CHAPTER 36:
Crisis
USSF Office of Scientific Integration
@OSIGenBoatright
(1/2) We can now report that the unknown illness affecting Percheron has been identified as resulting from an overdose of copper from the treatments intended to reduce fungal and bacterial growth in humid, closed-air spaces. It is not contagious, and has not affected the current Marsbase Two mission. The condition is easily treated, but will take time for individuals to fully recover.
(2/2) Since all Percheron and returning Marsbase personnel are affected to varying degrees—including Acting-Captain Dvorak, Marsbase One Director Taketani, and Medical Officer Barbier—USSF today directed Colonel Glenn A. Shepard to assume command of Percheron and all persons aboard. This office will provide updates on crew condition on a weekly basis.
ChirpChat, November 2043
The access panel had also given him the option to vent the entire contents into space, but Glenn really didn’t want to waste any of it. If the source of contamination was obvious, and could be sealed off, then the water could be filtered and at least used for hydroponics and hygiene. On the other hand, once the tank volume dropped below five percent, it was very difficult to extract the remainder as long as they were still in zero gee. Even the slightest engine thrust or roll of the ship would move the water to the walls of the tank and allow it to be pumped out, but not when there was no gravity of any sort. Therefore, he was going to have to waste the final few percent of the tank’s capacity with reduced pressure.
The diagnostics on the access panel tracked pumping efficiency. Once the water level fell effectively to zero, air would be pumped out as much as possible. The low pressure would cause the remaining water to boil, and the resulting water vapor and residual air would also be pumped as much as possible. When the pump readout indicated that no more water or air could be removed from the tank, Glenn turned off the pumps and opened the valve to re-equilibrate pressure. There would be water droplets and humidity, but there should not be any large globules of water to trap and drown an inspector. It was still enclosed space, so he would simply put his helmet on and turn on the oxygen feed.
He looked at the damaged faceplate and neck seal.
Damn, I should have fixed or replaced that on the walk here, he thought to himself. I’ve been so busy dealing with everyone else’s problems, I haven’t looked after myself. Here I am about to walk into a confined space without a working helmet.
Emergency decompression supplies were located in lockers all over the ship, but the highest concentration was at the hub interface for the rotating habitat ring. He could go back there for a full pressure suit, or check the lockers here. Unfortunately, there were only two in this section, and one was empty except for a plastic bottle filled with a clear liquid. He opened it and sniffed.
Alcohol. High proof, too; from Mishra and Grigorescu’s still, no doubt.
The second locker was nearly empty, containing only a pair of magnetic soled boots, another bottle of clear liquid—actually water this time—a packet of ibuprofen, and a tube of sealant goop.
Glenn figured that this was probably a prank, although he wasn’t sure who it was intended for. “Take two ibu, drink a bottle of water, and change your socks”—or boots in some circles—had been a joke among military medical personnel for many years. On the other hand, the water and pain reliever would help the headache he’d started to feel, and he could smear extra goop on the damaged neck ring for his helmet. He’d have to increase the airflow because of leakage, but at least he’d be breathing suit air.
To open the inspection hatch, Glenn had to enter a code and supply a biometric authorization. He worried, briefly, but command codes had apparently been uploaded along with the change-of-command orders. With that out of the way, he opened the hatch and entered the tank. It was more than large enough for him to stand upright, and the magnetic soled boots would be useful. He entered the tank, stood with his feet anchored to the hinged side of the hatch, and looked around.
The powerful flashlight that he had carried earlier as a potential weapon, was now put to its original use for illumination. The interior of the tank had a featureless metallic sheen, except for a few droplets of water that had condensed on the cold walls when pressure was restored. He touched a gloved hand to the interior wall. It was smooth, polished steel or aluminum, typical of water storage both on-Earth and off.
One area on the far wall of the tank did not reflect the same uniform sheen.
He released the magnetic locks on his boots to try to float or swim over to the opposite wall, but that was a mistake. He drifted slowly away from the wall, and swimming motions only caused him to tumble. He reactivated the magnetic soles and waited to either bump into another wall of the tank, or for his shoes to come close enough to grab. The magnetic force was adjustable—after all, he needed to be able to lift his feet to walk—so he turned the field strength to maximum and was suddenly jerked toward a wall only a foot away. Unfortunately, both feet were not together, and he landed in an awkward near-split.
That hurt! He turned the magnetic strength back down and shuffled his feet back together. As he slowly and gingerly shuffled to the area of discoloration, he called up the schematic of Percheron that he’d stored in his heads-up display buffer when he’d first entered the ship. The compartment on the other side of the discolored bulkhead was a holding tank for bactericide, fungicide, and cleaning agents. It had a valve to pull water from the main tank to mix with powdered chemicals. A fill station in the corridor allowed personnel to obtain the prepared liquid for treating specific problem spots, and a network of special pipes could spray the chemicals in several parts of the ship that required frequent disinfection. As Glenn got closer, he could see a small valve in the middle of the dark patch. That should be a one-way valve which took water from the tank for mixing the chemical cleaners. He reached out to touch it, and the valve fell away, revealing corroded metal.
Bingo!
The entire area around the valve was corroding, explaining the discoloration, and suggesting that it stuck open at some point in the past, allowing chemicals to backflow the water tank. The corrosion would have allowed other metals to leach into the water—aluminum, chromium, nickel, and more, which was why the heavy metal toxicity symptoms were not consistent across the crew.
As he was inspecting the area around the leak, he felt and heard vibration as the inspection hatch closed. Before he could get back to the hatch using the particular shuffle of magnetic boots, he heard the locking mechanism engage. A faint hissing noise became louder as his ears popped.
Vacuum purge! The pressure wouldn’t drop just to the point where the water boiled, but would go all the way down to hard vacuum. Someone had locked the hatch and trapped him in vacuum with limited air and a skinsuit helmet that wouldn’t completely seal.
Glenn’s right eardrum began to hurt from dropping pressure. He popped it several times, and kept his mouth open as he struggled with the manual release for the inspection hatch. Suddenly, he heard a screech of stressed metal. The structure of the tank had been compromised by the corrosion, and would collapse inward as pressure decreased.
If the vacuum didn’t get him, he would be crushed by the imploding water tank.
The hatch had been designed to lock in place with water pressure inside and air on the outer—corridor side—or vacuum on the inside and air outside. Either way, the mechanism dilated the outer rim of the hatch like an iris, so that its diameter increased, and wedged into the frame to secure it from being blown inward or outward by differential pressure. It was an ingenious design that Glenn felt absolutely no particular need to admire. At least, not under the current circumstances.
Manual operation of the hatch, the inner emergency release, was intended to operate when pressure on both sides of the hatch was equal. The only way to operate it with the pressure rapidly dropping was to physically pry it open and break the seal. It would cause decompression of the immediate corridor, but emergency bulkheads would protect the rest of the ship.
There was nothing in the tank that he could use to pry the hatch and crack the seal . . . except . . .
He felt a stabbing pain in his right ear, then felt a pop, and nothing. The only sound now came through the cochlear implant in his left ear. The vacuum had ruptured his eardrum. It was now or never.
He needed a prybar. In its absence, he needed to make one, just as he did back in North Carolina when he’d pried the door off of the overturned car. Nik had dubbed that move the “bionic knife hand.” Glenn put the fingers of his left hand together, palm flat, in a blade shape. He gave a mental command that locked the finger and wrist joints together to keep the whole thing rigid, then moved to a position straddling the hatch and turned the magnetic locks on his boots to maximum. He stabbed down with as much bionic force as he could, driving the hand into the edge of the hatch.
One advantage of bionics was the ability to turn off the sensation of pain. There were still many red lights and indicators in his heads-up display and the helmet indicators told him that the fabric of his skinsuit gloves was compromised. It didn’t work on the first try; he needed to repeat the motion at three more places around the hatch rim, watching the seal deform a bit more each time. The synthetic skin of his fingers as well as the artificial muscle underneath was shredding, but still remained operable enough that when his fingers penetrated the rim of the hatch on the fourth try, he unlocked the fingers, curled them, and pulled.
Much like the car door in North Carolina, the hatch came flying off—but so did the lower half of his arm.
Damn, he hadn’t expected that.
He wanted to stop and gasp for breath, after all, a rush of air just came in through the busted hatch. Unfortunately, the vacuum purge cycle was still ongoing and alarms began to sound in the corridor announcing decompression and risk of vacuum exposure. As he pulled himself out of the tank using his right arm, he saw Yvette standing next to the access control panel.
Oh crap, that’s what I forgot. I’d disabled the lock on the isolation room door.
Yvette looked down at her hands in horror.
Glenn suspected she just realized what she’d done. He swung himself toward the panel and reached for it with his left hand.
His missing left hand.
The movement caused him to twist awkwardly. He grabbed a handhold with his right hand, pulled himself over to the console, and canceled the vacuum purge. The rush of air stopped; both ends of the corridor were already sealed with emergency pressure doors, and he felt a muted sense of the pressure in his right ear along with a stabbing pain in his right eye as normal pressure was restored.
Now, there would be hell to pay in more ways than one. He’d identified both the unknown malady and its source, escaped death, and put the offending tank permanently out of commission. He had a plan to treat the crew and get them home safely to Earth. He even had replacement supplies to make sure they could get there.
He’d escaped death, and it only cost him his left forearm and his remaining natural eardrum. For now.
Yvette was floating in the hallway, staring at him in shock. “What have I done? I didn’t know!” she screamed. Then she tried to lunge back toward the control panel.
Glenn deflected her, and she turned on him. Her expression turned to rage, and she beat at him with closed fists. “It’s bad water! We have to get rid of it!”
He quickly moved his right arm to block her, and in the process, his right fist collided with her jaw. With a sob and a sigh, she slumped unconscious.
Glenn may have figured out the disease, the source, the treatment, and the way to save his own life, but he had one more . . . critical . . . crisis to solve. Everyone would be treated and brought back to health as much as possible, but he needed to stabilize Yvette.
He wasn’t sure that he could take another three-and-a-half months of her swinging from lust to rage on a chemical imbalance.
The trip back to the med bay took much longer than usual, with an unconscious Yvette being dragged along by his right hand, and the step-shuffle of magnetic boots. Flying down the corridors in zero gee required at least one free hand, and he was currently short two. Entering the med bay, he found Bialik up and gingerly moving around the room. She looked up in horror as the two entered the treatment room.
“Oh, Colonel Shepard, I’m so sorry! I only saw the change of command after I let Doctor Barbier out of the restraints. She said you attacked her!”
Glenn nodded wearily and maneuvered Yvette over to the open treatment table. Bialik stared at the empty magnetic coupling where his left forearm would have been. “S’okay. You didn’t know, but you need to follow my orders, now. She’s very sick and mentally altered. She needs dialysis, but give her five migs of midazolam before you start.”
“You want me to give her versed? The dialysis will pull that right back out.”
“I know. You’re going to repeat it once the first pass of dialysis is done,” Glenn told the medic. “Repeat every four hours at half the dose while we get her treated. You should prep some haloperidol, too. Just in case.”
“Yes, Doctor . . . um, Captain . . . ah . . . Colonel.”
Glenn looked closely at the medic. She looked tired, her eyes sunken, skin pale—but not yellow, so the dialysis had removed much of the copper from her system. “Help me with these restraints, then go rest on the isolation room cot. Later, if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll need your help getting everyone a shot of dimercaprol. You all need penicillamine, too, and prepare for it to smell much, much worse in here. If I can trust you with giving Doctor Barbier her medications, I need to go get some rest.”
Bialik nodded. She still looked weak, but was so much better than before. “Yes, Colonel.”
When he got back to the shuttle, Glenn checked his comms, but there was still nothing from Earth. He was so tired, and he needed sleep.
Screw them. Who cared what they thought?
He decided to take a nap and check again in a couple hours, but thought better and recorded a message to General Boatright, first. He recapped the events, and ended with a summary of the most recent events and his concern for Yvette. He wanted to end on a more positive note, so he included the fact that Bialik and Takeda had responded well to dialysis.
It was eight hours before he woke, to a whole series of messages from Houston, Tucson, the Moon, and the Third Space Wing headquarters on Heinlein Station. The NASA and MarsX messages were full of second guessing, but the message from his old friend the Moonbase CMO was simply congratulations and wanted him to relay the whole story over a beer. Heinlein confirmed his diagnosis and treatment plan and told him to ignore Houston and Tucson—he was in command, and he’d done what he’d been authorized to do.
The worst was over—but was it? He still needed to dialyze the rest of the personnel, get chelation treatments started, get Philips to inspect the spin hub, and restart the habitat ring. He could probably get Steve Green to help with that.
Then there was the matter of treating the psychoses and delusions so many had experienced. Fortunately, he knew a good psychiatrist. The worst was over, the hard work was about to start . . . and he would be doing it one-handed.
After a delicious meal of freeze-dried chili-mac and tang, Glenn received a message consisting of just a package ident and stowage manifest from Bat. It wasn’t one of the cargo cases he’d offloaded already, so he got into the MILES and went over to the cargo pod. It was a long, narrow cargo case, with a square cross-section; about fifty centimeters on a side and two meters long. It wasn’t particularly heavy, which made Glenn quite curious. He took it back to his shuttle and opened it. Inside was a complete replacement arm with a tag stating that it was a present from Marty and Nik. “In case you need to use the ‘Bionic Knife Hand’ again; it’s not fine-tuned, but better than nothing.”
Below that was a message in Boatright’s hand: “I wouldn’t want you to be unarmed.”