I said.

Ethan hesitated, and I almost yelled again because we didn’t have time to argue. But he was smart. I didn’t have to explain. He nodded and squeezed my ankle, which was sticking out over the seat and the closest part of me he could reach. That touch steadied me. Convinced me I was doing the right thing.

“Get him out,” I said.

“Charles, come on,” Ethan said.

“No. We can fix this, we can figure this out—”

Ethan grabbed him around the middle and hauled back.

“No!” Charles screamed the word over and over again. I’d never heard him make a sound like that. I squeezed my eyes shut, because I hadn’t even thought about crying until Charles started shouting.

The bulkhead door to the lifeboat slammed shut—I felt the vibration through the metal hull rather than heard it. Not much air left for sound to travel through. Charles’s shouts cut off.

I concentrated on holding the switch in place, keeping the thrusters off-line long enough for the lifeboat to get away. Just another minute. A charge fired, sending another shudder through the hull. I craned my neck to look at the instruments—and yes, the lifeboat was gone, on its way to a thrust-assisted landing and rescue. The shuttle was quiet now, mostly, except for the faded beeping of a malfunction alert. I couldn’t even hear the sound of air venting through a crack that couldn’t be sealed. Most of the air was already gone.

I could let go of the switch now. But I didn’t. People could survive in a vacuum longer than you’d think. Especially if you had oxygen. Sure, your blood started boiling and the internal pressure of your body caused your capillaries to burst and pretty soon your whole body failed. But that took time. I had oxygen. I’d survive for a little while.

On the other hand, all I had to do was let go of the switch, let the thrusters go out of control, and the high gravity would kill me.