Marie and I spent over an hour getting into radiation hardened space suits, and then we spent another hour getting out of the ship through a hatch from the equipment module directly behind the crew compartment.

The view was absolutely breathtaking. A myriad of stars blazed in glory every which way one looked. The sun was especially blinding, but our visors automatically filtered the light to prevent that. We really didn’t have time to enjoy the view.

The first thing I did was detach a line gun from my utility belt and use it to shoot a magnetic cable attachment dart at a strut near the forward breaking engine. The dart pulled a cable line to the strut so that we had something to hold onto as we moved along the outside of the ship toward the engine. I also connected a safety cable to a pullout attachment ring at the hatch just in case one of us gets knocked away from the ship. I had suffered that fate once, and I made up my mind that it wouldn’t happen again.

We used our MMU’s (Manned Maneuvering Unit) to speed up the process of traveling to the forward engine. After fifteen minutes, we arrived at the location of the faulty valve. I began the tedious process of disconnecting the valve from the inlet pipe to the engine from the cooling system while Marie served to hand me tools and the new part. She placed the broken valve in her belt bag along with any bolts that were part of it.

I got the valve in place and tightened down. “COMA, page the valve to see if it’s functional.”

The artificial vocal response came after a few minutes. “The valve returns a ready signal, Ryan.”

“Great. Now we can get back to where we belong.”

I secured the tools and began the torturous trip back to the hatch. Approximately ten minutes into the trip, I felt a tug on my safety harness. I looked around to see that Marie was floating away and that the cable attached to her harness was halting her progress.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a panicked voice. “My suit pressure is dropping.”

That worried me. “Oh shit!”

I pulled on the cable attached to her harness to reel her in. When I had her within reach, I frantically tried to find if she had been hit by a micro-meteor. After a few moments, I spotted the leak on her right shoulder. I could see that she was loosing conscious because of the lack of oxygen. I reached into my safety pouch, pulled out an emergency patch and slapped it on the location of the tiny hole. That immediately stopped the loss of pressure, but now I had to get her oxygenated. I attached an emergency oxygen bottle to a valve on her suit and opened it up. Within a few minutes I saw her eyes open.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know . . . I think so . . . “

“I patched the micro-meteor hole and installed an emergency oxygen bottle to your suit. Do you feel any pain?”

“I can’t feel my left arm.”

“You’re probably loosing blood. I have to get you back to the medical unit as quickly as possible.”

“I feel lightheaded,” she said in a feeble voice.

“Hang in there. I’m going to speed this trip up.”

I disconnected our safety harness cables and used my MMU to power us back to the hatch. I was taking a very risky chance here because if anything goes wrong we could float away from the ship, leaving James and Alisha to their own devices.

I got Marie back into the hatch and dragged her back through the tunnel to the crew compartment. James and Alisha helped me get her down and begin the task of getting her out of her space suit as quickly as possible.

The tiny meteor had shot through her shoulder like a cosmic bullet, causing little visible damage, but apparently internal problems, judging by the amount of blood. We got her to the medical station and undressed her before strapping her into the unit.

After several minutes, the automatic doctor had a diagnosis. “The subject has sustained a penetration to the Infraspinatus muscle and has a severed Suprascapular artery. The artery must be repaired and the wound cauterized. Blood plasma volume must be increased.”

“Do it,” I said.

As the auto doctor went to work, we prayed that she would recover.

“I didn’t even know they had one of these on this ship,” Alisha said.

“They have no other choice,” I said. “We used it twice on our previous missions. None of us are qualified to render medical treatment other than for cuts and bruises.”

“You were right,” James said.

“About what?”

“About the fact that you two know what you’re doing out there. Your fast action saved her life.”

“How did a micro-meteor get through the system?” Alisha asked.

“I’m not sure, but I suppose it was because the shielding had to be turned down in order for us to even be able to move around out there. Left at full power, the magnetic shielding would have made it impossible for us to move around.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t take a hit on the outer hull of one of the modules,” James said.

“You’re right about that.” I looked at Marie lying unconscious on the auto-doctor table. “Let’s hope that she makes it.”

They both agreed with me about that.