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16
Laying Cable
Lev leaned out of the hatch, the instinctual urge of an earthborn made him look both ways as he drifted over the thresh hold. The searing purple of the void beyond made his eyes itch. He wanted to look away, but it was everywhere. He hooked his toes into loops around the edge of the hatch and stood on the hull of the ship. The side of the Stalingrad became down, and he looked to his left, toward the bow of the ship, down the length of the umbilical between their tugboat and the colony station, the spinning cylinder at the other end. From this distance, it looked no bigger than his fist. The brilliant white paint standing out against the throbbing purple of the wrong dimension void around them.
A huff filled his ears as Toya grunted. Heaving part of the cable out of the open airlock after him as she too struggled out through the opening onto the side of the ship plunging through an alternate dimension or reality. “Thanks for the help,” she snapped at him. A twitch of guilt stirred his guts as he looked out into the endless purple. He had been too preoccupied with the otherness to even consider that he should have been helping her.
Finding a different set of loops to hook her space boots into, Toya held up her gloved hand in front of her helmet’s visor as if to block the sun. “Oh, I don’t like that. It makes my eyes hurt. Is it all like this? Why is it so…”
“Purple?” Lev ventured to her back across the radio.
“Yeah. It sucks. I used to like purple. Not any more.”
“You hadn’t seen this before?” he asked.
“No, I was busy working like I was supposed to be, not playing the white knight for the cute engineering assistant who lost her voice. I hate it, it makes my teeth itch. Let’s get this over with.”
“Right. Time Crunch.” Lev said sharply to the tiny mic pressing against the corner of his mouth, forgetting he was supposed to be doing something. He turned around, unhooking his lanyard from inside the hatch, and snapping the clip to D ring outside the hatch as Toya hand over fist pulled more of the spooled cable out of the airlock.
Re-secured, he reached over to help, yanking on the cable too. Soon they had more than a dozen meters drifting in the vacuum with them. Grabbing hold of the end with one hand, He took a tool set in the other hand, and reactivating the electromagnets in his boots, told Toya “I’m gunna yank it over to the hatch where we’re going to jack it into the system, you just keep feeding me the cable as I go.”
“Yep.” she replied through gritted teeth. “Anything to be able to stare into this hatch and not have to look at that damn purple. I’d rather look at nothing but this boring old airlock.” Lev started walking. Click, chunk, thump, with every stride.
With Toya feeding him the cable, he quickly made it the forty-three meters from the hatch to the panel. “Now the juggling starts.” He radioed back to her as he looked at the cable in his left hand, the toolkit in his right hand and the sealed hatch between his feet.
“You made it? I can stop feeding you cable?” came her voice inside his helmet.
“Yeah, I’m good, you can take a break.”
“Good, This purple is giving me a headache, I’m going to hide back inside the airlock so I don’t have to look at it.”
“That bad?” Lev asked as he pinched the end of the cable between his thighs and used his now free hand to pull open the tool kit.
“Worse.” she replied, he could hear the edge in her voice as he yanked the electric screw gun out of the toolkit and snapped the plastic case shut again.
Lev didn’t answer as he bent sharply at the waist, reaching with the screw gun in his left hand to loosen the panel. He didn’t pull any of the hardware all the way out, leaving them with a few threads still hanging on. Once they were all loose, he clipped the screw gun to his spacesuit’s belt. Then, widening his stance so he could reach even lower. One at a time, Lev loosened the screws the rest of the way with his thick gloved fingers, going slowly to make sure none slipped from his grip and drifted off. One by one, putting them in the empty thigh pocket of the suit.
“You can tell this panel wasn’t designed to be accessed in flight. No hinges, no hardware retainers, or even the most coveted, spring loaded latches.” He radioed to Toya, his voice curling with the smile on his face.
“I’m not thinking about the outside right now, my stomach is still swimming and I would rather think about something else, like rocks or mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms?” Lev asked, as he pulled the now loose panel into his armpit, glancing between the exposed guts inside and the many tools and parts he now held at the same time.
“Yes, mushrooms. Fungi that grow in dark, moist, controlled environments. The furthest possible thing that could be from this awful purple.”
“I think I need your help out here, holding all these parts and tools. I got it open, but I don’t have enough hands to hold everything and work the tools to strip the cable ends and install them.”
“Chuck ‘em,” Toya replied.
“I’m not coming out there to help you, and once the cable is installed, it’s not like you can just put the panel back on over it. So chuck it, we don’t need it anymore.”
Lev didn’t answer as he weighed her logic against the hardware in his hands. He would have shrugged if the spacesuit let him, and with a gentle swing of his arm, he sent the panel spinning like a Frisbie off into the purple beyond. Freeing up his left hand again. Lev worked the toolkit open and yanked out the wire strippers, setting to work on the end of the cable. He radioed to Toya again. “How long until the team from the colony cylinder gets here? Aren’t they supposed to have the shielding for this cable?”
“Shut up about the stupid cable. I don’t want to think about space or the alternate dimension and that gawd awful purple…”
“Alright, I’ll keep stripping, and let you know when I need you to feed me more of the cable.” She didn’t answer as his hands worked the tools. Stripping the insulation off the cable was the easy part. Getting the ends attached to the relay terminals inside the open panel was where he struggled.
Half an hour later, the headset in his helmet chirped, a sharp little tone telling him of a new wireless connection. He looked up sharply, quickly spotting the stark white pressure suits of two more spacewalkers, who had come all the way down the umbilical from the space station to him, still standing on the skin of the Stalingrad.
“You come here often?” A new voice teased him.
“I own the place,” Lev retorted with mock indignity.
“You need some help around here?”
“Unfortunately, we all do it seems. Did you bring the stuff?”
“We got the stuff, are you doing the thing?” the voice replied as the two others locked their magnetic boots onto the side of the hull next to Lev.
“I’m glad you’re all able to joke about this, but can we please just get it over with so I can shut this airlock and not have to look at the purple anymore? This migraine might be terminal.” Toya’s voice cut in. Lev reflexively looked over his shoulder back toward the airlock.
“Come on Toya, the others are here, and I’m basically done with the mounting. It’s time to get this moving again. Come out and help me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, not on your cranking life.”
“This isn’t a negotiable thing, Toya.” He paused as he waved one hand at the newcomers and struggled to get the tools put away.
She answered before he could speak again. “I’ve got a migraine now, there’s something off about this purple, it’s making me nauseous.”
The hardness in Lev’s voice filled her helmet. “It doesn’t matter how you feel, headache, tummy ache, whatever. We have to do this, and this has to work, or else everyone is going to have a really bad time. This isn’t negotiable, you don’t get to take a day off work because you don’t feel one hundred percent.”
“It would be bad if I threw up in the helmet.”
“It’ll be worse if we don’t get this done.” he waved to the other two, who introduced themselves.
“I’m Steven Kirkland.” waved the larger of the pair, a bundle of tubes tucked under one arm.
“We just call him Kirk, since everyone argues over how to spell his name.” Said the other, much more petite sized spacesuit, with a sickly sweet, almost sharp feminine voice.
“And she’s known as Spring.” Steven Kirkland indicated with a wave of his hand at his companion, who bore a large and bulging duffle bag.
“See! They can help you, you don’t need me.”
Using his magnetic boots Lev turned around fully to face the airlock as his shout echoed inside his helmet. “Toya, this isn’t negotiable. Get out here now, we need your hands. What would Chief Konstantin say? Or Captain Mironova?”
Toya emerged from the airlock, clipping her lanyards from D ring to D ring as she made her way over to the panel where the other three waited. They all exchanged glances, their faces distorted by their full body compression suits they had on as the base layer of the pressure suits. Despite the squeeze smooshing her features together, Toya was still in obvious discomfort. No sooner had she made eye contact with the other three, she turned back to Lev. “You can go crank yourself.” With that, she unhooked both her lanyards and held on only by her mag boots, walked back toward the airlock again, hand still shielding her eyes from the pervasive, otherly purple.
Kirk’s shoulders wiggled as he tried to shrug inside his spacesuit. “FIDO”
Lev watched Toya leave, sneering in disgust. “Fido?”
“Fuck it, drive on.” Explained Kirk.
“Yeah! We got stuff to do, we can deal with her later!” Spring’s shrill voice rang inside all four of their helmets as Lev turned back around, stooping to get ahold of his now attached cable.
“That the sheathing? We can just slide that on over the cable. But what does she have?”
“These” exclaimed spring, partially opening the duffle bag and extracting a beer can sized object, “are stand offs, we three D printed. That’s how we’re going to hold the cable in place along the whole length of the umbilical.”
Lev pulled the electric screw gun off his belt, giving it the customary rev. “Let’s get to it, we got what, three hundred meters of cable to lay?”
“three times” Kirk corrected.
“Going to tire a girl out doing this much work,” Spring chuckled. Their jovial mood was soured by the sound of Toya retching insider her helmet as she tried to seal the airlock’s outer hatch.
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