Articulated Restraint Read online

  “EV2 … We’ll need you to place all the tethers to make sure that the positions are achievable in a suit.” Jason sounded almost apologetic.

  “Copy.” The plan was to place four tethers to stabilize the life raft and then cinch it down to contact the side of the lunar rocket and engage the grapple mechanism. It made sense that they would need someone in an EVA suit, with its limited range of movement, to place all four. Looking down, she couldn’t even see the bottom tether. All things considered, she’d start with the hard one first while she still had some energy. “Working on the nadir tether attachment first.”

  Ruby released the local tether, leaving her safety tether in place, and worked her way down to the bottom of the handrail. At the bottom end, she tried to snag the tether hook but the body position was bad. She had to twist her arm in ways that the suit really wouldn’t let her. The suits really didn’t want you to raise your arms over your head. Being upside down might work though … Grabbing the handrail, she rotated so that she hung head-down in the water. Better.

  Kind of. The suits were neutrally buoyant, but inside them, she was dealing with 1-G. As blood pooled in Ruby’s head, she figured that at least her ankle was elevated.

  Over the comm, Jason said, “Looks like you’re heads-down, we’ll do a check at five minutes and pull you at ten.”

  “Copy.”

  The life raft had drifted down in the pool so the grapple mechanism was masking the anchor point on the lunar rocket. Maybe she should have done the top tether first. Ruby tried pushing the life raft up in the pool, but the water resistance and gravity pushed down on it. In space, this would be easy, but in the NBL her muscles burned.

  “Five minutes, EV2.”

  “I’m fine.” Standard procedure be damned. Her sinuses were full and her head pounded from being upside down, but she could manage the discomfort. The body position was better for placing the tether, but the tube itself was fighting her in ways that it wouldn’t in space.

  Ruby was so used to not complaining, because she was short. Because she was a woman. Anything she said would be seen as a failure on her part. But the resistance was an NBLism and not a problem the actual spacewalker would face, and people’s lives were on the line. Ruby sighed as quietly as she could on a live mic. “I could use a diver assist to support the tube.”

  Like magic, one of the three support divers following her floated up and guided the end of the bag so that it floated in the water more or less the way it would in space. She stretched her arm toward the newly revealed anchor point, fingers aching as she fought the pressurized suit.

  “That’s ten minutes, EV2.”

  “Almost there.” The motion made her rotate a little. Damn it. She should have put the additional local tether in place to control her own motion. Grimacing, she tried to snap the tether hook in place and just missed. It slipped out of her clumsy grasp and floated away from her in the water. She held her curses inside.

  “Divers, set EV2 upright.”

  Biting down on the inside of her cheek, Ruby tried to relax when the divers gently pulled her back and rotated her upright so the blood could drain from her head. As they did, she slipped inside her suit and suddenly all of her weight was on her feet. Ruby closed her eyes, breathing through her teeth.

  “Anything wrong, Ruby?” Jason Tsao’s voice snapped her eyes open.

  “Nope.” In front of her, the support diver in charge of filming had his camera aimed at her face. Ruby smiled at him, so that everyone in the mission control room would be able to see that she was fine. They wouldn’t pull her out of the pool, not with lives on the line, but they would sure as heck note any struggles for future missions. “Just thinking through next steps. I’m ready to start up again when you are.”

  * * *

  On attempt number four, Ruby had figured out a process that got the tube lined up, but still wrestled with snugging the life raft up against the ship enough to get a good seal. The grapple mechanism had been designed to be activated by pressure from docking. Attempting to exert that pressure manually was … challenging.

  Biting the inside of her lip, Ruby fumbled with the thick straps while holding on to a handrail with one hand. Her own tethers stabilized her a little, but not enough.

  Eugene crackled onto the comm. “Do you think an APFR would give you better leverage?”

  Articulated Portable Foot Restraint. She stopped what she was doing and stared at the ship. The handrail she was using was between two sockets built into the skin of the lunar shuttle. She’d been using the solution as just a navigation point. All she had to do was use one of those two sockets to attach a foot restraint and free both hands.

  And she’d been avoiding using a foot restraint because she’d been unconsciously avoiding pain. To get her feet into the APFR, she’d have to twist her ankle in and out of the restraint. Normally the MC trusted the astronaut on decisions like that during a dev run, to figure out what worked best for them. Ruby had been screwing things up because she’d gone dancing.

  “Good call.” The silver lining to the number of runs they’d done was that she knew where the nearest APFR was stored. She’d passed by it at least twice during this run, which made it all the worse that she hadn’t thought of it. “Translating back over the river and through the woods.”

  “If you’re reversing course, shouldn’t that be through the woods and over the river?”

  “Pretty sure there are woods on both sides of the river.” Ruby pulled herself hand over hand to the port sensor array, which was, thankfully, within reach of her safety tether. Even so, fighting the water resistance made her arms burn with effort. In the back of her head, time ticked away. “I could have collected this on my previous pass, which would buy some time.”

  Jason Tsao responded. “Good note, EV2. I’ll pass that up to station.”

  He didn’t say “if this works” but the question hung in the water with her. Ruby attached a Retractible Equipment Tether to the foot restraint. Once the RET was secure, she pulled the foot restraint off the WIF by turning the collar and depressing the “petals” at the base of the post. The bayonet slid out of the socket. It was a ridiculous thing to feel triumph about, but at the moment she would take even small victories.

  Turning to reverse course, Ruby swung her body through the water so that her feet trailed behind her The water resistance grabbed her feet and seemed to slowly twist her ankle. Ruby locked her jaw and breathed through her nose. This was an acceptable level of pain but the translation back to the work site seemed twice as long. She didn’t have the energy for banter.

  When she got back to the handrail, she snapped her local tether back into place. “Slider locked, black on black.”

  Closing her stiff fingers around the foot restraint, she plugged its bayonet into the nearest socket. The litany of locking things in place continued. “Collar locked, black on black.” She wrapped her hands round the APFR to make sure it was seated correctly. “Good twist and pull test”

  “Copy EV2.”

  Ruby retrieved the RET and restowed it. The last thing she needed was to get snarled in something she’d forgotten to put away.

  Adjusting her tethers to allow her to “stand up” perpendicular to the lunar rocket, Ruby put her feet next to the foot restraint. She slid the toes of her left foot under the restraint and twisted her foot to slide the heel ridge into the restraining slot.

  Biting the inside of her cheek, she slid her right foot under the restraint and twisted it. It felt as if her boot was filled with broken glass. It wasn’t. She was pretty sure she wasn’t doing permanent damage to the ankle. Slowing down recovery time, yes, but even if it was permanent damage, at the end of the day it just meant she wouldn’t be able to dance.

  But she’d still be able to play bridge with Myrtle and Eugene.

  Ruby reached for the tether and yanked on it with both hands. Something in her ankle went pfft and snapped.

  A small cry escaped. Ruby bit down hard. She would live, and
so would the people on that ship if she had anything to say about it. Grimacing, she hauled on the tether until the tube snuggled up against the mockup station and the grapple clicked into place.

  Tears streaked across her cheeks, and for once the 1-G was a benefit because the moisture didn’t build up in watery balls over her eyes. Ruby nodded for the camera. “Thanks, Eugene. The answer is APFR. With that, I can pitch back. I can grab the bag. Anchor it. I can maneuver my body and not have to pitch or roll with the handrail. Sorry it took so long to work out.” Her ankle throbbed with each beat of her heart. “What’s next?”

  She hung in the water, listening to the sound of her own fans. Around her, support divers slowly turned the water with their fins while they all waited. Her ankle consumed the rest of her attention.

  The line crackled as Jason came back on the line. “Let’s get you out of the pool.”

  “I’m fine to continue.”

  “Thank you, but we’re transmitting this part of the procedure up to Lunetta. We’ll let Paul and Serge dev the process of getting the tube back to the other end of the ship. It’s comparatively straightforward.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “Ruby.” Eugene’s voice cut in. “I’ve played bridge with you. I know your tells.”

  She opened her mouth, staring at the camera in front of her. “Right. See you topside.”

  Her support divers swam up around her and pulled her away from the ship. In space, right now, someone on Lunetta was suiting up to go out and do this as a real spacewalk, not as a development run in a pool. Or heck, maybe they were all ready to go and had just been waiting for a viable solution.

  All the mistakes that Ruby had made were ones that the real rescue team wouldn’t have to. The pool was hard. Space would kill you.

  Ruby let herself go limp in her suit, watching the bubbles of her support divers stream past like flecks of snow. In her ears, the conversation with the other team continued as they kept working to try to mate an umbilical to the lunar rocket. She realized that she had no idea how long she’d been down.

  When the divers got her attached to the donning stand and the crane hauled her above the pool, Eugene was waiting poolside. He still wore his Snoopy cap, with the comm unit in place so he could stay in the loop. His lower lip had a raw spot as if he’d been biting it constantly while she was under the water.

  He could hear her if she spoke, but she waited until her suit was depressurized and her suit tech had her helmet off. She flexed her hands against the ache in the joints and met Eugene’s gaze as the tech pulled her Snoopy cap off.

  Eugene took his own off and stepped forward. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell them to pull you earlier.”

  “That was the right choice.” She shifted her weight to her left foot as her tech released the hard aluminum ring connecting her pants to the suit. “How long do they have?”

  “Six hours.” He glanced across the room at the clock on the wall. “It’s enough.”

  Ruby nodded and squirmed down, with a tech on either side to catch her. It was standard practice, but Eugene stepping forward, hands out, wasn’t. For the first time since she’d gone under, Ruby put weight on her right foot. Her head was still in the suit and the fiberglass interior seemed to light up like a meteor striking the Earth.

  Hands caught her and the next thing she knew, she was seated in a chair, still blinking back tears. Swallowing, Ruby shook her head. “I’m fine—GAH!” The sound ripped out of her as the techs tried to pull the spacesuit pants down. Her ankle was so swollen that it caught in the boot.

  Gripping the side of the chair, she panted until the spots faded from her vision.

  The nearest suit tech toggled on his mic. “We need medical for EV2.”

  She winced, but calling a medic was inevitable. “Not urgent. I aggravated a previous injury, that’s all.”

  “Aggravated?” Eugene shook his head. “You’re going to aggravate me if you keep lying.”

  “I’m not— Okay. I am. I’ve likely torn a ligament in my ankle. But y’all are going to pull these goddamn pants off of me because if the medic gets here first, she’s going to try cutting it off.”

  The tech looked up, appalled. “Oh hell, no.”

  “Right?” Ruby stuck out her hurt leg. “You are Go for removal.”

  He looked up at Eugene, who grimaced and then nodded. Eugene stepped behind her and braced Ruby with his hands on her shoulders. Putting a hand on either side of the boot, the tech hauled back. Ruby managed not to scream, but if Eugene weren’t bracing her, she probably would have fallen out of the chair.

  Beneath the mesh of her cooling garment, her ankle was swollen to twice the size it should be. Eugene whistled. “Aggravated a previous injury?”

  “Sprained it last night.” Her entire leg was pulsing in hot and cold waves around the burning core of her ankle. It was past a sprain now, but Ruby tried to keep her voice military calm. “But … not really a choice, was there?”

  “Thank you.” He squeezed her shoulder.

  She didn’t deserve thanks. If she’d done her homework on other ships. If she’d not been avoiding using her foot. If she’d just had her priorities straight—hell, if Eugene had been in the pool, he’d have figured this out faster than she did. She’d been trying to fit too many things into her life and had come within a hairsbreadth of failing at all of them. Failing her dance partner was disappointing. Failing the IAC could have been fatal.

  Ruby let her breath out slowly as the medic came barreling around the end of the pool. “Make a phone call for me? I have a rehearsal I need to cancel.”

  And after that, Ruby was going to go home, curl up in bed, and study every manual she could get her hands on. No one was going to come this close to dying on her watch ever again.

  She didn’t have that many pieces of Before left, but keeping them didn’t mean keeping them in the same way and shape. Lindy-hop could go back to being just a social thing. But where she belonged in life After the Meteor, was here.

  Here, she made a difference. Sprained ankle and all.

  About the Author

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL was the 2008 recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a Hugo winner for her story “For Want of a Nail.” Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, and several Year’s Best anthologies. She also writes the Glamourist History series, which began with Shades of Milk and Honey. A professional puppeteer and voice actor, she spent five years touring nationally with puppet theaters. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and many manual typewriters. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Art copyright © 2019 by Jasu Hu