Helps

It’s been over a day since I shoved Rocky in that airlock and he still hasn’t moved. But I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ve been mad sciencing some inventions in the lab. This kind of gadget creation is really Rocky’s forte, but I give it my best.

I thought about lots of different approaches. But in the end, I think I should let Rocky’s body heal itself as much as possible. I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to operate on a human, let alone an Eridian. His body should know what to do. I just have to let it.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to do nothing at all, though. I have a guess as to what’s going on. And if I’m wrong, my idea for treatment won’t hurt him.

Right now, there’s a bunch of soot and other combustion by-product crap in his radiator organ. So it probably doesn’t work well. If he’s alive at all, it’ll take his body a long time to clear that out. Maybe too long.

So maybe I can help?

I hold the box in my hand. It’s enclosed on five of six sides with the remaining side open. The walls are 4-inch-thick steel. It took me all day to repair the mill and get it working again, but once I did, milling up this box was a breeze.

Inside is a high-powered air pump. Simple as that. I can shoot high-pressure air really hard. I tested it out in the lab and it blew a hole in a 1-millimeter-thick sheet of aluminum from a foot away. It really works. I wish I could claim I’m a genius who made this all from scratch, but the reality is I only made the box. The pump is repurposed from a high-pressure tank.

Also in the box is a battery, a camera, some stepper motors, and a drill. I’ll need all of these things for my plan to work.

I’ve cleaned up the lab, somewhat. Most of the equipment is ruined, but some might be fixable. I cross to the other side of the table, where I have another experiment.

I have a little chip of xenonite—some chaff left over from when we made two hundred thousand chain links. I used a generous application of epoxy to glue it to the tip of a roughed-up drill bit. It’s been setting for over an hour. Should be done.

I pick up the bit and the xenonite comes with it. I use all my strength to try to pull them apart. I can’t.

I nod and smile. This might work.

I do a few more tests with the box. My remote control for the motors works well enough. It’s not true remote control. It’s a bank of switches attached to a plastic container lid. I have wires from the switches going through a tiny hole in the steel, which is in turn filled up with resin. I can turn the power on or off to any of the components in there. That’s my “remote control.” I can only hope the motors don’t have a problem with high heat or ammonia.

(...)

First I’ll need to drill a hole in the xenonite. And that’s where all hell will break loose if things go bad. The general idea here is for the drill inside the box to put a hole in the xenonite and for the box to contain the pressure that rushes in. But you never know. The box might not be held on tight enough.

I wear a medical breathing mask and eye protection. If there’s going to be a jet of superheated, high-pressure ammonia in this room, I need to not die from it.

Earlier I filed down a metal rod to be sort of a spike. The full radius is a little bigger than the drill bit I have readied in the steel box. I hold the spike and hammer at the ready. If the pressure blows the box off, I’ll hammer the spike into the hole and hope it plugs the gap.

Of course, the pressure might not blow the box off entirely. It might just spurt out around the edges of the glue joint. If that happens, I’ll have to smack the box with the hammer until it comes off, then drive in the spike.

Yes, it’s ridiculously dangerous. But I just don’t know if Rocky will survive without help. Maybe I’m being emotional instead of rational. But so what?

I clench the hammer and spike. Then I activate the drill.

It takes so long for that drill to get through the xenonite, I actually calm down out of boredom. It’s only 1 centimeter, but it’s like trying to grind down diamond. I’m lucky the drill bit is hard enough to do anything at all. The camera feed from inside shows slow and steady progress. Instead of drilling like wood or metal, this is more like glass. It breaks off in chips and chunks.

Finally, the bit breaches to the other side. It is immediately launched back into the box and bent sideways by the pressure. There’s a whump as Eridian air rushes into the little box. I squint my eyes. Then, after a few seconds, I open them again.

If the box was going to blow off, it would have done so right then. My seal held. For now anyway. I breathe a sigh of relief.

But I don’t take the mask or goggles off. You never know when the seal might give out.

I check the camera screen. This will take careful aim, so I was very clever in making sure a camera could—

The camera feed is dead.

A pain in my wrist takes over and I pull it away.

Ah. Yeah. Webcams aren’t designed to work at 210 degrees Celsius and 29 atmospheres. And my solid steel box, well, it’s solid steel. Steel is an excellent heat conductor. I can’t even touch it now it’s so hot.

I’m still stupid. First the Adrian sample container, and now this. I want to sleep, but Rocky is more important. At least being stupid isn’t permanent. I’ll press on. I know I shouldn’t, but I’m too stupid to take that into consideration.

Okay, the camera is dead. I can’t see into the box. But I can still see Rocky in the airlock because the xenonite is clear. I’ll have to work with what I’ve got here.

I fire up the high-pressure pump. It still works—at least, it’s making noise. It should be shooting a very high-pressure jet of air in Rocky’s direction. At 29 atmospheres, air acts almost like water. You can really knock stuff around with it. But ammonia is clear. So I have no idea where it’s going.

I adjust the angle of the jet with the servo controls. Are they working? I have no idea. The pump is too loud for me to hear if the servos are doing anything. I sweep left and right, inching down and up in a pattern.

Finally, I spot something. One of the levers in the airlock wiggles a bit. I zero in on it. It gets pushed back several inches.

“Gotcha!” I say.

Now I know where it’s pointed. I do some guesswork and aim for Rocky’s carapace vents. Nothing happens, so I do a grid search, back and forth, up and down, until I get a result.

And oh, what a result it is!

I hit the sweet spot. All of a sudden, Rocky’s carapace vents belch out black smoke. The nasty dust and debris that built up when he was on fire. It’s intensely satisfying. Like that feeling when you blast an air duster into an old computer.

I sweep back and forth, trying to hit each vent one by one. The latter vents don’t cause nearly the commotion as that first one. I think they all lead to the same organ—like a human’s mouth and nose do. Multiple orifices for redundancy and safety.

After a few minutes, no more sooty dust is coming out. I shut off the pump.

“Well, buddy,” I say. “I’ve done all I can. I just hope you can do the rest.”

I spend the rest of the day working on a secondary and tertiary containment box. I glue them in place over my device. The Eridian air will have to breach three seals to get into my compartment now. That will have to do.

I hope Rocky wakes up.

***

Chapter 20