One Human by Craig Delancey

Author:Craig Delancey [Delancey, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Military, Space Exploration, Alien Contact, General, Hard Science Fiction
Google: 9Y-zDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07WGXBLKB
Goodreads: 48741249
Publisher: 496 \ Perfect Number Press
Published: 2019-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Calvino had followed Margherita down the hall and around two corners, and they dived into a narrow passage when the decompression hit. She soared backwards and her rocket pack slammed into the corner of the archway they had just passed under. She stuck her legs out reflexively and by luck they both planted firmly on the carved metal wall opposite her. Wind howled around her, but her suit had turned on the electromagnets automatically when she had been tossed backwards. The boots now clung to the wall firmly. She pushed her back against the frame of the arch, jamming herself in the doorway, shouting as stones thrown by the wind pelted her suit and cracked against her helmet.

Margherita had flattened herself in the narrow passage when the decompression started, but now she started to slide back, her gloves unable to get any grip on the smooth floor. Calvino watched her daughter slide toward her. When Margherita came close, she reached out and grabbed at her suit. Calvino’s glove, clumsy in its thickness, could not get a grip on the girl’s leg. But then Margherita slid farther, and Calvino had her hand on the backpack of the smaller suit. The glove bounced over the small crevasses of the air supply, and she felt a surge of panic that she would get no grip. Margherita spread her arms, trying to grab for the door frame.

Then two of Calvino’s fingers caught in one of the utility rings on the backpack. She closed her fist, shouting with the effort. A rock bounced hard off her helmet, leaving a scratch. Another rock hit Margherita on the shoulder and bounced up to hit Calvino’s hand where she clung to the pack.

Her grip began to weaken. She felt the ring sliding through her fingers. One finger came free. She howled in frustration as the other finger began to open, unable to hold the weight.

And then they both fell. They landed side by side, sitting on the hard floor. Calvino wondered if all the air had suddenly evacuated, leaving no wind, but the change had been too abrupt. She looked back toward the way they had come, her helmet lamp casting a narrow band of light. A few meters away, some kind of balloon filled the passageway. Calvino had stepped over a pipe there, thinking it some inscrutable bit of minor infrastructure, but now she realized it was some kind of seal for an emergency decompression. Out of the pipe, a balloon had explosively inflated and filled the hallway. As she watched, it oozed a foam from its surface, and the foam filled the cracks all around it, hardening as it did so. A whistle of escaping air rose in pitch and then died, silenced.

They looked at each other, relieved. Calvino threw her arms around Margherita and held her close. She began to weep. It was too much. The long weeks and months of uncertainty. The coming and going of her sanity. The hallucinations. The dull, infuriating experience of being so much stupider than she had ever been.

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