— 34 Hours Remain —
The physics lab was quiet. The girls had moved everything out of the way, and now all that was left to do was wait and hope the air held out. Two had to breathe heavily to get full breaths as she lay on the mattress that would have to do as a landing cushion. She missed Five. She missed the casual banter. She missed just having her around. Three was far too serious and Seven was difficult to hold more than a one-sided conversation with since her incident.
Two lay in the room by herself, contemplating where everything had gone wrong. What could they have possibly done better? She hated that the answer seemed to be nothing. The odds were stacked against them from the beginning, and they probably never really stood a chance. They just weren’t good enough. They were literally the final gasp of a dying race; the pinnacle of human invention, and they weren’t enough.
The door to the lab opened and Three walked through, panting as she wheeled in a gas canister behind herself. Two looked up and acknowledged her, but didn’t say anything. That would just use up the air faster. Seven followed in after her, also wheeling in tanks. It seemed she’d gotten enough of her sense back to be able to follow simple instructions at least. Seven sat down on her bed afterward, but Three immediately left again. She returned minutes later, carrying in more cannisters of various sizes.
When Three left once more only to return with a heavy-looking metal box in her arms, turned around and closed the door, Two finally had to ask in a hoarse tone of voice “What are you doing?”
Three walked to the hatch in the floor and threw open the path to the waste treatment room “I had a stupid idea.” was all she said before she wheeled a cannister over to the hole in the floor and turned the knob on it, letting gas slowly seep into the air “The unused EVA cannisters will last us a little while. We keep it trapped in this room to control it better. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it will sink into the treatment plant.”
“Will it be enough?” Two asked, little optimism left in her voice.
Three paused “No… there must be a leak somewhere. We’re losing air faster than I calculated. We’re still doomed.” she pulled another cannister over to crack it open “But this buys us more time. And if we keep it in this room, it might be isolated from the leak.”
The three girls came to attention at once as there was a muffled buckling noise that came from the engineering bay. It had been happening irregularly for the past day. Without Five, they had no idea if it was something to be worried about, so they just had to hope the room would hold together until the landing.
“Just equipment shifting after it spun around.” Three concluded, getting back to work releasing the last clean atmosphere they had into the room.
“Well I hope you have a plan to make oxygen out of nowhere.” Two muttered, laying back on her mattress.
“Not just oxygen. Breathable air is mostly nitrogen.” Three wiped her brow and sat down next to the hatch “And that’s where the stupid comes in.” she pointed to the larger tanks they had wheeled in before “Nitrogen.”
“How does that help us without oxygen.” Two asked, starting to feel herself able to think more clearly as the clean air permeated the room.
“What’s below this room, Two?” Three asked, clearly starting to feel the pressure of breathing heavily come off of her too.
“The waste treatment plant.” Two wasn’t sure where she was going with this “And apparently a growing cloud of poison now.”
“And what do we treat in the waste treatment plant?” Three continued, waiting for her to get the point.
“Water.” There was a long pause as Two tried to piece things together, and then it hit her “A lot of water… and water is made up of…”
“Hydrogen and oxygen.” Three smirked. “I may not be Six, but I can do my research. And there’s a process called electrolysis that lets you separate those elements into hydrogen and oxygen gas.”
“That means we’d be turning our water supply into poison…” Two said quietly “But I’d rather have air than water if I had to make a choice. Do we have the equipment to perform electrolysis?”
“Yeah, the plant has an electrolyzer. It’ll take a lot of power, and it’ll be slow, but if I can keep it running full time, it might produce enough oxygen to last the rest of the trip. Then we just open the nitrogen cannister at the right ratio, and we’ve got breathable atmosphere.” Three finished explaining and looked down the hatch into the waste processing plant.
“Well… okay, that sounds great.” Two sounded surprised. Three had actually found what sounded like a sound solution, but she had to ask “But what makes this a stupid idea then?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Cause I have to go down into the plant and move the electrolyzer into the main water tank.” Three let out a deep sigh.
Two stared at her quietly for a few moments “So we have to go do manual labor in a room full of poisonous gas.” Two reiterated to be sure she understood what Three was getting at.
Three nodded “An electrolyzer is an extremely delicate machine though. So I have to do it. Sorry, but I’ve already looked into what I need to do, and one working hand won’t do. Seven’s clearly doesn’t have the presence of mind for it either. So it’s my turn to be a stupid reckless hero.”
Two stared shocked at Three. Three had already prepared and countered any argument she had against her doing this handily. She really was better at thinking ahead. “Please, Three… I can’t lose you too.” Two said quietly “Don’t make me just sit here and do nothing again. Please.”
“I won’t.” Three nodded “In that box, there’s a breathing mask and a lot of surgical tubing. I need you to manage it while I’m down there. It’ll be my air supply.” she motioned toward the box she had carried in “It’s stiff, so feed it to me as I go in, and pull it back when I’m moving back out. I’m going to be relying on you. I trust you, Two.”
Two nodded to her “Well then… let’s do something stupid.”
—
— 33 Hours Remain —
Two stood above the hatch in the floor and held onto the mass of tubing with her mechanical arm while she carefully fed a line down to Three, who was still slowly descending the ladder to make sure she didn’t get ahead of Two handling the line. Two carefully watched the spots where the tubing had been connected together, making sure that it wouldn’t fall apart as she fed it down. “It’s working, right?” Two called down to the girl with a breathing mask strapped to her face. It was clear that Three had cobbled this kit together entirely with surgical equipment.
They both looked to the wall when another sound of falling machinery came from engineering, and Three shook her head to get Two’s attention back “Well, I’m still breathing. So I guess.” she said uncertainly, her voice slightly muffled by the mask “Dense carbon dioxide certainly feels weird to stand around in though. It’s irritating my eyes. I don’t want to spend too long in this.”
Two briefly looked to Seven, seeing her surrounded by the bottles of water they had filled from the lab’s sink. It would have to last them until they could find a fresh source on Earth. If there was still fresh water to be had on Earth. The astronomical number of ‘if’s that had piled up was staggering to Two, but the chance that this could actually work was still at the forefront of her thoughts.
“Two. Focus.” Three called up as the tubing started to grow taut, and Two fed more of it down to her.
There was a long silence between the two as Two dutifully controlled Three’s lifeline. She couldn’t let anything bad happen to her. She had to protect the friends she had left. “Removing the electrolyzer from its assembly.” Three called up. Two could hear the shuffling of machinery below, but because of the angle of the shaft, she couldn’t see what was happening at all.
“What was it doing before anyway?” Two asked.
“Fuel efficiency.” she answered “Makes the engines burn cleaner or something. It’s easy to remove cause it’s also used for experiments.”
Two nodded “And it’s not like it’s gonna fly again after this anyway.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Three grunted , clearly exerting herself over something. The electrolyzer must have been heavy. “Two… thanks for sticking around.”
“To help with this? Well, of course. I’m not sitting on the sidelines again.” I sniffled as I reminded myself of what had happened yesterday.
“I meant… thank you for not killing yourself.” there was the distinct sound of water displacing.
Two paused momentarily “I… thank you. For believing in this. Even in that moment when I didn’t.”
“You can’t be the only one with blind faith around here.” she called up as a mechanical whirr began coming from the room under them “That should do it. Gonna need you to lower the nitrogen tank down here too. The gas will mix better rising up from here.”
“You sure? I’m gonna have to let go of the tubing.” Two asked as Three appeared at the bottom of the shaft.
“I’m coming up to help you.” she said as she climbed up the ladder. She looked more tired than when she went down, the effect of standing around in poisonous air obvious despite the fact that she wasn’t breathing it. She looked paler and her eyes looked irritated.
“Just get up here.” Two said, reaching her hand down to help her up the last few steps. “You look awful. Are you sure you’re not going to be sick?”
“Well… not that sick.” she pulled the mask up and took in a deep breath of the clean air “Oh wow, that does feel nice though.”
—
— 32 Hours Remain —
The pair worked together and slowly lowered the nitrogen tank down into the depths, the valve already opened as it clattered the last few feet to the floor.
“That couldn’t have exploded… could it?” Two asked, wiping her brow.
“Could have. Didn’t.” Three replied curtly.
“Now who’s being reckless.” Two jabbed at her teasingly.
“Still me. See, I doubt this is a healthy gas mix, since I’m basically just guessing at it. We probably won’t want to stay in this room when we hit Earth. But it should last us until then at least.” Three laid back on the floor and took in another deep breath.
That’s when a mechanical whirring started coming from the next lab over, and both girls sat upright. “That… doesn’t sound like equipment falling over.” Two commented.
“That sounds like equipment running.” Three nodded “Did it restart an automated system or something?”
“You don’t think…” Two started, but didn’t want to finish the sentence at the risk of opening a fresh emotional wound. Then the whirring noise started getting louder. It started to sound like it was coming from the hallway…
Without another word, Two rushed to her feet and charged to the door, opening it and turning down the hall to see sparks flying out from the space between the engineering bay doors. “W-What?” she mumbled as a circular blade cut slowly from the top down to the floor, and in a dramatic hiss of air, the doors separated. And out from between it walked a panting, sweat-drenched Five, holding tight to some sort of cobbled together two-handed power saw tool she had clearly just made by herself, now powering down. She dropped the tool on the floor and mumbled drowzily to Two “Remind me never to weld anything shut… ever.” before she fell over onto the floor in exhaustion.