for times when the reader was unpowered like right now. Great planning as long as you had the key, which I did not. But I did have an ax and this door measured no more than a few millimeters thick. I stood back, pulling the small ax from my suit leg. After lining up the blade, I drew it back and took the first swing. The metal-on-metal clang sounded deafening in the still of the gloomy sarcophagus. All it left was a dent. Half a dozen strikes later, though, the bolt sheared, perhaps embrittled by the cold or just due to old age.
I re-stowed the ax and went prone, peering into the service hatch. A flashlight would’ve been useful, but I didn’t have one so waited a while for my pupils to dilate some more. I still couldn’t see into the dark space so had a feel around inside. It was deeper than I’d expected—maybe eighteen inches into the bulkhead. All kinds of switches and dials and sockets lined the left and right sides. The back panel, facing outwards felt flush and bare. Stroking around the bottom then the top surface of the recess, I felt a small control wheel with five spokes but was unsure of its function. Deciding I could either start randomly flipping switches and turning dials or I could have another feel around, I went for the latter. After a few seconds reexamining the featureless back surface I realized there was another panel, except with no handle, button or any other means of opening it. Then, I pressed the panel and it popped open. Behind it sat what I’d been searching for: the hand-winch, which I quickly pulled out beyond the service hatch, extending the handle. Now free of the confines of the recess, it’d be far easier to turn it and manually open the blast doors. The winch reminded me of the ones found on a sailing yacht. For all I knew it could’ve been made by the same company. Kneeling facing the winch I tried to turn it counter-clockwise. After some jerking and forcing it creaked past whatever was seizing it up and started moving. It rotated with a gritty resistance, but the torque needed was minimal once it got going. It seemed to click on every revolution and the blast doors stayed shut, so I tried turning clockwise—but it was a no go. Perhaps the clicking noise meant the mechanism was somehow disengaged. But why and how and what to do to engage it? I was missing something.
Five minutes later, after exhausting all other possibilities, I turned the control wheel with five spokes inside the service hatch. I heard a distant releasing of gas somewhere in the link tunnel and assumed it to be some sort of pressure equalization. The noise of flowing air ceased and I tried the open-close winch once more. This time, it took all my strength to get it moving, but move it did. The first turn was slow, but after more than a revolution, I noticed an absence of any clicking noise. Better still, the hairline gap in the center of the door segments had grown to a definite dark vertical line.
Fifteen minutes of hard work later and the segments had parted enough for me to squeeze through sideways. Hungry and weakening, I dreaded the thought of repeating the same thing to access Module 4. But as I floated into the light of the link tunnel, a welcome sight greeted me—the blast doors to Module 4 were wide open.
I pushed off the half-open blast doors of Module 5. Floating toward the opening and Module 4, I thought back to swimming as a kid. Cutting through the water of the municipal swimming pool, I’d feel free in the otherworldly space, willing my forward glide to continue for just a little longer. In zero-g the same push off would go for way longer—it was only air resistance here, not the resistance of water a thousand times denser. Before I realized it, I’d reached the end of the link tunnel. That’s when I noticed the metal deck coming up to meet me.
I didn’t drop straight down—more like a shallow parabola like due to my forward motion. My hands sprung out reflexively, breaking my fall but
I re-stowed the ax and went prone, peering into the service hatch. A flashlight would’ve been useful, but I didn’t have one so waited a while for my pupils to dilate some more. I still couldn’t see into the dark space so had a feel around inside. It was deeper than I’d expected—maybe eighteen inches into the bulkhead. All kinds of switches and dials and sockets lined the left and right sides. The back panel, facing outwards felt flush and bare. Stroking around the bottom then the top surface of the recess, I felt a small control wheel with five spokes but was unsure of its function. Deciding I could either start randomly flipping switches and turning dials or I could have another feel around, I went for the latter. After a few seconds reexamining the featureless back surface I realized there was another panel, except with no handle, button or any other means of opening it. Then, I pressed the panel and it popped open. Behind it sat what I’d been searching for: the hand-winch, which I quickly pulled out beyond the service hatch, extending the handle. Now free of the confines of the recess, it’d be far easier to turn it and manually open the blast doors. The winch reminded me of the ones found on a sailing yacht. For all I knew it could’ve been made by the same company. Kneeling facing the winch I tried to turn it counter-clockwise. After some jerking and forcing it creaked past whatever was seizing it up and started moving. It rotated with a gritty resistance, but the torque needed was minimal once it got going. It seemed to click on every revolution and the blast doors stayed shut, so I tried turning clockwise—but it was a no go. Perhaps the clicking noise meant the mechanism was somehow disengaged. But why and how and what to do to engage it? I was missing something.
Five minutes later, after exhausting all other possibilities, I turned the control wheel with five spokes inside the service hatch. I heard a distant releasing of gas somewhere in the link tunnel and assumed it to be some sort of pressure equalization. The noise of flowing air ceased and I tried the open-close winch once more. This time, it took all my strength to get it moving, but move it did. The first turn was slow, but after more than a revolution, I noticed an absence of any clicking noise. Better still, the hairline gap in the center of the door segments had grown to a definite dark vertical line.
Fifteen minutes of hard work later and the segments had parted enough for me to squeeze through sideways. Hungry and weakening, I dreaded the thought of repeating the same thing to access Module 4. But as I floated into the light of the link tunnel, a welcome sight greeted me—the blast doors to Module 4 were wide open.
I pushed off the half-open blast doors of Module 5. Floating toward the opening and Module 4, I thought back to swimming as a kid. Cutting through the water of the municipal swimming pool, I’d feel free in the otherworldly space, willing my forward glide to continue for just a little longer. In zero-g the same push off would go for way longer—it was only air resistance here, not the resistance of water a thousand times denser. Before I realized it, I’d reached the end of the link tunnel. That’s when I noticed the metal deck coming up to meet me.
I didn’t drop straight down—more like a shallow parabola like due to my forward motion. My hands sprung out reflexively, breaking my fall but
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