The Forever War (The Forever War, #1) - Joe Haldeman Page 0,17
what had happened. He looked at the heat exchanger, then plugged a couple of jacks into it and got a digital readout from a little monitor in his kit. I didn’t know what it was measuring, but it came out zero to eight decimal places.
Heard a soft click, Sanchez chinning my private frequency. “Corporal, this guy’s a deader.”
“What? Can’t you fix the goddamn thing?”
“Maybe…maybe I could, if I could take it apart. But there’s no way—”
“Hey! Sanchez?” Singer was talking on the general freak. “Find out what’s wrong?” He was panting.
Click. “Keep your pants on, man, we’re working on it.” Click. “He won’t last long enough for us to get the bunker pressurized. And I can’t work on the heat exchanger from outside of the suit.”
“You’ve got a spare suit, haven’t you?”
“Two of ’em, the fit-anybody kind. But there’s no place…say…”
“Right. Go get one of the suits warmed up.” I chinned the general freak. “Listen, Singer, we’ve gotta get you out of that thing. Sanchez has a spare suit, but to make the switch, we’re gonna have to build a house around you. Understand?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Look, we’ll make a box with you inside, and hook it up to the life-support unit. That way you can breathe while you make the switch.”
“Soun’s pretty compis…compil…cated t’me.”
“Look, just come along—”
“I’ll be all right, man, jus’ lemme res’…”
I grabbed his arm and led him to the building site. He was really weaving. Doc took his other arm, and between us, we kept him from falling over.
“Corporal Ho, this is Corporal Mandella.” Ho was in charge of the life-support unit.
“Go away, Mandella, I’m busy.”
“You’re going to be busier.” I outlined the problem to her. While her group hurried to adapt the LSU—for this purpose, it need only be an air hose and heater—I got my crew to bring around six slabs of permaplast, so we could build a big box around Singer and the extra suit. It would look like a huge coffin, a meter square and six meters long.
We set the suit down on the slab that would be the floor of the coffin. “Okay, Singer, let’s go.”
No answer.
“Singer, let’s go.”
No answer.
“Singer!” He was just standing there. Doc Jones checked his readout.
“He’s out, man, unconscious.”
My mind raced. There might just be room for another person in the box. “Give me a hand here.” I took Singer’s shoulders and Doc took his feet, and we carefully laid him out at the feet of the empty suit.
Then I lay down myself, above the suit. “Okay, close ’er up.”
“Look, Mandella, if anybody goes in there, it oughta be me.”
“Fuck you, Doc. My job. My man.” That sounded all wrong. William Mandella, boy hero.
They stood a slab up on edge—it had two openings for the LSU input and exhaust—and proceeded to weld it to the bottom plank with a narrow laser beam. On Earth, we’d just use glue, but here the only fluid was helium, which has lots of interesting properties, but is definitely not sticky.
After about ten minutes we were completely walled up. I could feel the LSU humming. I switched on my suit light—the first time since we landed on darkside—and the glare made purple blotches dance in front of my eyes.
“Mandella, this is Ho. Stay in your suit at least two or three minutes. We’re putting hot air in, but it’s coming back just this side of liquid.” I watched the purple fade for a while.
“Okay, it’s still cold, but you can make it.” I popped my suit. It wouldn’t open all the way, but I didn’t have too much trouble getting out. The suit was still cold enough to take some skin off my fingers and butt as I wiggled out.
I had to crawl feet-first down the coffin to get to Singer. It got darker fast, moving away from my light. When I popped his suit a rush of hot stink hit me in the face. In the dim light his skin was dark red and splotchy. His breathing was very shallow and I could see his heart palpitating.
First I unhooked the relief tubes—an unpleasant business—then the biosensors; and then I had the problem of getting his arms out of their sleeves.
It’s pretty easy to do for yourself. You twist this way and turn that way and the arm pops out. Doing it from the outside is a different matter: I had to twist his arm and then reach under and move the suit’s arm to match—it takes muscle to move a suit around from the