Fifteen Miles

Fifteen Miles

By Ben Bova

The generator was hopelessly smashed, he saw. The old bird must’ve been breathing his own juices.

When the emergency tank registered full, he disconnected the oxygen line and plugged it into a special fitting below the regenerator.

“If you’re dead, this is probably going to kill me, too,” Kinsman said. He purged the entire suit, forcing the contaminating fumes out and replacing them with the oxygen that the jumper’s rocket needed to get them back to the base.

He was close enough now to see through the canister’s tinted visor. The priest’s face was grizzled, eyes closed. Its usual smile was gone; the mouth hung open limply.

Kinsman hauled him up onto the railess platform and strapped him down on the deck. Then he went to the controls and inched the throttle forward just enough to give them the barest minimum of lift.

The jumper almost made it to the crest before its rocket died and bumped them gently on one on the terraces. There was a small emergency tank of oxygen that could have carried them a little farther, Kinsman knew. But he and the priest would need it for breathing.

Fifteen Miles. Photo by Elena

«Wonder how many Jesuits have been carried home on their shields?” he asked himself as he unbolted the section of decking that the priest was lying on. By threading the winch line through the bolt holes, he made a sort of sled, which he carefully lowered to the ground. Then he took down the emergency oxygen tank and strapped it to the deck section, too.

Kinsman wrapped the line around his fists and leaned against the burden. Even in the moon’s light gravity, it was like trying to haul a truck.

“Down to less than one horsepower”, he grunted, straining forward.

For once he was glad that the scoured rocks had been smoothed clean by micrometeors. He would climb a few stepts, wedge himself as firmly as he could, and drag the sled up to him. It took a painful half-hour to reach the rignwall crest.

He could see the base again, tiny and remote as a dream. “All downhill from here,” he mumbled.

He thought he heard a groan.

“That’s it,” he said, pushing the sled over the crest, down the gentle outward slope. “That’s it. Stay with it. Don’t you die on me. Don’t put me through this for nothing!”