He gagged. Then retched. Dry heaves, hot acid bile spattering against the inside of his bubble helmet. Death’ll be easy after this, Harry thought.
The space-suited figure of the other worker was closer, though. Close enough to grab, almost. Desperately, Harry fired a few quick squirts of the oxygen, trying to stop his own spinning or at least slow it down some.
It didn’t help much, but then he rammed into the other worker and grabbed with both hands. The oxygen tank almost slipped out from between his legs, but Harry clamped hard onto it. His life depended on it. His, and the other guy’s.
“Harry? Is that you?”
It was Marta Santos, Harry saw, looking into her helmet. With their helmets touching, Harry could hear her trembling voice, shocked and scared.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
He had to swallow down acid before he could say, “Hold on.”
She clung to him as if they were racing a Harley through heavy traffic. Harry fumbled with the oxy tank’s nozzle, trying to get them moving back toward the habitat. At his back the mammoth tropical storm swirled and pulsated like a thing alive, beckoning to Harry, trying to pull him down into its spinning heart.
“For chrissake,” the super’s voice screeched, “how long does it take to get a rescue flitter going? I got four injured people here and two more streakin’ out to friggin’ Costa Rica!”
Harry couldn’t be certain, but it seemed that the habitat was getting larger. Maybe we’re getting closer to it, he thought. At least we’re heading in the right direction. I think.
He couldn’t really control the oxygen tank. Every time he opened the valve for another squirt of gas the damned tank started spinning wildly. Harry heard Marta sobbing as she clung to him. The habitat was whirling around, from Harry’s point of view, but it was getting closer.
“Whattaya mean it’ll take another ten minutes?” the super’s voice snarled. “You’re supposed to be a rescue vehicle. Get out there and rescue them!”
Whoever was talking to the super, Harry couldn’t hear it. The supervisor had blocked out everything except his own outgoing calls.
“By the time you shitheads get into your friggin’ suits my guys’ll be dead!” the super shrieked. Harry wished he could turn off the radio altogether but to do that he’d have to let go of the tank and if he did that he’d probably go flying off the tank completely. So he held on and listened to the super screaming at the rescue team.
The habitat was definitely getting closer. Harry could see spacesuited figures floating near the endcap and the big mess of girders jammed into the skeletal structure there. Some of the girders were still floating loose, tumbling slowly end over end like enormous throwing sticks.
“Harry!”
Marta’s shriek of warning came too late. Harry turned his head inside the fishbowl helmet and saw one of those big, massive girders looming off to his left, slightly behind him, swinging down on him like a giant tree falling.
Automatically, Harry opened the oxy tank valve again. It was the only thing he could think to do as the ponderous steel girder swung down on him like the arm of an avenging god. He felt the tank spurt briefly, then the shadow of the girder blotted out everything and Marta was screaming behind him and then he could feel his leg crush like a berry bursting between his teeth and the pain hit so hard that he felt like he was being roasted alive and he had one last glimpse of the mammoth storm down on Earth before everything went black.
When Harry woke he was pretty sure he was dead. But if this was the next world, he slowly realized, it smells an awful lot like a hospital. Then he heard the faint, regular beeps of monitors and saw that he was in a hospital, or at least the habitat’s infirmary. Must be the infirmary, Harry decided, once he recognized that he was floating without support, tethered only by a light cord tied around his waist.
And his left leg was gone.
His leg ended halfway down the thigh. Just a bandaged stump there. His right leg was heavily bandaged, too, but it was all there, down to his toes.
Harry Sixtoes now, he said to himself. For the first time since his mother had died he felt like crying. But he didn’t. He felt like screaming or pounding the walls. But he didn’t do that, either. He just lay there, floating in the middle of the antiseptic white cubicle, and listened to the beeping of the monitors that were keeping watch over him.
He drifted into sleep, and when he awoke the supervisor was standing beside him, feet encased in the floor loops, his wiry body bobbing slightly, the expression on his face grim.
Harry blinked several times. “Hi, chief.”
“That was a damned fool thing you did,” the super said quietly.
“Yeah. Guess so.”
“You saved Marta’s life. The frickin’ rescue team took half an hour to get outside. She’d a’ been gone by then.”
“My leg . . .”
The super shook his head. “Mashed to a pulp. No way to save it.”
Harry let out a long, weary breath.
“They got therapies back Earthside,” the super said. “Stem cells and stuff. Maybe they can grow the leg back again.”
“Workman’s insurance cover that?”
The super didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “We’ll take up a collection for you, Harry. I’ll raise whatever it takes.”
“No,” Harry said. “No charity.”
“It’s not charity, it’s—”
“Besides, a guy doesn’t need his legs up here. I can get around just as well without it.”
“You can’t stay here!”
“Why not?” Harry said. “I can still work. I don’t need the leg.”
“Company rules,” the super mumbled.
Harry was about to say, “Fuck the company rules.” Instead, he heard himself say, “Change ’em.”
