First she closed the Node 2 hatch. She unstowed the crank handle, rotated it out, and started twirling the lever like crazy. When it stopped she moved it back, then went through the JPM’s hatch and shut it by grabbing the quick release handle. It closed with a satisfying clang.
Okay. Next step is to evacuate the vestibule.
Kimberly uncapped the pressure equalization valve, grabbed the VAJ, and connected its green fabric-covered metal hose to the experimental vacuum manifold, leading to the vacuum of space.
Through the small viewport in the hatch she saw Farid suddenly appear. She hoped the seals were tight, but she didn’t have time to worry. If they got in they’d kill her, she knew, and she thought she’d rather die in the cold vacuum of space than have those two bastards slit her throat.
She pushed off for the laptop and rapidly typed in the necessary commands, calling up a schematic of the JPM module and opening the valve to the vacuum outside.
With a barely audible whoosh the air in the vestibule connecting Node 2 with the JPM was released to space.
Kimberly saw tiny crystals of ice swirl around the outside exit as the humid air expanded and instantly froze in the cold grip of vacuum. They looked beautiful, like a sprinkling of fairy dust. She thrilled at the sight, and even more so at the realization that her plan had actually worked.
In the back of her mind she felt grateful that the ISS was the first complex vehicle designed from the ground up to be operated through computer graphical interfaces instead of hardwired mechanical control panels, allowing any laptop to operate the station. Maybe I’ll be able to take advantage of that to gain control of the station again, she thought.
She realized she was hurting. Dull, sullen pain throbbed in her hip and her arm. She saw Farid still at the Node 2 hatch. He pounded against the glass but she couldn’t hear anything across the vacuum interface of the vestibule. He glared through the thick window, his eyes wild. Spittle spewed from his mouth, his nostrils flared.
Kimberly was too tired to face him. She hurt too much. She floated up and away from the hatch’s viewport. She was effectively barricaded from the murderers; she was safe in the JPM—for the time being. They couldn’t open their hatch to get to her, and even if they got themselves into an EVA suit, the spacesuits were much too large for the JPM airlock, which was designed to expose small experiments to vacuum. It was barely big enough for the second-generation suit Kimberly had stowed in the module.
She caught a glimpse of movement in Node 2, down where the pressure release valve to the vestibule was located. Floating slowly upward to get a better view, she saw that Farid was trying to open the pressure equalization valve. Kimberly drew back, wondering if the idiot wanted to kill all of them.
He could certainly try to open the valve, she knew, but the air would have to rush completely out of both Node 2 and the entire ISS before they could even open their own hatch. And even if they did that, they still couldn’t open her hatch to the JPM: try as they might there was twelve tons of pressure pressing her module’s airlock hatch against the vacuum.
Kimberly realized that there was a slight chance they could get through, though. Not impossible, yet an incredibly small chance, and they’d have to be awfully quick—and lucky: The viewports were 8 inches in diameter, ¾-inch-thick glass, with two panes separated by 2 inches. If they tried to smash the viewport on her hatch they would have to shatter their Node 2 window first, probably using the titanium prybar. That would repressurize the vestibule while the air in the entire ISS would start escaping via the VAJ hose. Then they’d have to smash the JPM hatch window, which would rapidly decompress the JPM while they attempted to enter the module and go after her.
The decompression would happen so fast that it would probably kill them before they could accomplish whatever they had planned for the ISS.
So they’d kill her but they’d also end up dying themselves. In the time it would take them to get into the JPM most of the air in the whole space station would be forever lost to space, and they would all end up dying.
So why would they even try?
Unless their real purpose for this insane attack was only to kill everybody on board, including themselves.
But why try to do that? It would have been much easier just to sabotage a few resupply rockets than to go to all the trouble of getting two radicalized cosmonauts on board the ISS. It just didn’t make any sense.
On the other hand, Kimberly thought, with two murderers imperiling the whole ISS by trying to evacuate the air in the vestibule, nothing made much sense.
She saw both Farid and Bakhet gesticulating wildly in Node 2. She still couldn’t hear what was going on, but it looked as though they had discovered that the air in Node 2 was escaping into space. They probably also realized that by the time they’d be able to get to her, the air supply throughout the ISS would be totally gone.
Again Farid turned to the hatch. He pounded angrily on the thick glass plate, but Kimberly still couldn’t hear any sounds. His eyes bulged out and his face turned so red it looked as if all the blood in his body had welled up to his head. He shook a fist at her.
Kimberly slowly floated down until her nose nearly touched the JPM’s viewport. They were only two feet apart, but separated by the tons of force clamping the two hatches shut.
As Farid raged on, his face red and contorted, his arms flailing, Kimberly’s mind raced, trying to think of what she could do to stop the two, no matter what they had in mind. They wanted to kill her, she knew, but what else? What was their final objective?
Before she turned away from the viewport she kept her face stone cold, showing no emotion except icy, frigid contempt as she stared them down.
Then as slowly as she could she moved her right hand in front of her face, gradually closed it into a fist, and then, millimeter by millimeter, raised her middle finger until it stood fully upright.
She pushed it to touch the viewport. As Farid’s eyes widened at the obscene gesture, Kimberly mouthed a silent Fuck you.
ASSESSMENT
Obviously furious, Farid pounded harder on the viewport but Kimberly couldn’t hear a sound because the vestibule was in vacuum. If the situation weren’t so deadly serious, she thought, this could be a great physics demonstration to beam down to school-kids, showing the need of an atmosphere to transmit sound waves.
Kimberly turned her back to the viewport, realizing that she had little time for speculation. She pressed her hand against her hip and winced. The bleeding had stopped but it hurt like hell. The hip was bruised as well as cut. Her arm was bruised, too, and she knew that it was going to be sore.
She pushed off and found a small first aid kit. While bandaging the hip, she tried to assess the situation.
She was safe for the time being. As long as she kept the VAJ attached to the bleed-off port, the vestibule would remain in vacuum, and the enormous force of both Node 2’s and the JPM’s 14.7-psi atmosphere would keep the hatches tightly sealed.
She glanced through the JPM for a quick inventory. She had plenty of air, electrical power, and heat to survive. There was only one laptop in the module; she remembered that the guys had borrowed the other three for Robert’s EVA. But from the one, she could control nearly all the functions of the ISS’s systems. Farid shouldn’t be able to cut off any of the JPM’s vital systems, she thought. Kimberly remembered from Farid’s bio that he had been a computer specialist, and she assumed that he had kept his skills current. He might even know the onboard systems better than I do, she worried.