Chapter 8

Jackknife wiped a mustard smear off his cheek with the back of his hand, wrapped the remainder of a corned beef sandwich in a napkin, and shoved it into one of the spacious pockets of his workpants. After restocking his personal supply of food, cigarettes, and alcohol flasks, he figured he had left Cory waiting long enough. With a twisted knot of heavy chains and padlocks in his left hand, he guided himself along the hallway handrail with his right.

A door ahead opened and an electrician in a green jumpsuit kited out. A slight man with wiry hair and elephantine ears, he looked up to see Jackknife steaming toward him and moved aside deferentially. He smiled meekly as Jackknife neared. "Oh. Howdy Jackknife. I didn't know you were out here." He was bypassed without a glance.

Jackknife rounded a bend and proceeded toward the junction with the main shaft. Just a few months prior, the B Shift had spent a solid week refurbishing this section of West Wing, buffing the stainless steel panels, repainting the piping, and replacing the light fixtures. Every two meters they had installed plastic tiedown hooks for securing equipment. Jackknife found that they made a nice, crisp snap as he broke them off one by one.

As he approached the main shaft, he noted the faint traces of a flashing red light somewhere off the tee junction. With his interest piqued, he quickened his pace and tried to recall what it meant. A yellow light indicated heavy equipment, a bright strobe high CO₂ levels, and revolving red and blue was a hull breach. He could now clearly see it was a slow throb like a heartbeat. Not an emergency light, just a status indicator of some sort.

He turned the corner and found the source located above a bay door down the main shaft. Then he recalled what it meant. "Decompression?" he said aloud. "Who'd be decompressing a bay now?"

He took advantage of a nearby tiedown and secured the mass of chains he had been hauling. He gave the bay door a perfunctory pull and found that it was tightly sealed. The control room door next to it opened easily, so he peered inside, finding it fully lit and disturbingly vacant.

Entering cautiously, he took in the scene. Nothing seemed suspicious, aside from the flashing red lights on several control panels located throughout the room. He eyed a few instruments here and there and then sailed to the far end of the room for a look through the observation window.

"What the-?" Jackknife pressed against the glass with palms and nose. "Cory?" The slumped form he spotted in the bay was facing away and barely moving. "Cory?" he repeated to himself as he watched his boss' hands slide slowly down the wall panel and lose contact with it completely.

Jackknife quickly checked the pressure indicator on the instrument panel in front of him and swore. Operating in panic mode, he frantically searched for the emergency shutoff switch amid the myriad controls. His finger made contact with the large red switch, began to apply pressure, and then hesitated.

His eyes shot another look into the adjoining bay and lingered on the lonely figure inside. The alarm continued to flash in one-second intervals, casting a red glow across Jackknife's face as it steadily hardened into grim resolve. Then the finger lifted.

Jackknife moved back to the window and stared impassively. Cory hung limply in the air, slowly drifting toward the air vents.

A few seconds later, Ramon appeared in the room asking, "Hey, Jackknife, what's going on in here?"

Startled, Jackknife backed away from the window. "I was headed to-uh-and then I saw an alarm..."

Ramon continued toward him. "Yeah, I got a strange intercom message. Nobody there, but I could hear an alarm and air blowing. I checked the system to see where it might have come from, and saw somebody was depressurizing the bay." He reached the window and took a casual look into the bay. "What I can't figure is how-Dios mio! There's somebody in there!"

Jackknife feigned disbelief admirably. "What? That's impossible."

In an instant Ramon was racing for the control panel. "No, look behind that Transvac engine. It's a body. We've got to repressurize fast."

"You've got good eyes, Ramon. Looks like that con went off and spaced himself for us. Shoulda been more careful which buttons he was pushing."

"All I could see was his back, Jackknife, and it looked like a crew uniform to me." Ramon hit the red button and the alarms died as the space vents slammed shut. A few more buttons pushes fired up roaring turbines that began pumping oxygen back into the bay. "I don't think it's too late. There was still 20% air pressure."

"Nobody can survive that," Jackknife said. "And even if he did, pressurizing him would be just as bad."

Ramon kept his eyes trained on the panel in front of him. "You could dive 50 meters and come back up without the bends if you did it fast enough. He might make it just because it happened so fast., his body hasn't depressurized yet The best thing to do is get the pressure back up quick." He watched the pressure gauge a moment and then flipped another switch, sending the turbines into deafening overdrive.

The needle on the pressure gauge rose briskly, passing from the red region to the yellow, and soon into the green. Jackknife kept watch at the window and Ramon said he would place a call for help. Since Raymond Casper had been the only medically skilled crewman, his departure in the transport left them few options. They decided their best hope was either Zhukov, the mechanic, because he knew CPR, or Farkzahd, the electrician, because they had once seen him set a broken arm without flinching. Ramon called for both. He also called for Cory.

As the bay pressure approached nominal, the turbines began to ramp down. Ramon rushed into the hall and over to the bay door. He tugged at it repeatedly, and hardly noticed that Jackknife had followed him.

"You'll hear it unlock when it's ready, Ramon."

Ramon continued pulling. "It won't unlock 'cause nobody locked it in the first place." He motioned toward some configuration of gears on the door's exterior that should have somehow made that obvious to Jackknife. "Looks like the door slammed shut and sealed on it own against the vacuum. That means it'll open when both sides equalize. It's close enough that we ought to be able to force it open."

Jackknife pitched in and, after a few attempts, they were able to just crack the seal. Ramon wedged his steel-toed boot into the opening as air rushed into the bay through it. They continued to pull, finally forcing the door fully open.

A healthy current rushed into the room, and Ramon took advantage of it, allowing it to swiftly usher him to the far end of the bay where he latched onto a vertical support beam. From there he launched over to the large deep-space engine, scrambled over it, and made for a nearby corner where the body had drifted.

The first thing he saw was the soles of the man's shoes. Ramon reached out for the legs, which were pointing toward him, and cautiously rotated the man to bring his face into view.

"Cory?" he gasped. "Cory? Oh no! What happened to you? Jackknife, get in here! It's Cory, man. It's Cory in here!"

"He's dead?" Jackknife shouted back.

"I don't know. Hold on." Ramon drew Cory's limp body close and held it up against himself. It was still and lifeless.

"I swear to God, Cory, I wouldn't do this for any other man." Ramon pressed against Cory's pale blue lips and blew, in what he hoped was a reasonable attempt at CPR. He felt the ribcage slowly expand, and then he squeezed out as much air as he could and repeated the process.

After several attempts, he began to strike his chest with the heel of his hand. "Come on, Cory. I don't know what to do here. Make your heart beat, or start breathing, or something. You were always telling me to be optimistic. Don't let me down, now."

"Ramon," Jackknife said as he approached, "he's gone. He was probably gone a long time ago. There's nothing either of us coulda done."

Ramon inflated Cory's lungs again and expelled the air. "I owe him my best shot."

Jackknife's tone hardened. "Cory's dead, Ramon. It's not my fault, it's not yours. It's just what is. And in case you've forgotten, we're all dead men anyway. You're trying to bring back the dead, just so he can die again in a couple of hours."

Ramon ignored him, waiting on Zhukov and Farkzahd to tell him when was too late. They arrived quickly and, although they didn't share Ramon's hopefulness, they aided him with better technique.

"Wait, I heard something that time," Ramon said. "Like a pop in his throat." Zhukov soon heard something, too. And after a few more attempts, they all heard Cory start to cough faintly. With newfound determination, the three of them worked in concert to revive him.

"I can't believe it," Jackknife finally said. "He's either the luckiest guy I ever saw, or the unluckiest. Like winning the lottery an hour before you have a heart attack. I say he was better off dead, if you ask me."

"Nobody's asking you," Ramon said, and Jackknife maintained his physical and emotional distance.

They continued working on Cory until his breathing became regular. After several minutes he seemed to gain a dim awareness of his surroundings.

"Cory, can you hear me?" Ramon asked while squeezing his hand.

"Cold," he whispered. "Cold."

Ramon wrapped him in an army-green tarp pulled from a storage bin on the wall. He continued to talk to him, reassuring him he would be okay, and watching strength and alertness reassert themselves in his features.

Cory reached up to feel the left side of his face, running his hand along his jawbone and up to his ear. "I can't hear," he said slowly. "Not on this side."

"And on the other?" Ramon asked.

"It's ringing. It's screaming, howling at me. Like a gunshot in my head. But I can still hear."

Zhukov shook his head and made a discreet motion toward Ramon like the breaking of a twig. Ramon nodded and moved to Cory's right side. "Cory, I think your eardrum's probably busted. Does it hurt?"

"I don't know. Everything hurts. I can't say it hurts any more or less. With or without both ears, I'm just glad to be alive."

Jackknife hissed, and Cory turned toward him. "I can hear well enough to hear you, Jackknife. You might not understand this, but life is a gift. Every minute of it, down to the last fleeting second." His eyes closed and it looked like he might drift off to sleep, but a few seconds later they reopened with renewed focus. "Plants and animals know it instinctively, only people give up too soon. I fought with everything in me to survive. I intend to live, come what may."

"I see you're well enough to lecture," Jackknife quipped. "You'll make it."

"What happened, Cory?" Ramon asked. "Do you remember anything?"

"It's like remembering a dream," he said. "There were flashing lights and a door slamming shut. There was a window. A face. But whose? Let's see..." The strain on his face was evident as he sifted through his memory. "Yes, it was him."

"Isaacson?"

"Yes. He was there, over there in that room, across the glass from me. I came in because-because I heard a noise. But I picked the wrong room, and he was on the other side of the glass. Neither one of us could get across to the other, and there was no way to call anybody. If I had turned my back or left the room, he would have been gone. I talked to him-stalled him-hoping somebody would show up, but nobody did."

"How did this happen?" Ramon asked.

"It's all kind of fuzzy. I think that, at some point, I knew nobody would show up in time. Or maybe I sensed he was about to disappear. I don't recall. But I'm pretty sure I made my move first, hoping to get out of the bay and to the control room door before he could. I never made it through the door.

"And now that I think of it, I'd appreciate it if you would get me out of here. I almost died in this room, and what I wanted more than anything was just to get out that door."

Ramon shot him a dubious look, but Cory returned a reassuring nod and pushed the green tarp aside. He moved slowly and deliberately at first, but soon loosened up and moved more freely. Ramon and the others helped him to the door, all except for Jackknife who went to retrieve the chains he had left down the hallway.

"See, I'm as good as new," Cory said as they passed through the door.

"I doubt that," Ramon said, "but it's good to see you moving. Cory, you're the strongest man I know. Jackknife's got more muscle, but you've got more drive than anybody. There's no telling how you feel."

Cory's expression teetered between a smile and a wince, but his voice was warm. "I'll tell you how I feel, Ramon. Grateful. To you, especially. At some point it dawned on me that I wasn't going to make it on my own. I knew that the next face I saw, if it wasn't God's, would be yours."

Ramon began to reply with something heartfelt, but noticed Zhukov and Farkzahd looking on. "No problem, boss. Glad you're okay."

He turned and closed the bay door behind them and began to spin the lock wheel. "Might as well seal it off and let Jackknife lock it tight. I know the guys down on East Wing have already searched and sealed off about half of it. Pretty soon there won't be any place left to hide. Okay, Cory, let's get you down to-" He suddenly stiffened like a deer sniffing the wind. "Did you hear that?"

No one had, but the atmosphere shifted immediately as they responded to the urgency in his voice.

"I could feel it," he said, entering the control room. He switched the comm panel to the B channel. "Hey, who's down around the launch bays. Somebody talk to me."

A bewildered voice came back. "Ramon, we just heard a ship take off over here."

"Yeah, I know. But there weren't any ships docked out there, so explain it to me."

The sound of shouting could be heard across the intercom and then the first voice resumed. "They're saying it's the shuttle that took off. And it's not headed down to the surface, it's headed out into space. I know it ain't supposed to be able to do that, so don't ask me how. It just is."

"Hold tight," Ramon said, "I'll be right there." He signed off and flew into the corridor to inform Cory.