15. Hanging by a thread

An infinitely long minute passed away for Dan, his mind like on crack, breathing fast and heavily. Survive. It was the only thing on his mind. The world almost entirely locked out, he could not notice the moon at the bow of the ship rising in its solemn majesty. The cold light just a reflection shining through the black silhouettes, the once were humans with dreams, needs and petty dramas now floating empty shells left alone even by the cosmos.

The tiny gravitational forces acting upon Dan left unchecked, he did not wanted to waste any more fuel. The slow turn brought the actual source of the light into his vision, triggering the suit to apply sunshades automatically. In the moment, Dan felt like he is in a staring contest, an invader in the kingdom of someone else, caught and now the king looks into him deeply. Weightless bodies hanging with an imaginary thread connecting living and inanimate. The absurdity of the moment left unspoken.

• “Get yourself together!” — the voice in Dan’s head snapped. He thought he heard Ava at first. Even saw her face for a moment. Or that happened only earlier?

His mind could make less sense of the world with the early onset of hipoxia.

• “Leak detected, new estimate 3 minutes until oxygen depletion.” — clear sound of hissing joined Dan’s consciousness, he became alert again as the valves applied higher pressure on the computer’s command. Losing time yet giving a fighting chance to its occupant.
• “How, … how much … fuel left?”
• “20 seconds acceleration available with 60 seconds navigation thrusters”
• “Calculate path to… nearest entry”
• “90 seconds” — a trajectory line appeared on Dan’s head up display, dotted each second of the route to both the frontal and dorsal ring pairs.
• “No way I go close to those frontal rings. Take me to the dorsal entry!”
• “Automatic navigation engaged, starting acceleration in 3, 2, 1…”

Dan felt the pressure in his back, far from being unpleasant or straining, he was already flying fast toward his salvation. In other circumstances, he might have enjoyed the ride, yet his injuries and the newly began incessant beeping alert of low oxygen took a toll on his nerves. Still at this point he could not do anything more, unknown what exactly awaits him at the ring, he just waited. His thrusters activated in a slow rhythm keeping him safely away from the drum’s surface.

• “Deceleration in 3, 2, 1…” — and Dan screamed as the push in his abdomen appeared.
• “60 seconds oxygen left” — sounded cold toned commentary from the suit’s computer.

Dan floated in front of an airlock so close he could touch the door of it. Looking around he quickly found the control panel next to the frame and hit open. A large digital board started on 120 and slowly counted down showing the pressurization cycle. The ticks were maddeningly slow, in reality it counted seconds but Dan’s hormonal system did not care and kicked him into adrenaline overdrive again as it did more than once this day.

The airlock had to be depressurized before opening and the mechanics took time to do their job. As Dan was thinking this is too much, he will lose consciousness before he could enter the chamber, he noticed an override below the counters. Fortunately the designers thought of emergencies, and a red, small button flashing underneath allowed exactly that.

An explosive decompression blew Dan away after he pushed the button three times frantically. He held onto a railing with his right for dear life. As the air rushed out, span him and the torque threw him into hull plating with such a force that it bend. If he would have any free moment to stop and wonder on the fact that humans now build ships in the sizes of kilometers, yet there are no exceptional materials discovered, instead the marvel of engineering bent the environment to fit, the structure is not strained while traveling faster than light thanks to the fact that actually the universe travels around the ship.

A few seconds and Dan was fiddling in the chamber with the controls to close the outer doors. The control pad stubbornly refused to comply, dancing in now yellow colors with the word warning flashing in the middle, changing it to different languages every second. The rush of air bending the massive doors mechanics, Dan’s training kicked in and he reached for the manual release.

“Tack, tack, tack” — his oxygen running out in seconds, took his last big breath as he applied two magnetic handles onto the door. Using the chamber side and with some leverage, the door budged and slide into its position to an airtight seal. The control panel showing green and slowly starting to pressurize again, Dan’s last view of the 120 switched to 119 before he blacked out filled him with relieve at last.

He woke up to air rushing into him with power. A tube on his face forced it down his throat rhythmically, until he pushed it away. An instinctive move, forgetting he is in weightlessness leading to him floating onto the chamber wall.

• “It’s okey, it’s okey” — a young face hovered over Dan, bruises under short brown hair.

He wore a dark uniform, with a red cross on both end of his collar and waists. Dan recognized a paramedic serving on the ship, even on a normal day the size of this floating city needs an entire hospital to run and their generally more mature aged guests paying for their own care, they had double the medical personnel on board than anyone else in the fleet.

• “I heard the airlock’s siren while treating a few bruises of the crew nearby, thought someone might need help.”
• “Indeed, thanks.” — Dan still collecting his breath limited his mood to talk.
• “You spacewalked. You must know, what happened to the ship? What happened to us?”
• “I am not sure, I saw only…” — the silhouettes flashed into his mind — “only that the frontal rings are damaged, pieces floating out of them.” — he tried to from words to describe the bodies but he simply could not give sound to them. — “Please, I need to get to gravity.”
• “Of, …, of course” — with one hand hugging Dan, another hand grabbing the railings, the young nurse pushed themselves on the corridors.

Dan slipping in and out of consciousness as his internal bleeding drained him even further, he saw only moments of his surroundings. Engineers scrambling in a room distributing equipment, nurses treating minor injuries in another. It took minutes for them to reach the transition point between the rings and the main body. He blacked out on the seat of the train car in between the rotating parts.

A curious design of how to bring people to rotating parts of a ship from the weightless parts. As the rings needed weightlessness to operate and form the gravitational fields necessary for faster than light travel, while humans required artificial gravity for long term living in space, the main hull and the rings could rotate freely from each other. Space walk would have been inefficient and for most people, undesirable under any circumstances, engineers put a train car between the rotating pieces and led rails over the entire circumference. The car sped up with the rotating piece or slowed down to the non-rotating to allow safe transit of humans. Hundreds of years old tech being still the most efficient solution for mass transit of people even lightyears away from its original applications.

Dan and a dozen other serious injured were spin up to match the main drum’s speed and as gravity pulled down their blood, helping drain the internal bleedings and blunt trauma they suffered, all of them had a new chance to survive.