People of Mars by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

gap.
    “I knew that …” he
told himself. “The dude who designed that stuff was really a
genius.”
    He deactivated the
hermetic seal, which, as was evident, had long since stopped
working properly, and inserted the screwdriver tip into the gap to
use it as a lever.
    All of a sudden his
brain was flooded with a loud, high-pitched sound. By instinct, he
drew back and dropped the screwdriver, which tumbled down the roof.
He placed his hand on his helmet, as if he could cover his ears. He
was feeling as if his head was about to explode and he started
screaming, but that sound was so loud that he couldn’t hear his own
voice. An unexpected gust of wind pushed him from behind, making
him lose his balance. In an instant, his feet slipped on the
footbridge and he found himself falling along the curve of the
roof, until he stopped abruptly, held by the safety rope.
    “Hassan!” he shouted
into his helmet microphone.
    The sound had ceased
and it was replaced by a distant buzz. He thought he could make out
a voice, but he wasn’t sure. His own breath rumbled inside his head
and everything sounded muffled. His arms and his torso were
stretched out on the roof, while his legs dangled down the wall,
shaking panicked, in a useless attempt to find a foothold.
    “Hassan, can you hear
me?”
    He played around with
the controller on the left wrist of his suit to extend his
transmission to the emergency channel of the station.
    “Anna, are you hearing
me?”
    No reply.
    Robert forced himself
to calm down and glanced at the ground. Just three metres separated
him from it, a little less than ten feet. A dangerous fall on
Earth, but not that much on a planet with a little more than one
third of its gravity. He could unhook from the rope and let himself
slip downwards.
    He wasn’t even able to
finish formulating that thought when he felt himself fall again. He
seized the ledge with his hands while the safety rope, dragged by
the unhooked snap-link, fell past him to swing in the air as it
hung from his suit.
    “Pressure leak inside
suit, return immediately to the station.” The voice of the helmet
unit resounded in his ears.
    There wasn’t much time
left. He had to jump and hope for the best.
    While he attempted to
position his legs to cushion his fall, he noticed he couldn’t move
the left one very well. It seemed stuck. With some difficulty, he
tried and looked down. A hem of his suit had slipped deep into a
gap between two adjacent panels that insulated the wall against
radiations. Perhaps while sliding against a sharpened edge, a
microscopic cut had been created. From the values he could read on
the augmented reality, the pressure drop was minimal and the life
support was able to compensate. But, actually, the situation
prevented him from jumping. If he tried it, at best he would get
trapped mid air with his suit stuck in the gap. At worst, it would
tear completely.
    Robert was assailed by
a sudden terror.
    “Christ, Hassan, where
the fuck are you?!”
    How could the
snap-link have unhooked? Hassan had secured it. Why wasn’t he
coming to help him? Was it possible he didn’t realise that
something was happening? Was he really unable to hear him?
    His heart was beating
like crazy. An emergency icon was blinking insistently in the
helmet’s augmented reality, warning that he was in a condition of
extreme cardiovascular stress. His right hand fingers hurt, while
he could barely feel those on the left one. It was almost
impossible to hold on with those clumsy gloves. He sensed himself
slipping down. Sweat was dripping on his brow, blurring his
sight.
    Then he lost his
grip.
    But at the very last
moment he felt his arm being grabbed.
     
     
    “Pressure equalised,”
the inexpressive voice of the AI enunciated inside the airlock.
    His hands still
trembling, Robert tried to unfasten the safety lock of his helmet,
but his fingers kept on slipping on the mechanism. Hassan, who had
already removed his own, reached out towards