NIMH Planet of the Rats chapter 27

Location: Low NIMH-Beta Orbit
Sol 27

Josh found himself tumbling to and fro in the vacuum of space. Whatever the hell had just happened, he realised the REMO and his pod had somehow become detached. The first thing he wondered was why he wasn’t already dead; putting his hands up to his face, he realised, by the sheerest luck, his visor plate had sealed itself shut before he’d been blown out. Whether it had been his own reflex action, or just lucky chance, he couldn’t tell. Not that it would do him much good now anyway.

Despite the disorienting rotation in which he was moving, he could see his orbit was decaying; at this rate, he’d fall back into the atmosphere and burn up like a human meteorite. In the distance, he could see his pod, now drifting free of the REMO, being pushed out of orbit, moving out into deep space. This time, he'd really bit the dirt.

“Mission Control, mayday, mayday, mayday! I’m ejected and floating free into space! Do you read me? Justin? Nicodemus? Anybody, hello...!” The comms were all dead.

Checking his suit computer, he realised he’d smashed his taccom unit, so his radio and biomonitor were off-line. No doubt his friends on the ground had seen his biosensor readouts drop to zero and figured he’d been killed. Not that they could help him, even if they could still hear him. Then, with a chill of horror, he remembered Martin.

Looking frantically around, he couldn’t see the boy’s vacuum-frozen body anywhere. He shuddered at the thought of what must have happened to him; decompression by ejection into outer space was a horrible way to die and he was fully responsible for that boy’s nasty death. He should have aborted the mission and flown Martin back down rather than pressing on to the REMO. If he ever got out of this alive, how would he ever explain himself to Elizabeth?

Turning back to his own problems, he considered his options. His radio was dead, but otherwise his suit was still pressurised and the life support fully operational, so he had some time. First problem was propulsion. This was his surface suit, and as the name suggested, it was built only for surface EVAs, not space-walking. The crew of the Nimh-One each had two spacesuits; one reasonably light design, like the one he was wearing for surface operations, and another heavier and more robust one for space EVAs. Yes, it was built to withstand the vacuum just fine, but it had no jetpack or attitude-control thrusters for manoeuvring in zero gravity.

Propulsion in spacesuits was usually provided by the MMU, a unit which used compressed nitrogen gas, expelled from a system of 24 tiny nozzle thrusters installed on the jetpack. Obviously, there was no need for such a heavy system in the gravity environment of a planet’s surface, so the surface suits didn’t have one. The only thing he had to work with was his life-support pack.

His pack had three tanks in it – one with nitrogen, the other with oxygen, plus one small emergency backup. The two gasses were mixed together in a reaction chamber, creating plain breathable air, which was then fed into the suit by hoses, with a system of lithium-hydroxide filters used for removing carbon dioxide created by the astronaut’s exhaling. The two primary tanks were interconnected, so he’d have to sacrifice them both to get a good kick; his emergency oxygen tank should keep him alive for maybe half an hour, as long as he didn’t tamper with it. If he couldn’t make it back to the ship by then, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Tapping a series of commands on his wrist-pad, he shut off his supply. Buzzing alarms were heard and a graph on his pad showed his reserve tank had automatically kicked in. At the current rate of consumption, he had about 25 minutes of oxygen left. It should be enough. Then, reaching behind him, he traced a purge-valve NIMH’s engineers had installed on the bottom of the suit pack; this was connected directly to the reaction chamber, used for draining the tanks during maintenance. Taking out his wrench from his toolkit, he got a good grip on the valve and twisted it hard.

The valve outlet burst like a rocket booster; trailing white mist like a comet’s tail underneath him, the force of the escaping air sent Josh flying around like Iron Man.

Still gripping the valve behind his back with his wrench, so he could turn it on and off as he needed to, Josh struggled to correct his attitude. With only one crude thruster to work with, it was anything but easy. The first step was correcting the tumbling motion he was caught into. Firing several short bursts from the valve in rapid succession, he was finally able to stabilize himself. His trajectory still put him in line with the atmosphere, now getting very close, but at least the tumble-dryer ride had stopped.

That’s one point for Iron Man; now it’s time to let Spiderman out of the bag...

Using his own body momentum to turn himself around, until he was aligned with the pod, now but a small dot in the distance, he grasped the valve again, preparing for one final, giant burst. He glanced at his tank readouts; he was down to 45% and 18 minutes of emergency oxygen left. It was time to fish or cut bait. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the valve wide open.

In another instant, Josh was flying in a straight line like a human missile, pushing him out of that deadly re-entry corridor and on a new trajectory back to his ship. His suit tracker showed he was less than 10,000 yards from the pod. He could already see his ship looming into view dead ahead.

The first sign of relief came when he noticed the pod was miraculously still in one piece. Although the explosive decompression had sent it into a tumble-roll like it had done him, her attitude-control thrusters had automatically kicked in, realigning her. She was now drifting dead in space, waiting for someone to come along and do a full-thrust burn to get her back into orbit. The hatch was still open, confirming the cockpit was a vacuum. If it had been damaged and he couldn’t get it closed again, to repressurise, he wouldn’t be able to re-enter the atmosphere and he’d be doomed.

He glanced at his readouts; the primary tank was empty and his reserve was down to just 3 minutes.  Only 100 yards shy of the pod, he stretched out his hands, preparing to grab hold. He knew he only had one chance at this; if he missed, he’d tumble away into deep space, with no way to get back, for all eternity. Suddenly, he slammed down hard on his stomach onto the back of the pod, just behind the open hatch.

For a split-second, it seemed he’d done it; but, at the worst possible moment, his hands couldn’t find something to grab onto. The momentum sent him bouncing off the fuselage and back out into space. In an instant, the pod was out of his reach and he was left drifting back out into the void once again.

Damn it! All right, Josh, you blighter, come on, think, think...

With nothing else left to lose and with his oxygen supply now down to less than one minute, he grabbed his harness from his belt. Drawing his pickaxe, he tied the line to the handle, and, holding it like a spear, threw it like a harpooner spearing a whale. In space, there’s no gravity and no air to cause friction or resistance, so things travel in straight lines, giving them great accuracy in their targets. The pickaxe flew through the pod’s open hatch, where it bounced off the seat, before becoming wedged cross-wise across the hatchway, allowing Josh to reel himself in.

He'd just made it, went his suit alarm went off again. Oxygen: zero. He could already see black spots obscuring his vision, could feel his lungs start to burn from asphyxia. He should be able to hold out for a couple more minutes tops before brain damage started setting in. Hurryingly, he turned to do a brief inspection of the hull; he could see some slight buckling on the metal plating around the sockets where the clamps for the docking collar went. The clamps, all torn clean of the collar when the sleeve had ripped apart, were still locked in their sockets; one, he noticed, was missing completely, indicating it probably hadn’t locked properly on docking, which explained what had happened. However, luckily, there was no breach in the hull or damage to the hatch. It looked like she’d survive another re-entry.

He lowered himself back into the pod. He was expecting to discover Martin’s freeze-dried corpse still inside, but the mouse boy was nowhere to be seen. Poor bugger, thought Josh grimly. He’d probably been blown out into space too, in which case he’d never find his body to return to his mother. Pulling the hatch closed and securing the latch, he hit the emergency repressurisation switch. White mist poured out of the vents, as the life support system rebooted, pumping all remaining compressed air from the dump tanks into the cabin. The computer screen powered up again, displaying status:

SYSTEM STATUS:

REBOOTING ALL SYSTEMS...

>>>PRESSURE STABLE<<<

With atmosphere restored, Josh threw off his helmet, gasping for air. He had done it! He had survived yet another brush with death, which no other astronaut he knew of had accomplished before. He would have gladly cheered and rejoiced, but currently he wasn’t in the mood, thinking of Martin. However, he still had a mission to finish, a stash of 2,000-year-old medicine to deliver.

Turning to the sample container, he was relieved to see the cases Martin had packed were still there. Well, at least this escapade wouldn’t be for naught. Timmy might have a fighting chance after all. Stowing his now useless suit away, he turned to check the damage.

The cabin integrity seemed to be holding and there didn’t seem to be any pressure leaks. As for himself, he had sustained a bad laceration to the head and several nasty bruises to his arms and torso from the violent ejection, as well as from when he’d slammed into the pod during his Spiderman stunt, but otherwise his suit padding had saved him from any broken bones.

Strapping himself in, he did a full diagnostics check on every system. Twice. All was green across the board. He powered up the communication array.

“Justin, this is Josh. You copy?” There was no answer, “Justin, I repeat, this is Josh. I had a bit of an accident; we’ve lost Martin...” But then, he remembered he was now orbiting on the dark side of the planet, while Thorn Valley was on the day side and out of radio range.

Setting his flight computer, he plotted his re-entry corridor. His attitude-control thrusters fired, aligning the nose for re-entry. He was good to go. He primed the main ion engine, preparing for PC2-plus burn. He hit the ignition switch.

Nothing happened.

He tried again; nothing. Switching over to manual ignition, he tried again but still got nothing. Why wasn’t that bloody engine firing? Thinking maybe a fuel line had frozen in the air purge, he ran a diagnostics check. Engine checked out okay, all readouts normal; all except the fuel. The gauges were inoperative of course, but, eliminating every other failure in the checklist, it wasn’t so difficult to narrow it down.

No fuel? But my calculations said there should be enough to make it back on. But then...Oh no!

Because he hadn’t counted for the butt-load of RCS fuel he’d lost when the pod had gone into emergency recovery mode in the separation, to correct her attitude, the fuel cells had been depleted. Now he was left stranded in space, with no way to get back. His screen scrambled, revising the data:

ENGINE DIAGNOSTICS CHECK:

ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL

TOTAL FUEL: 0,0%

Perfect, just my rotten luck... Josh felt like slamming his fist through the console in frustration. But it wouldn’t do him any good. Without fuel, there was no burn and with no burn, no re-entry. Meanwhile, he noticed, he was drifting out of Nimh-Beta’s orbit, heading out into the void. Consulting his flight computer, he charted his new trajectory, wondering just where the hell he would end up. The trajectory line left Nimh-Beta and went into a curve as it circled Nimh-Alpha in a decaying orbit, eventually ending on a point of impact, somewhere in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere, which the computer calculated should occur in just under 39 hours from now.

The gas giant! He was on a collision course with the nebulous Nimh-Alpha, around which Nimh-Beta orbited, with no way to stop. This time, he was in a real fix. At this rate, he figured, he’d enter the gas giant’s atmosphere and burn up, or else be crushed by the massive pressures. And if by some miracle that didn’t happen, eventually he’d run out of air when the pod’s marginal life support was used up, and suffocate. Either way, he was a dead man.

***

36 hours later...

The cockpit was dim and cold. The emergency power had just about drained away. For hours, Josh had restlessly gone through the flight manual, page by page, looking desperately for some procedure to work around the fuel-starved engine. There was nothing. Once the fuel was gone, there were no redundancies or backups, none whatsoever. The only procedure was to fire off a mayday and wait for a recovery mission from the mothership to pick him up. In other words, rubbish and poppycock.

Going through the manual, he had also found the section on the pod’s fuel plant – an experimental system, the first of its kind to be used on manned spacecraft, for producing more fuel for the pod on site. On interstellar missions, reserve fuel was hard to bring along due to weight limitations, so NIMH’s scientists had instead designed autonomous fuel plant units, which were installed on the pods. This compressor absorbed any alien atmosphere, of any composition, and, using electrolysis, collected any compounds that could be used as fuel for the ion drive – hydrogen, argon, ammonia, methane, even water vapour –, as well as extra breathing oxygen. Only problem was, the fuel plant could only function in an atmospheric environment. Out here in the vacuum, it was useless.

For some time, Josh had pondered on the possibility of diverting his remaining oxygen to the fuel plant and getting the engine working again. But what good would that do, if he was left with no air to breathe for the return trip? He’d be dead from asphyxia long before he could make it back. It was hopeless.

Finally giving himself up for lost, he had powered down the pod’s life-support systems and turned off the cabin lights. With no air recyclers and no heater, he figured he’d lose consciousness within another hour or so, sparing him the agony of burning up in Nimh-Alpha’s atmosphere.  The gas giant now loomed big and menacing ahead. A spectacular aurora, caused by radiation interference from Nimh-Alpha, glowed around the pod, the magnetic shielding protecting her doomed pilot, as least for now. Within an hour or so, he’d plunge into the atmosphere and that would be the end of it.

Looking behind him, he cast one last look at Nimh-Beta, which had briefly been his new home, as it disappeared over the horizon of Nimh-Alpha for the last time. Goodbye, Elizabeth...

Josh lay back, numb and freezing, his vision slowly growing foggy from hypoxia. The temperature had dropped to below freezing and carbon dioxide levels were rising to dangerous levels. Not that it mattered anymore. Staring through his windshield, he continued admiring the stunning view of the blood-red layers of gas that made up the gas giant. He’d even taken a few pictures. Not that he expected anyone to ever find them. How he envied astronomers, who’d sell their soul for a view of a gas giant up this close; right now, he’d gladly trade places with them.

The horizon of the nebulous Nimh-Alpha looked infinite, like an endless ocean of dancing orange-red clouds, which were the hydrogen, helium and hydrocarbons that made up the gas giant’s composition. Cyclones and electrostatic storms, raging non-stop for millions of years, could be seen moving across the gaseous surface, any one of them big enough to swallow an entire planet. Josh could vaguely remember Dr Stetson telling them over dinner how a gas giant sometimes collapsed onto itself, the hydrogen and helium causing a fusion reaction, like in rockets, and giving birth to a new star... Hydrogen!

Suddenly, Josh was wide awake, as a last-ditch plan to save his arse came to mind. That gas giant was practically made up of spacecraft fuel; and he had the perfect wonder machine for collecting and processing it right here on board! The only question was how was he supposed to get close enough to that gas inferno to tap into it?

Powering the life support systems back up again, he grabbed some scrap paper and did a series of complex calculations. During his years in the Royal Air Forces, he had flown many stratospheric craft, similar to the old Vomit Comets, practicing atmospheric skipping – an extremely delicate manoeuvre that allowed the spacecraft to skip across the upper atmosphere like a stone on water. If a pilot could align his ship at just the right angle, balancing the effects of gravity and atmospheric resistance with precise timing, he could do an atmospheric skip, until gravity pulled him back down to earth, or he used his own engine thrust to abort.

Although atmospheric skipping on a gas giant was theoretically possible, it had never been intended for manned spacecraft for the obvious reason that it was a damned gamble with death! A few expendable, unmanned probes had attempted it in Jupiter’s atmosphere for aerodynamics testing, and with only about one in three surviving, but that was about it. According to his calculations, assuming he did everything perfectly, Josh figured he could hold a skipping pattern for about nine minutes before atmospheric drag caused his velocity to drop below stall limits and then he’d plunge into the gas giant and be crushed. In other words, nine minutes for the fuel plant to refill the tanks and then get the hell out of there. Could he push it to work that fast?

Doing the math, he realised it wouldn’t be fast enough. The outer layers of the gas giant, where he’d be skipping, were a trace atmosphere, with very little pressure. That would drastically slow down the fuel production process. According to his estimates, he could only collect roughly two-thirds of what he needed to make it back before he ran out of time. Unless, of course, one knew his chemistry.

The gas giant’s atmosphere was three quarters hydrogen; and he had two large tanks of breathing oxygen on the pod. Two hydrogen atoms bound with one oxygen atom produced water; in other words, he could increase his fuel production by one third if he went for water, rather than just plain hydrogen. Although he obviously couldn’t sacrifice his entire oxygen supply, one third of it he could easily afford for making water fuel. Not as good as ammonia or hydrogen, but the ion engine would run on it...theoretically at least.

Grabbing his tools, he turned and unscrewed a service panel aft of the cabin, revealing a number of mesh-lined hoses, which were for channelling the flow of oxygen and fuel from the tank bay to the systems. With some simple rigging, by switching hoses around and turning a few valves, he isolated the full oxygen Tank A, so it was feeding directly into the fuel plant, leaving the half-full Tank B for his own use. Everything was set.    

Only fifteen minutes shy of re-entry, he set his controls. He still had a couple of good thrusts worth of R.C.S. fuel left in the tanks, enough to turn the heat shield at the correct angle. Wearing his spacesuit for added protection in case of a hull breach, his flight computer and instruments all set, he readied himself. He thought of praying, but then decided against it. He wasn’t going to die, he would not fail now!

Suddenly, turbulence hit as the pod licked the upper layers of Nimh-Alpha’s atmosphere. Josh felt gravity return to his body, a lot of it. The g-meter on his control panel soared to a staggering seven Gs as he plunged into the blood-red atmosphere, the pod trailing flames from super-heated gas like a falling meteor. The g-forces pinning him to his seat, Josh reached up and hit a switch. On the outside of the pod, a bay door opened and an L-shaped pipe with a wide funnel on the end sprang out, sucking in masses of the hydrogen atmosphere.

Fighting blackout from the building g-forces, Josh saw the graph on his computer turn green as the fuel plant started producing. According to his chronometer, he had exactly four minutes and 49 seconds left before he had to abort, or else he’d be vaporized. Using his atmospheric jets, he struggled to keep the angle of the scorching heat-shield steady. G-forces had risen to 9Gs; at 12Gs, he’d burn up.

Only seconds before time up, he finally got a green light for the ion engines. His ship was alive again! Just before his airspeed could drop below the stall limit, he fired up his boosters. The escape velocity caused the g-forces to soar again as the pod, now running on water fuel, put all she had into her engines to escape Nimh-Alpha’s gravitation pull, causing Josh to black out.

When he came to, his vision was obscured by red; he was bleeding rivulets from his nose, ears and eyes as a result of burst capillaries caused by the g-forces, but he was still alive. He had done it! The pod was now flying in the clear, orbiting around the day side of Nimh-Alpha, on a free-return trajectory. Looking ahead, Josh spotted Nimh-Beta, a pale blue spot that he could hide with the tip of his thumb, appear again in the distance as he circled around the gas giant. He was going back to Elizabeth!

“Thank you, God!” he cried out loud, “And thank you, NIMH, for your miracle-working fuel plant!”

Suddenly, he realised his throbbing headache was due to the master alarm blaring in his ears, over a nerve-wracking hissing sound in the background. Something was wrong. Glancing at his screen, he saw the cabin pressure display was up, showing a red warning of rapidly decreasing pressure. There was a breach in the hull! The atmospheric-skipping stunt he’d just pulled had obviously put too much strain on the pod and caused a leak somewhere.

Shocked back into full alertness, Josh feverishly started patting down the padded walls of the cabin, trying to pinpoint the leak. Although luckily only a slow leak, not big enough to cause another explosive decompression, Josh knew he had to find and plug it fast, or else he wouldn’t have enough oxygen left to make it back.

Popping open a small locker on the sideboard, he took out the pod’s breach-kit – a vacuum-proof glue gun and some suction-cup-shaped patches for plugging small holes. Then came the hard part of finding that damn leak.

Bloody hell, where are you...?

He searched every nook and cranny around the cabin. Nothing. He could clearly hear it bleeding out air, but it was too small to see with the naked eye. Looking out the windows, he couldn’t see any streaks of white mist that might pinpoint its location. What he needed was something coloured to show where the air was escaping from.  Preferably something red...

Digging into the kits he’d taken off the REMO, he took out a bottle of iodine and squeezed its contents out. He watched as the bubbles of amber-coloured liquid momentarily floated around in the zero gravity before slowly moving towards a spot close to the floor, where a seam joined two sections of the hull together. The bubbles of iodine disappeared through a thin crack in the seam, appearing out into space where they split into millions of frozen particles, becoming the new Iodine Constellation.

Gotcha, you little bastard!

Josh pressed his glue-gun against the crack and coated it in glue, which solidified almost instantly like cement. Then, he slapped a patch on the white goo, which stuck fast, sealing the leak. The pressure readouts returned to normal and the alarm stopped blaring. He now had fuel, working engines, and environment, enough to get him back. Assuming, of course, nothing else went wrong.

***

When the decompression happened, Martin had ventured deeper inside the REMO’s aft segments to explore, leaving Josh to work on his repairs. Oh, well, even if he was going to get spanked or grounded by his mother for coming up here against her wishes, nothing could beat the sheer fun of this ride! The bug had taken hold the moment he’d heard Josh’s amazing stories of space travel and couldn’t resist the opportunity of seeing it for himself. Oh, Teresa, Timmy and Cynthia would be green with envy!

He was having fun whirling around in the zero gravity and bouncing off the padded walls of the module like a pinball mouse, when suddenly, without warning, he heard a loud whooshing sound. The air became one horrific, powerful indoor tornado, which sucked him along through all the open segments, like a golf ball being sucked down a vacuum cleaner hose. Up ahead, he caught a split-second glimpse of Josh being sucked out the hatch, which, he realised, was now open to the void.

Logically, he would have also followed Josh out into space, to his death; but, a miracle caused the hatch to suddenly break loose from its anchoring pin and the suction of the decompression slammed it shut. Safety seals automatically locked, sealing it tight and containing the decompression. Martin slammed face-first onto the closed hatchway with such force, he was knocked senseless.

The first thing he knew when he woke up hours later was nausea and pain; his head felt like it’d taken another of Moe’s beatings. He could see his own battered reflection on what looked like a dark red bubble moving in front of his face – what he soon realised was actually a bubble of his own blood floating in the zero gravity. Nursing his head, he felt a long gash, still oozing out blood, across his forehead. His lip and nose were also bleeding and bruised, and there was a painful swelling from a minor fracture in his left wrist, courtesy from when he’d hit the bulkhead, but otherwise he was all right.

Head still spinning from concussion, he struggled to recall what had happened. Whatever had caused that powerful wind to kick up, Josh sure hadn’t mentioned anything about it... Josh! Looking around horrified, he realised he was all alone. Josh had disappeared, sucked out, as Martin recalled with terror.

Looking out the small porthole in the sealed hatch, he saw the pod was gone, torn free it seemed, judging by the protruding strips of twisted metal and torn insulation that had once formed the walls of the sleeve.  All he could see now was a gaping hole beyond with a view of the world far below. He was trapped.

“Help! Let me out of here!” he shouted, frantically banging his little fists on the hatch until they starting bruising. “Josh! Where are you? Help me!” No one answered him. Martin knew fear; now what was he going to do?

Trying to keep his head together and think, he saw the porthole was made of glass. If he could just find something heavy to smash it with, he could get out of this flying metal barrel. Of course, that would be the last thing any sane person would want to do, because not only would he lose the last of the REMO’s already rarefied air that was keeping him alive, but also he’d stand no chance getting back down without a ship.

Tearing open several cases, he found a heavy wrench with a jagged end, which just might do the job. Pulling it free from its straps, amazed by how easy it was to carry in this place (there was no gravity), he swung it hard against the glass porthole. It hardly made a mark.

Growing desperate and frustrated, Martin continued helplessly hitting the glass with the wrench, but to no avail. The glass remained solid as a diamond. And why shouldn’t it? NIMH had put millions in perfecting those glass alloys so they could withstand even micrometeorite strikes. Exhausted, Martin threw the wrench away. At that moment, the lights went out as the REMO entered the dark side of Nimh-Beta, rendering its few working solar panels useless. Lost all alone in the dark, poor Martin did the only thing he had left to do: he lost his head.

“Help me! Oh, mother, help me!”

Semi-crazed and sobbing in anguish, he darted to and fro, punching and kicking the walls like a trapped animal seeking an escape route. The truth was so terrible he didn’t even want to think about it. He was stranded up here, all alone, with the prospect of being left to slowly die of hunger and the cold, like someone buried alive in his own tomb.

Finally, too exhausted to keep on screaming, an utterly miserable Martin blindly crawled under a loose tarp he’d found strapped to a wall, sobbing his heart out. Why had he been so stupid? Why had he come up here when his mother and Josh had told him not to? If he ever got out of this, he thought to himself, he’d never be a bad boy again. Unfortunately, nor his tears, nor his bravado would save him now. Around him, the module, lacking proper life support, was slowly turning freezing cold, the air becoming stuffier and stuffier, as carbon dioxide levels began to rise...

***

Thousands of miles away, Josh was on his free-return trajectory, making a run for home. After surviving the ejection into space, fuel starvation, the gas giant and the air leak, his space sojourn was finally coming to an end. He'd been in space for nearly 70 hours, having set an astounding record of over 1 million miles of straight flight in his tiny, one-man spacecraft. His pod, although worked way beyond its design specifications, had fared marvellously. All of the problems this mission had thrown his way, he’d overcome them. But unfortunately, space never cooperates and is always on the lookout for some way to kill you.

Josh was dozing off, feeling bored to death. He’d checked and double-checked all the systems one by one and found they were all in good shape; taking a fuel reading, he’d calculated the fuel plant had given him enough juice to make it back to Nimh-Beta orbit and eventual re-entry, provided he made no more detours on the way. Within a couple of hours, he should be back within radio range, so he could talk to his friends again. Suddenly, a new warning light appeared on his control panel.

High CO2 level warning? You got to be kidding me...

Thinking maybe he’d unthinkingly drained the pod’s oxygen tanks for the fuel plant, he checked the readouts on the gauges; no, there was still plenty of O2 and N2 left in reserve. So if it wasn’t the lack of oxygen, then something was wrong with the air recycler – the CO2 scrubbers!

On spacecraft, there is no vegetation or photosynthetic microorganisms to keep the nutrient cycles going, so artificial means are needed to clean the carbon dioxide out of the air. This was usually accomplished with oxygenators, which separate the oxygen using dry electrolysis and give it back; but these machines are too bulky and require too much electrical power to be installed on small manned pods. So instead, the Nimh-One’s Scouts used old-fashioned lithium hydroxide filters, which chemically filtered out the carbon dioxide. Only problem was, they were expendable and needed to be regularly replaced.

When Josh had left the mothership, he’d had clean, brand-new filters. The filters had done their job well, but were now on their last legs, nearing the end of their 72-hour lifespan. He’d been in space for too long and saturated the filters so they were useless. Studying the readouts, he saw the CO2 level was already at 2% and rising; at 3% he would be unable to think clearly or do complex tasks; at 5% it would be hearts and flowers.

Unwilling to give up now, Josh struggled for a solution. He needed to replace those filters and unfortunately, he had no spares onboard. He had some lithium hydroxide in Lt Stacy’s chemo kit, along with plenty of sponges, sample bottles and duct-tape, with which he could improvise some crude filters, but knew better than to waste time trying. He wasn’t a qualified chemist and if he made any mistakes, he could turn his pod into a gas chamber. So that left him with only one alternative: his broken-down, out-of-oxygen spacesuit.

Although the suit’s life-support pack was empty, it still had working CO2 filters; and the pod still had enough O2 left in its tanks. The suit could be hooked up to the pod's air supply, but that was only for running it straight off the pod's filters, so it was no good. Likewise, he couldn't simply cannibalise the suit's filters for spares; they were small and totally incompatible with the pod’s own system. Instead, he needed to find a way to feed the oxygen directly into his suit’s recycling system, which he’d now have to wear for the rest of the ride home, much to his discomfort, but at least he’d have breathable air.

Going through Strauss’s toolbox, he found some spare air hoses and adaptor connection valves. Turning to the same valve panel he’d tampered with earlier to divert the oxygen to the fuel plant, he got to work. Pulling out the main oxygen and nitrogen hoses, he spliced them together with duct-tape and attached them to his suit’s positive-feed air hose with an adaptor valve. Then, he took the negative-feed hose from the suit and attached it to the ‘sharing’ valve on the bulkhead – an auxiliary system for feeding the suit directly off the pod’s life support in flight, which should keep the air pressure from building up inside the suit. Only now, the roles had been reversed, so that the suit was managing the pod’s entire air system instead.

Making sure all the valves and hoses were secure, he shut his visor plate and pressurised his suit. The environment readouts on his biomonitor showed the suit, now supplied from the pod’s tanks, recycling the stale air inside it, until the CO2 levels dropped to normal. Josh smiled; his ingenuity had saved his hide yet again.

With only four hours left to re-entry, he got on his radio again. He should be back within radio range by now to contact Thorn Valley. The Rats would be wondering what had happened to him and he needed to bring them up to speed on his situation.

“Thorn Valley, this is Josh. Do you copy?” There was only static. He enhanced the frequency, “I repeat, this is Josh. Does anyone copy...?” Suddenly, he heard something on the other end; but it wasn’t the voices of his friends. To Josh, it sounded very much like a child's voice crying and wailing.

“...mother...help me...help...!”

Josh felt his heart jump into his mouth from shock as he recognised the voice of Martin. But how could that be? How could that boy have survived short of a miracle? But that was definitely his voice calling for help! Did this mean he was still alive onboard the REMO?

“Oh, my God...”

Quickly tuning in to the frequency of the makeshift radio he’d installed on the REMO, he called back across the line, “Martin? Martin, it’s me, Josh! Can you hear me, lad?” For a few seconds there was only silence and Josh was beginning to think maybe Martin couldn’t hear him. But then, he heard the boy’s panicked voice calling him.

“Josh? Josh, I’m in here! Help!”

***

Back at Thorn Valley, the Rats were just about to pull out. After abruptly losing contact with Josh and Martin, not knowing what had happened up there or what to do to help them, on Nicodemus’ insistence, they’d remained at their posts for the past two days, trying in vain to re-establish contact. Justin had even tried the auto-return switch Josh had pointed out to him, but the computer told him the pod was off-line. Eventually, they’d given up hope.

Obviously some sort of unforeseen accident beyond Josh’s control had occurred up there and both he and the Brisby boy had been lost; and Nicodemus’s Plan was lost with them. Even if they could find the last missing piece of the Stone, they’d still be back at square one without Josh. The Plan was history. Justin felt so sorry for Elizabeth; she’d be terribly distraught when she heard her friend and her eldest son were both dead, and that her youngest son would probably be joining them too without medicine.

Suddenly, the ancient comms station, silent for hours, was beeping again with an incoming transmission. Then they heard the voice of a supposedly dead man.

“...Nicodemus? Justin, this is Josh! I’m back! Do you copy?”

In another instant, the Rats were back at their posts, overwhelmed with joy and relief. Even Brutus, who didn’t trust Josh as far as he could throw him, couldn’t help but smile. Nicodemus gestured at everyone to keep quiet, so Justin could listen.

“Josh, this is Justin. We’re here! We can hear you! What happened up there? Where have you been?”

“There was a failure with the goddamn docking collar. I was ejected out into space... I’ll explain later. Listen, Martin is trapped on the REMO and I can’t get him out. I need everybody standing by for emergency instructions, while I work out our rescue options here...”

The Rats looked at each other solemnly; although they had seen more than enough proof to know that Josh could pull some unexpected miracles out of his hat, they still couldn’t see how any rescue for Martin Brisby could be possible.

***

The pod re-entered Nimh-Beta orbit, preparing to do one final slingshot around the planet, using the gravity for assist, before it made the final descent for re-entry. Doing some careful manoeuvring, Josh adjusted course to do a close flyby of the REMO. He had no idea how he was going to get Martin out of the drifting module when he got there; but he had to give that kid some hope to hold onto.  

Using his piloting radar, Josh locked onto the REMO’s navigational beacon like he’d done on his previous approach and followed his plotted trajectory line to the target. Martin was still on the line, overjoyed to hear him, but no less frightened.

“Josh? Please, you’ve got to help me! It’s so cold in here and I’m scared...!”

“Hush, laddie, I hear you. I’m going to get you out. But I need you to stay calm and listen. All right?” Keeping the Rats down on the ground on one frequency and the REMO on the other, and putting them on VOX, so he could have a simultaneous two-way communication with both parties, he focused on Martin.

“First and foremost, whatever you do, don’t touch the radio,” he told Martin. As long as they could talk, they had the situation under control, “Now, I need you to look around you. Is there any damage to the module? Can you hear any hissing-like noises?”

“No, I don’t think so,” replied Martin, confirming there were no leaks, but Josh could tell something was very wrong about his tone of voice, almost as if he was disorientated for some reason. And he soon found out why. “But there’s something wrong with the air. It’s making me feel dizzy...”

Dizziness...Carbon dioxide poisoning, thought Josh with a frown. The boy had been trapped inside the REMO too long and the module, although airtight, had no air recycling unit. They had to get him out of there soon or else he’d suffocate to death in that can. Time was running out.

He closed in on the REMO. He was relieved to see the fuselage was indeed intact, with no signs of pressure leaks. But, as he’d feared, the sleeve was ruined; the collar had split open in the decompression, tearing the whole sleeve apart and making another docking impossible. Either way, he didn’t have enough fuel to attempt a docking even if he could, or else he wouldn’t make it back to the surface.  And to make matters worse, he noticed the module’s orbit was decaying; very soon, gravity would cause it to re-enter the atmosphere uncontrolled and burn up with Martin still in it. They had a big problem here.

Josh plied his brains furiously for a solution. No viable rescue plan seemed to come to mind; he couldn’t dock with the damaged REMO and his suit was out of oxygen so he couldn’t go EVA either. Anyway, he couldn’t open that hatch without killing Martin; and there were no bail-out space suits onboard the REMO either. That left them with only one choice.

“All right, everybody, listen up, we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” he said, “We’re going to try and bring the REMO in to land!” He could hear his friends on the ground muttering uncertainly to one another.

“But won’t that be dangerous?” asked Justin, realising the sheer insanity of Martin hitching a ride back to the ground in a 2,000-year-old derelict resupply module, which wasn’t even rated for carrying passengers. All manned landers were built for smooth, controlled landings, carried out by a pilot; the REMO was entirely automated, with only a set of parachutes and a rudimentary bouncing-balloon system for a reasonably soft landing, which was more like being in a tumble-dryer full of stones. Any delicate cargo had to be strapped down and well padded to survive impact. A passenger not strapped down tight, hitting the earth at 150 miles an hour would be suicide.

“It’s our only option,” said Josh, “We’ll just have to chance it.” He switched back to Martin’s frequency.

“Martin, I want you to listen to me carefully now,” he said, “I have some instructions for you...”

***

Onboard the REMO, despite the freezing temperatures and rapidly worsening air, the situation was quite tense. After being left to his misery for what seemed like an eternity, Martin had suddenly woken up to the sound of Josh’s voice.

Freezing, but at least, he noticed, the lights were back on, he had realised it was coming from that radio thingy Josh had spliced into the module’s comms system earlier. His hopes of being saved from this death-trap renewed, he discarded the tarp he’d been using as a blanket and floated up to the radio. Sure enough, it was Josh, who’d somehow survived being sucked out and had made his way back to rescue him!

“I have some instructions for you,” he told Martin, “The radio you’re using to talk to me needs to be switched over to data transmissions, so that we can execute the landing sequence to bring you down. Now, once that happens, we’ll lose contact, and you’ll be on your own...” Martin was terrified at the prospect of being left on his own again.

“No, please, Josh, no!” he cried, “Please don’t leave me alone!”

“You’ve always said how you aren’t afraid of anything,” retorted Josh, a little harsher than he’d like to, but he needed to give Martin some encouragement, “Well, now’s the time to prove it!” This seemed to give Martin some courage. He’d rather be left up here than be made to look a whimpering mama’s boy in front of Josh.

“On the edge of the radio, there is a little switch,” Josh continued, “Can you see it?” Martin traced the switch of the side of the duct-taped-together package of circuit-boards and wires, which was the radio, “When I tell you, I need you to turn it over as far as it will go. Just that. Once that’s done, you will have exactly five minutes to strap yourself against a wall, and I mean real, real tight. You have anything you can use for rope?”  

Martin looked around and spotted a spool of nylon tether on a bulkhead. And, it just so happened, he was famous among his family for tying good knots, mostly during Cow-Rats and Indian-Mice games, when he’d tie up his siblings and then tickle-torture them. After going over the procedure several times with Josh, making sure they hadn’t missed a step, they were set.

“We’ll be waiting to greet you on the ground,” called Josh, “Au ravoir, Martin, and good luck!” Then his voice was gone and Martin was left all alone again, his survival now entirely in his own paws.

Struggling to stay calm and focus, he reached up and turned the switch as Josh had instructed; the radio made a beeping sound and the static stopped, nothing spectacular. Had it worked? He had no way of knowing. Following Josh’s instructions, he then turned and grabbed the tether. Finding a nice flat, soft surface against a large package of Hab canvas, he wrapped the tether around it and himself, strapping himself in. It felt awkward tying himself up like this, but he managed. Just as he finished tying the last knot, the ride began...

***

From his pod, Josh called to Justin down on the ground, “All right, execute re-entry program!” On the Nimh-One’s bridge, Justin hit a key on the keyboard as instructed; the ancient computers scrambled, bringing up a schematic of the REMO, with the words:

RE-ENTRY SEQUENCE INITIATED:

DIAGNOSTICS CHECK COMPLETE
EXECUTING FLIGHT PLAN...

***

From orbit, Josh watched as the REMO jettisoned its now useless solar panels and antenna array; then the module separated into its twelve individual segments, which fanned out, preparing to plunge into the atmosphere. Adjusting his own course, Josh followed the segments, preparing for re-entry. Flames from super-heated air caused by the friction licked the pod and modules as they fell from the sky like a meteor shower, travelling at hundreds of miles an hour.

***

The Rats had left the Temple and had gathered outside, waiting to see if Josh and Martin would make it to the ground in one piece. Between a fuel-starved pod, worked way beyond its design limits, and a 2,000-year-old resupply module, the odds didn't look good, to say the least.

“There they are! I see them!” called Mr Ages, as they spotted the segments of the REMO, now descending by parachute, looking like a group of flying mushrooms in the sky. Ten feet above the ground, their bouncing-balloons automatically deployed all around the hull, like a bunch of grapes, allowing the segments to hit the ground in a cushioned fall, bouncing them all around the Valley. Behind them, they saw Josh’s pod, her atmospheric jets roaring, as he cruised in for landing.

The pod’s landing gear deployed and her pilot set her down in a smooth, routine landing. Then, he powered down. After 76 hours and 23 minutes, and having covered over 1.2 million miles of open space, Josh had returned safely. The Rats all cheered as Josh climbed out, staggering with muscle atrophy after having spent three days in zero gravity, beaming at them. He looked none the worse for wear, with his battered face and bloodshot eyes, not to mention his state of unwash, but still very much alive.

“It’s so good to see you, Josh,” said Justin, slapping him on the shoulder, “We thought we’d lost you for sure!”

“You’ve sure building a reputation of escaping death at every turn, you resilient human, you!” said Brutus gruffly, but nonetheless impressed.

“You chaps sure are a sight for sore eyes,” muttered Josh, forcing a smile, barely able to stand from exhaustion, “Where’s Martin?”

They didn’t take long to locate the REMO’s first segment where Martin was, which had come to rest only a few hundred yards away from the Temple of the Great Owl. Its balloons had deflated by now and the module just lay there tangled in its own parachute, waiting for a non-existent ground crew to come along collect its cargo of supplies.

Working frantically, they pried the hatch open. The air inside was dank and stale, barely breathable. And, strapped to the bulkhead upside-down (the module had rolled over during its tumble) was Martin. The boy looked badly battered and bruised, his fur still icy from the subzero temperatures of outer space, but still breathing. As Josh had expected, he’d passed out from the great velocity, but his binds had protected him from any serious injury.

“Martin? Martin, wake up, lad!” called Josh, gently slapping the boy’s cheeks, finally bringing him back to consciousness. Martin’s bloodshot eyes fluttered open, staring back at them, confused.

“Josh...? Justin...? Why are you all upside down?” he groaned, his mind a total blank from the blackout. Josh raised an eyebrow at his companions and they all burst out laughing. Then Martin finally realised he was the one strapped upside-down, and now that he was back in proper gravity, he found he couldn’t untie himself. The others chuckled in amusement at his futile efforts to wriggle free of his binds, making him feel so embarrassed.

“Hey, get me down from here!” he shouted, his usual bravado and short-temperedness restored, “And it’s not funny!” Josh only continued laughing; against all unimaginable odds, they’d both made it back alive, with a stash of medicine for Timmy and a cargo of 21st century, state-of-the-art equipment. Their mission was a success.

Author’s note: My apologies for the delay, but this chapter was real hard to write. I hope I didn’t go too much over the top with the space trip, but I wanted to have Josh on an escapade strictly within his own element. Until next time then. Enjoy and please review!