Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(111)

He could hear a whishing, humming sound inside the suit, and it took a moment for him to realize that the tether was now reversed. Instead of playing out to let Monkey catch him, it was reeling her in.

They would collide soon. He hoped that she had used her directionals to make her change of direction more gradual, that she would also make their collision gradual enough to pose no danger to them—

Then he realized that there were bright objects whizzing past him, and he felt a force suddenly hurtle him rapidly toward the station. Was this how fast Monkey was going when she hit him?

She hadn’t hit him. Instead, he saw her spacesuit flash past him. And then her new movement made the tether jerk in his arms. Without the strength of the locked suit he could never have held on. Why was she moving so fast?

Not her choice, Dabeet realized. The ship had blown up. All the force that would have torn apart the station had blasted in every direction from the ship. They were far enough to cut that force in half, maybe to a quarter of what it would have been, but they were still way too close, and the debris had hit them, most of it pulverized to dust, so it hit them like wind; but some of it was still in chunks, mostly tiny, but some the size of a leaf, some the size of a basketball—

Dabeet was now going the same speed as Monkey, dragging along behind her, moving toward the station. The tether was still reeling them in—whoever was controlling it must have sped it up to match and surpass their new velocity and it was pulling him a little sideways, so his angle changed, and now he could see that …

Monkey’s suit was torn. Not a big tear, but she was trying to cover it with her hand, and the glove wasn’t big enough. Atmo was escaping and turning instantly into a cloud of ice. Dabeet remembered the lecture they all heard about leaking spacesuits and it didn’t take any complicated math to realize that unless that leak could be slowed, Monkey would arrive at the station airlock door dead.

Dabeet didn’t even have to think about it. He pushed against the force of the suit-lock and his right arm came free. He found the tether with his glove and locked on to it. Found the tether with his other glove. Hand over hand, he climbed up the tether until he reached Monkey.

Then he climbed Monkey’s suit. Each grasp, he thought the name of the spot he was reaching for, he gripped and let the glove take hold, too much haste and he’d lose her completely, he had to stay close, stay attached.

Now he was almost even with her, his chest pressed against the abdominal tear in her suit. He wrapped his arms around her body and gripped. Tighter. Tighter. Tighter. Was this close enough that his suit was blocking the leak? Did his suit somehow know what he was trying to do? Was it helping him? Or had he missed, was he clinging to her dying body as atmo kept escaping because he wasn’t blocking the hole?

I won’t know, I can’t know till the tether brings us in, and I don’t dare let go to check because then atmo will definitely escape.

Do the suits self-seal at all? There’s no nanooze, but surely there’s some kind of self-sealing mechanism. Her suit couldn’t cope with the size of the tear, but maybe the two suits together could do it, especially if he was blocking the hole so that no more atmo was escaping.

There was a harsh jolt as the two of them collided with the hull of the station. His suit’s lock held, so they weren’t pulled apart. They slid along the nanooze only a little way, with only a couple of bounces, till they were dragged around the corner of the airlock doorframe and toward the tether’s root in the inside wall.

Hands grabbed at them, tried to pull them apart, but Dabeet held on to the locked position until he could see that the outer airlock door was closed. Then the inner door opened, atmo whooshed into the space, and now he unlocked his hold on Monkey and the other kids pulled the two of them apart.

He reached up and pulled off his helmet.

“Rip in her suit!”

“Get the helmet off!”

“Is she breathing? Is she conscious?”

So he wouldn’t have to tell them about the torn suit. He stood on the floor, grateful to be back with working gravitics. He made the suit loosen and drop down from his body, and he stepped out of it.

“Is she alive?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Zhang He. He had apparently been inside the station corridor, not in the open airlock, because he wasn’t wearing a spacesuit. Dabeet saw and instantly registered that it was Bartolomeo Ja who had been in the open airlock, wearing a suit, monitoring and controlling the tether. And also Timeon. Those were the catchers, there to pull them in.

They had Monkey out of her spacesuit. Ragnar was checking her pulse, her breathing; he put his hand flat on her chest, nodded. “Heartbeat strong, breathing strong. But who knows how long she was oxygen deprived?”

Monkey’s eyes opened. “The only thing depriving me of oxygen,” she said, “was Dabeet crushing the life out of me.”

“I was trying to block the hole in your suit, I didn’t mean to—”

“Saved my life, oomay, that’s what you did. Alarms going off in my suit, estimate of five seconds till total atmo loss when you plugged the hole, you saved my stupid life.”

“I let go of the tether, though,” said Dabeet.

“I forgive you,” said Monkey.

“And I used the directionals to reorient myself,” said Dabeet.

“If you hadn’t, would you have seen that my suit was torn?”