She clambered inside and blinked, trying to clear her mind as she tugged at the outer ПρК hatch to close it. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. She wasn’t yet gasping for air, but she knew her oxygen was almost gone: her indecision and slow judgment were signs of central hypoxia, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Struggling, she pulled at the hatch again.
The hatch swung shut. She suddenly felt claustrophobic, trapped, and unable to get into the station while her air was running out. The terrorists wouldn’t even bother to overpower her; they’d just let her suffocate out here in this old Russian transfer chamber while they rained death on millions of guiltless Americans.
She needed oxygen.
With a shake of her head she quickly debated opening the re-pressurization valves located on the inner hatch. No, she told herself. The terrorists could detect even small pressure changes in the ISS, and she wasn’t in any shape to fight them if they stormed the service module when she entered it. Instead, she opted to re-pressurize the chamber with the Russian bea-em-pea high-pressure tanks attached to the transfer chamber’s side.
She stared at the tanks, trying to remember what she had to do. She knew that somehow she had to get back to basics, to be practical, positive, and not a victim. She was better than this: she was an astronaut.
Through the fog that was enveloping her mind, she reminded herself that the terrorists couldn’t stop her from entering the SM module. Even if they were inside waiting for her, she’d use her tools and Shep’s knife to fight back. Shakily, she punched at the controls that started the pressurization process.
Air flowed into the airlock chamber, slowly filling its volume. Kimberly stared at the pressure gauge. It seemed to take forever for the levels to build up as the analog needle quivered across the dial. She felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath. She tried to force herself to wait, but when the gauge showed 30 kilopascals of pressure she started to remove her helmet.
She bounced off the side of the chamber as she struggled to pull off the clear bubble of polycarbonate plastic, frantically twisting it back and forth and kicking her legs until the helmet finally came off.
Gasping, panting, she saw that the pressure dial registered only slightly less than five pounds to the square inch, about the equivalent of being on the summit of Mount Everest. But the pressure was rising. Kimberly tried to draw in deep breaths, pull more oxygen into her starved lungs as she watched the gauge slowly, slowly continue to rise.
The needle finally passed 100 kPa, right at the 14.7-psi sea-level standard throughout the station. Still, she sucked in deep lungfuls. And tried to convince herself that her reaction now was more psychological than physical. She should have plenty of air now, more than enough to breathe normally—unless the terrorists had somehow tampered with the gauges and they were now displaying false data.
She pushed that fear from her mind. These were analog dials, not digital. They were directly connected to pressure transducers embedded throughout the small chamber. They were immune to computer hacking.
And she realized that with that simple display of logic she was finally regaining her mental facilities.
Almost immediately she felt better. Her breathing slowed. Her mind really had played tricks on her. She didn’t want to know how low her oxygen level had gotten; she hadn’t shown so much confusion even during her astronaut hypobaric training in NASA’s high-altitude chamber.
Instead of dwelling on that, she pulled Shep’s knife out of her equipment pouch and crouched to launch herself out of the ПρК. With her free hand she slowly cranked the lever at the base of the hatch, rotating it counterclockwise.…
She tensed as the hatch swung open, praying that they weren’t in Central Post; if they were, they’d only be fifteen or so feet away, just on the other side of the galley. Blood pounded in her ears as she readied herself for any type of response from Farid and Bakhet, from the two of them rushing her, to being hit on the head, even blindsided by some piece of heavy equipment. She pushed out with both legs as hard as she could, holding Shep’s knife in front of her as she shot out the instant the hatch swung fully open.
Nothing. She was alone in the far aft end of the SM, by the Russian toilet, and Central Post was deserted.
She soared down the axis of the module and prepared to swing around the side of the vestibule as she exited the SM. If the terrorists weren’t still down by the JPM, no telling where they were, but they’d still be trying to deorbit the station, and were probably furious because the thruster controls wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t have a clue that she’d physically prevented the hypergolic propellants from reaching the thruster motors. Most likely they’d be frantically combing through the software to see how she might have put another lock on the propellant control states.
So she’d have to start hunting them down, module by module, just as they did her when they first arrived.
She didn’t know if she’d encounter one or both of them, but she figured she’d have the element of surprise. Her breath quickening, she rotated around the metal edge of the vestibule and flew directly into DC-1.
Bakhet was peering out the viewport, maybe looking for Mecca, just as that Saudi prince had done years ago when he had visited the station. Bakhet turned his head as she entered, his eyes flashing wide with astonishment. He started to yell while simultaneously ducking away from her.
Kimberly slashed out as she flew over him, barely missing him with Shep’s knife. She spun around in midair by quickly jerking her hands and upper torso upward, forcing her legs to swing forward. Her feet struck Bakhet on the back of his skull, right above the neck. His head snapped against his chest and he cried out.
She spun forward from the hit and, unable to stop, sailed out of DC-1 and into the SM, straight into a large brown coarse fabric sack of supplies. As she tumbled she spotted the titanium prybar, wedged next to the laptop Bakhet had been using.
Could she reach the prybar before he did?
Bakhet came out of DC-1, holding a hand to his head. He lurched toward her, but with his inexperience in zero-gee he started to rotate forward. He reached out for the long Russian prybar; his hand swiped against it, causing the titanium tool to rapidly tumble away in a wobbly spinning motion.
Heading directly for Kimberly.
She tried to twist out of its way, but as she moved the bar’s pointed end slashed against the top of her hand. Blood spurted from a vein, spewing out a stream of bright red globules. Gritting her teeth, Kimberly smashed against the pile of bungee-cord secured supplies. Shep’s knife slipped out of her hand, spinning away in the opposite direction, toward the far end of the service module.
As she bounced, Kimberly reached out and grabbed one of the bungee cords, ripping it from its mooring. A mass of mee-shauks, large brown surplus Russian cloth sacks, floated out. She grabbed one by its back end and swung it at Bakhet, spilling out packets of nuts, buckwheat gruel, borsch, and tvorog Russian cottage cheese—creating a cloud of mini-asteroids in the center of the module.
Twisting in the air, she grabbed another bungee cord secured to the wall. With blood still pumping from her hand, Kimberly jerked the other end of the cord free, pulling out a heavy metal ring that fastened the cord to the module. The motion snapped her toward the wall. Hitting the module’s insulated side, she whipped around and swung the long cord and its oval fastener at Bakhet.