Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(93)

Now I’m here. Outside the ship. Hanging here with the next airlock only about fifty meters away.

He could see the bars around that other airlock.

And absolutely nothing to hold on to between this airlock and that one.

Oh, this is such a very bad design. Maybe I’m not supposed to have any handholds at all. Maybe I’m supposed to walk along in the nanooze and—

Don’t walk. Don’t run.

Dabeet looked at the curved metal sheet that was riveted to the frame of the wheel. Smooth, unbroken …

Except that the corners were rounded. And since each corner was aligned with three other corners, each junction had about a ten-centimeter gap. A full-sized person could easily reach one of those corners, but …

So could a child. Dabeet slid himself along the bar to one end, then reached out his hand.

“Reaching for that gap between plates,” he said aloud. “Definitely attached to the ship by a bunch of rivets.”

He found that the rounded corners had a gap behind them, so there was room for gloves to reach in and get a grip. He could easily hang from this.

But could he reach the next one?

That was nowhere near as important as the question, Could he get back to the bar around the airlock door, if he once let go of it?

It took him a long time to let go of that bar, move his free hand up to the same gap, and hang there by both hands. Then, almost convulsively, he started to reach again for the bar. But he stopped himself. “Reaching for the airlock bar. Left hand stays here, right hand moves to the bar.”

It turned out to be easy.

Slow at first, Dabeet began to get a rhythm once he realized that even a child could bridge from gap to gap. Each time, he’d say, “Next gap. Next gap.” But about halfway across to the other airlock, he stopped himself. He had been getting too comfortable with it. The process was repetitive, and he had the illusion that he had mastered the physical routine of it.

But that’s how I’ll die, thought Dabeet. The first time I let go before realizing that the gap isn’t at the same spot in this place.

And, sure enough, even though he hadn’t consciously noticed it before stopping himself, the plates aligned differently in one band around the hull. He remembered now that inside the hull, there was another structure that intruded into the topmost corridor. And here on the outside, that structure was represented by longer, narrower plates. Their corners were not rounded. There was no gap.

But the whole band was raised about three centimeters above the level of the regular plates. He reached his glove into the space and found that it was deep enough for his hands to find purchase there. But the reaching hand was facing the wrong way, his hand didn’t bend that way, he—

I’m hanging below the ship, he reminded himself. He pulled his hand back to the gap he was hanging from and now reached again, this time with his hand held the other way, palm out from the station surface. “Reaching for the lip of that plate,” he said. Now his fingers went under the plate in the right direction. Once his grip there was secure, he let go of the old gap and rotated his body so that when he reached the other side …

There was no gap between the two narrow plates. Combined, they were wider than the spaces between corner gaps. He hadn’t reached the far side, where presumably there was another lip. Immediately he laid his palm flat against the surface. The nanooze gripped his glove. But he didn’t count on it. He was hanging from the station, he couldn’t count on the nanooze holding him.

I didn’t say, “The other side of these plates” out loud, thought Dabeet. And he realized that if he had said it, he would have looked to estimate the distance, would have been prepared for this.

He slid his extended hand through the nanooze toward the far side. Stretched farther and farther.

Could I reach it with my toe? Or is the toe of the boot too thick to fit into the gap?

By tilting his head backward so his chest was pressed against the plates, he was able to reach far enough that his fingers caught the lip. He gripped as tightly as he could. Finally his heads-up display showed him that both gloves were locked into their life grip on the ship’s hull.

He let go with the first hand. At once his body relaxed into its new position, beyond the narrow patch, hanging in place. He inserted his other hand into the same gap. Gripped with both. Breathed slowly and carefully.

Now he was back to the land of the corner gaps. He could see that this path continued unbroken to the next airlock. Slowly, word by word and grip by grip, he made his way across. He forced himself to push the VACATE button before he pressed the OPEN button on the airlock. The last thing he needed was a tsunami-force puff of air to blow him off the face of the station.

Do not feel relieved, he warned himself. Relief makes you careless. I can lose my grip here in the airlock entrance as easily as anywhere else. “Reaching for the bar above the airlock door.” Then, “Reaching for the bar inside the airlock.”

With his arm hooked through the bar on the interior door, he pushed the CLOSE button and saw the band of dazzling sunlight disappear as the door blocked it.

RECHARGE. It took about ten seconds for atmo to level out, yet when the light turned green, Dabeet wasn’t yet ready to open the interior door.

I’m alive. But that was harder than I ever thought it would be.

He tried to imagine making that same passage with Monkey supervising. She would have been helpful. He would have been more confident. Or would he? Monkey was kind, but she couldn’t have kept the “of course” tone out of her voice each time he figured something out.