A Cold Soak story
The Pool
Before Artemis Base, Jack Richardson and Petra Halvorsen trained together in Houston.
The deck told me where things stood before anyone did. Weights racked by count along the near wall, umbilicals coiled and hung on their hooks, the crane carriage parked over the water with its cable drawn tight to the platform. Two stations down a tether hung off a rail, unclipped, its gate open, and my eye caught on it until a tech came past and seated it. Ray stood at the edge of the boards the way he stood on any deck, like it had been poured to set under him. Past his shoulder the pool lay flat and blue and enormous, the surface holding still under the lights.
“There he is.” He wiped both palms down the thighs of his coveralls and came at my trim pack with them. “Come here, Jackie. Let me get you honest.”
He worked me over by the count. A plate off the upper back, one onto the front, the hip straps cinched and rocked hard against their buckles. The figures from my last run were clipped to his board, but he trusted them only far enough to begin. The final truth would come in the water.
“You rolled left all afternoon last time. Hold still. Quit helping me.” He drew a plate, weighed it in his hand and set another in its place. “There.”
Neutral was the aim of it. A suited body weighted until it neither climbed nor sank, until a hand released from the rail left the body where it had been put. Ray built the first approximation into me plate by plate, counting under his breath the way another man might hum. When he had it, he pressed a flat hand to my sternum and rocked me half an inch and watched the harness come back square.
“Even as water,” he said.
Petra was two donning stations down with one glove on and three techs working around her. She was reading something over a shoulder that had nothing to do with her. Ray followed my eye.
“Man gets spoiled, working with somebody who reads him that easy.” He set the buckle and tested it with his thumb. “Starts thinking he never has to say a thing.”
“Torque’s fine on that one,” I said. “Leave it seated.”
He grunted and moved to the next strap.
I seated the suit connector and felt the small hard click of it under my thumb, clipped its tether to the ring and tugged once. My hand moved on. A beat after it was already fast, I came back and tugged the clip a second time. The catch gave the same answer it had the first.
The comm cap came alive with the loop. Petra was ahead of me.
“EV2, loop up. Reading you.”
“EV1, reading clean.”
“Your cap’s a hair hot.”
“Within band.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
We ran the rest of the check between us, my number and hers, the step first and the hands second. She was quicker over it than I was and did not wait for me to notice.
Ray came around for the final pass. His hands went back to a shoulder strap he had already cleared and read the webbing through his fingers once more.
“Squared?” I said.
He put one palm against the pack and held it there a second past what the go required. That was the go.
The crane platform took us over the water side by side. Petra stood locked into the other donning stand with her helmet turned towards the pool and one glove resting on the rail. The deck dropped away beneath us. At the edge, the platform stopped and lowered.
Water climbed the boots and legs and then the chest, taking the suit’s weight a section at a time. It rose across the faceplate and folded over the helmet into a lid of moving light. Deck noise thinned to nothing. The loop and my own breath remained.
The safety divers were waiting below. One came to each shoulder as the platform carried me down, and at the shallow stop the utility diver worked the trim packs, moving a plate from hip to chest and adding a float at the left boot. He pushed me away by the pack and watched. I rolled half a degree, slowed and stopped. He drew me back, moved the float, and tried again.
This time I stayed where he left me.
At worksite depth Ray’s count came true. I hung level at the station without spending a thought on it. Petra translated along the handrails to the receiving side of the worksite and set herself two bays to my right, where she could see the alignment mark I would lose behind the tool. Between us the connector station stood racked, the fitting in its parked bracket and the torque tool clipped beneath it.
Ed came onto the loop from test control. “EV1, EV2, on the mark. Step one, go for connector.”
“EV1, at the worksite.”
“EV2, receiver side configured.”
Gail keyed in from biomed. “Jack, how are the hands?”
“Reading nominal.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Petra’s breath caught once on the loop, too small to call a laugh.
I opened and closed the right glove. “Hands are fine.”
“Copy. Try to keep them that way.”
I unracked the torque tool and thumbed the setting to the number on the card. The detent clicked and held. The tether paid out behind it, slow in the water. Step two seated clean. The collar took the fitting square and the resistance built under my hand in an even climb, exactly as the card said it should.
“Alignment good my side,” Petra said.
Ed walked us down the sequence. “Step two complete. Step three, go for seat.”
On the seating step it stopped coming.
The torque loaded partway and then the handle went stiff where it should have kept turning. The connector stood a finger proud of the collar. Nothing on the gauges sat wrong.
I let the load off. Force a bad seat and you set the bind harder into the threads. I backed the tool away, sighted the fitting square and ran a glove around the collar. No burr, step or warp stood proud under the fingertip.
“Hold one. Connector won’t seat.”
“TC copies the hold. Safety one, close up and stand by.”
The diver off my left shoulder came within a body length and stayed there. The loop cleared. In the gap where the readbacks had been, Petra remained keyed in and said nothing. Her breathing settled beside mine.
I took the connector back to the top of the seat. The alignment mark showed true from where I held it.
“Mark?” I said.
“Mark’s true,” Petra said.
I brought the torque up again. The fitting travelled to the same place and stopped in the same small way.
“Same stop.”
“TC copies.” Paper moved at Ed’s end. “You have four minutes inside the hold. After that we change the article and log the item incomplete.”
There was no danger in incomplete. The run would end, the hardware would go to a bench and the report would say the training article had failed. My hands would be absent from the sentence. That was the clean answer, and I did not want it.
“Backing it out. Request full order from the top.”
“Approved. Release, align, seat, lock.”
I set my left glove on the handrail and took the break-loose load. The seat gave, a small release felt through the glove before the tool showed it. The fitting came off the collar and hung loose against my palm.
Off the seat, the index mark stood a hair to the right. The first back-out had let the collar walk in its detent.
“Collar off index,” I said.
“I see it,” Petra said.
I released the lock and worked the mark back towards home a fraction at a time. The collar answered in grudging movements. When the lines met, Petra called the mark and I set the lock.
“Two minutes,” Ed said.
I brought the fitting in. It started true and carried deeper than before. Then the resistance rose again, hard under my hand. The connector stopped an edge short of home.
My thumb pressed the tool harder before I took it off. The load climbed and the fitting did not move.
“Jack,” Gail said.
“Within limit.”
“I can see the limit.”
I eased the load off. My left glove stayed locked around the handrail. I had taken it at the first turn of the seat and never moved it. The body was neutral, but the arm was holding the whole of me as if the water meant to take me somewhere.
Petra keyed in. “Your axial load is clean until you take the rail.”
I looked across the tool at her. Beyond her faceplate the pool lights moved in the water.
“Say again.”
“You’re carrying lateral when you brace left. Two pounds, then four. The collar follows you.” Her voice stayed on the reading. “Move your anchor to centreline.”
The handrail sat where it had sat through every attempt. My grip had turned the torso a few degrees against the fitting, not enough to see from inside the helmet and enough to load the collar across its seat. Petra had been looking at the side of it the whole time.
I released the rail.
The water took the tension out of my shoulder. I translated half a body-width and set my left glove on the centre handhold, directly behind the tool. The safety diver came close enough to catch me if the trim went.
“Thirty seconds,” Ed said.
“On the mark,” I said.
“Mark is true,” Petra answered.
I brought the torque up in stages. The fitting started and carried. Where the wall had risen before, the tool kept moving. The load stayed axial and the collar took the seat, the last fraction of travel going soft under the glove.
It went home.
The lock took past it clean. I read the gauges down the row. Each needle held its number.
“EV1, seat confirmed. Connector home, lock home, gauges flat.”
“EV2 confirms.”
Ed took the call and closed the sequence. “Step three complete. Hold released. Task complete. Safety, clear the worksite and bring them up.”
The divers came in to stow the tools and free our worksite tethers. The crane platform found us at the shallow stop. As it lifted, the surface opened above the helmets and the pool returned the deck a section at a time: lights, boards, the long rail of donning stations, Ray waiting where we had left him.
The utility divers stripped the trim from us while the water still carried the suits. The neutral hang went plate by plate. Weight returned to the harness and settled into the shoulders.
Ray took me at the pack as the platform seated against the deck. He checked the upper strap, then checked it again.
“Rolled left,” he said.
“I corrected it.”
“Eventually.”
He moved around behind me to the next buckle.
The techs disconnected the umbilicals at the stands, vented the suits and worked us out of the helmets. Petra stood an arm’s length away with the water still running off her suit, hair flattened at the temples, comm cap around her neck. Close enough that a sentence could have crossed without the loop to carry it.
She waited the way she waited after a readback when another call was due.
My hand found the suit connector at my chest. The tether was clipped and seated. I drew it once, felt the catch hold, and a beat later drew it a second time where once had been enough.
I let the tether fall.
Read or revisit Cold Soak, the lunar survival novella by Nicky Hooke.