The Arrows of Time

The repair didn’t have to be airtight immediately; he just had to stop the sunstone being lost. He dragged himself to Agata’s cabin and snatched the tarpaulin from her bed, then detoured to the tool cupboard and grabbed a jar of sealing resin.

If he entered the gasification chamber through the hatch he’d just drive more sunstone out as he pushed his way through it. Back in the maintenance shaft, he warily tested the rim of the gash with one fingertip. The damaged stone was still warm from the collision – with a microscopic Hurtler, most likely – but the escaping air had carried away enough heat to render it traversable. He clambered out into the void and made his way along the torn edge of the hull, hand over hand; the distance was so short that this was faster than messing around with his jetpack.

‘I’m with her!’ Agata announced excitedly. ‘She’s conscious, Ramiro. She’s putting on her cooling bag now.’

Ramiro started humming with relief; embarrassed, he muted the outwards channel on the link until he’d regained his composure. ‘Be careful coming back,’ he managed.

Agata replied, ‘Don’t worry, we will.’

As Ramiro climbed into the chamber small pellets of sunstone bounced off his jetpack and faceplate; he had to force himself not to raise his arm instinctively to swat them away like insects, as that would only have added energy to the swarm. He took the jar from his tool pouch and daubed resin over the nearest part of the inner wall, then tugged the tarpaulin out of the gap under his belt and fixed one edge in place. There were no ropes or handholds in the chamber that he could use to brace himself, but he could apply pressure by closing his hand over the whole exposed thickness of the wall, clamping the fabric of the tarpaulin against the resin until it adhered.

He pushed himself off from the wall to reach the far side of the chamber; he hit it with a jolt but managed to grab the rim of the gash to keep himself from bouncing. The tarpaulin was wider than the gap he was trying to cover, and once he had it secured at both ends the pellets of sunstone were too large to work their way around the sides.

Ramiro paused to take stock. There was more sunstone in the store behind the chamber; they’d probably only lost about a twelfth of their total. If Tarquinia was safe, the next most urgent matter was checking on Azelio. Getting the gash repaired and the entire Surveyor airtight again would take a long time, but as an interim measure they could seal the doors to the damaged cabins and concentrate on the cooling chamber while they still had enough air in tanks to keep them from hyperthermia.

He managed to get out of the chamber through the hatch with only a handful of sunstone escaping into the passage. Back in his cabin, he surveyed Azelio’s wounds, cutting holes in the cooling bag so he wouldn’t have to pull the whole thing off. At each site there was a faint yellow glow suffusing the punctured flesh, but it looked like the body’s ordinary signalling rather than a runaway reaction, and the surrounding skin wasn’t hot to the touch. The fragments of stone had passed right through Azelio’s body, but as far as Ramiro could see his digestive tract hadn’t been breached. If his skull and gut were undamaged, his chances were good.

‘We’re almost back,’ Agata announced. ‘Ah, you’ve closed off the chamber already!’

‘Yes.’ Ramiro had never expected her to prove so indomitable in the face of a calamity like this. One stride deeper into the hull and the Hurtler would have ended the mission. Maybe Agata was relishing the sense of solidarity with the ancestors, and picturing herself as a member of the most far-flung branch of Eusebio’s fire watch.

The two women returned together through the same opening they’d used to make their separate exits. Ramiro was waiting for them, and he handed Tarquinia her helmet.

‘Welcome back,’ he said. If the ordeal had shaken her, she wasn’t letting it show.

‘How’s Azelio?’ she asked.

‘He’s got five wounds, but they all seem clean to me.’

‘Let me take a look.’

In Ramiro’s cabin, Azelio was still motionless under the tarpaulin, but even from the doorway they could see the light from the wound in his thigh, shining through the fabric.

‘It wasn’t like that a few lapses ago,’ Ramiro declared. That meant it was deteriorating rapidly.

Tarquinia said, ‘Get the medical kit.’

Agata went to fetch it.

‘The hull fragments missed you?’ Ramiro asked Tarquinia.

‘I was lucky.’ Tarquinia buzzed grimly. ‘I was out in the void before I was even awake. After this, I’m going to start sleeping in my cooling bag.’

Agata returned with the box of medication and instruments. Tarquinia dragged herself over to the bed; Ramiro followed, taking off his jetpack so he could move more freely.

Agata remained by the door. ‘You survived worse than this, didn’t you, Ramiro?’

‘Absolutely. He’s going to be fine.’

Ramiro helped Tarquinia pull the tarpaulin out of the way, but they left the straps in place to keep Azelio still.