Ahrottl’s breath came quick, her heart beating a steady but rapid pace, as the outer airlock door opened.
In
front of her was a vast expanse of grey metal, hovering in the void, and
between her and it was nothing but space.
Empty space, but for particles and energies that were outside her range
of perception. Empty space, but for the
ghosts of the crew of that colossal station that she imagined waving to her,
calling her forward.
“Securing
the line.” She said, and reached around
the outside of the cabin door, briefly dizzy from the scale of what she was
witnessing. She closed her eyes, and
felt with her suited paw for the loop beside the airlock door, and hooked the
end of her line through it, snapping it shut.
She opened her eyes and tensed her body, ancient processes in her
hindbrain gauging the distance and angle between her and the open docking bay
ahead of her. Her hips wiggled as she
crouched, and sprang forward.
She
flew, not feeling the velocity as she might in an environment with gravity and
air, but watching the universe slide by her silently. She felt a bubble rising up from deep inside
of her, pushing past her rips and into her throat, and she let out a wild,
chittering scream of exhilaration, wonder, and terror. She slid effortlessly through space, the
motor attached to her suit feeding out line in time with her velocity.
The
closed doors of the docking bay were approaching rapidly. Floating in dead space with no gravity,
turning effectively would have been impossible.
Reluctantly she fired a small jet on the back of her suit, slowing her
approach. Her kind was acrobatic and
loved to play in low gravity or gravity-free environments but she knew that if
she did not slow down at all she could easily get injured; she might be
weightless but her mass had not changed at all.
She held her forepaws forwards as she landed against the docking bay
door.
Ahrottl
glanced around, seeing something that looked suspiciously like a handhold close
by, on the frame of the gate. She
reoriented herself and let a small blast of her jet carry her towards it,
grabbing at it quickly before she slid past.
She reached back and grasped her line in one hand, then tied it to the
handhold, tethering her to both this station and the mining ship. Feeling a bit more secure, she nosed her comm
back on.
“Is the
pickup working?”
“Yup!” Came Gerry’s voice. “We can see you, and see through your
helmet. Is everything all right?”
“As all
right as it can be. How are you doing on
opening that outer lock?”
“We’ve
found what appears to be a control panel on the inside of the lock. We’re attempting to compare it to the other
panel that we found.” Mother Superior
said in her crisp tones. “Your time
might be best used examining the outside and seeing if you can’t find the
same.”
Aware
that her face was visible to the rest of the crew, Ahrottl merely whirled her
whiskers instead of screwing up her face and mimicking Mother Superior. She began to look around for other handholds.
The
outer lock seemed to be lined with them, at about two meters apart, each
roughly a meter from the frame. Others
grips were placed even further out, roughly a meter and a half past the first
row, and seemed to have even more space between them. Ahrottl moved gingerly, heading “up” (the
direction that her head was currently oriented), rung by rung, looking for some
sort of manual control or more lettering.
An
irregularity in the surface caught her eye; she moved to examine it. A square seam in the surface of the ship,
perhaps ten centimeters on a side, was depressed into the hull within easy reach
of one of the rungs. “What do you
think?”
Non-committal
noises came over the comm. Ahrottl
shrugged and pressed against the plate gently with her suited paw.
The
panel turned dead black against the grey background and images popped into view. A series of colored circles, each highlighted
with a symbol, connected by white lines in an arrayed pattern. Ahrottl nibbled on her lip while looking them
over. The symbols familiar ones from
previous experience with the alien alphabet, and they had a different quality;
angular where the others curved and flowed, blocky where the others seemed to
have some nuance.
“What
do you think?” She asked of the crew.
“Your
guess is as good as mine.” Maria
said. “Probably better.”
She
looked it over and contemplated it. The
circles ranged in color from primary hues to mixtures, a few of them similar
shades, and there were twenty two of them in all. The arrangement was roughly oval.
“Maybe
it’s a numbering system.” Timmy
suggested brightly. “They may have been
generated by a different culture, or created to look deliberately different
from the rest of their script to avoid confusion.
“So
this might be a number pad? Hmmm.” Ahrottl scanned it again. “None of the symbols are the same? A base twenty two number system? That seems…”
“Unlikely, given that they resemble
the Vessels, which resemble the humans and Zig.
Most species seem to have number systems primarily based on their number
of available digits for counting, with the exception of the Mauraug who use a
base six and the Zig who use a binary system now, but did not start with one.”
Ahrottl twirled her whiskers and
banged on the docking bay door in frustration.
“Come on!”
Mother Superior’s voice came over
the communicator, “There seems to be a change.”
A couple of the other crew members murmured
in surprise. Ahrottl, blind to what they
were viewing, asked, “Well? What is it?”
“There’s a sequence forming on the
panel by the door. It looks like a
series of symbols – similar to the ones that you’re seeing. Maybe it’s the entry code?” Maria suggested.
“It’s better than guessing. Can you relay the image to me?”
“I’ll take care of it, ma’am.” Timmy provided helpfully. Soon enough there was a small holo of the
inner panel floating in the helmet of her suit; she manipulated it with her
tongue and nose until she could see it clearly.
The symbols did seem to match, and it looked like a sequence, a pathway
from one end of the oval to the other.
“Now I just have to hope that I’m
going in the right direction.” Ahrottl
said, and began pressing the glowing circles in sequence. They each dimmed after she touched them, and
when she reached the end, the oval faded, leaving behind a blinking message in
the script.
“Any change?” She asked, and then saw the miniature holo
sent by the probe shift its vantage point rapidly, looking as though it was
careening. “It appears that the pressure
has dropped again.” Timmy said, as
Ahrottl saw the massive docking bay doors slide silently open.
“Well… that worked.” Ahrottl said, wonderingly, and swung herself
around the edge of the frame of the doors and began to propel herself
inwards. She floated past the ship,
trying not to give in to her curiosity and look in to the port, and brought herself
straight to the inner airlock. “I’m
going to unhook now – the outer doors probably won’t close with the line still
in them, and if they do, I’ll still be tethered either way.” She unclipped herself and watched silently as
the line floated away, at first lazily and then snapping to as the mechanism on
the mining vessel began to reel it in.
She licked her lips nervously and
looked at the floating probe beside her – a grey cylinder, wider at the center
than at the ends, with antennae and manipulator arms extending from either end
– and then turned her attention to the door and its panel. The sequence that had been there before was
gone, and was replaced by the previous image that they encountered. She pressed the light blue button, gripping
on to the handhold beside the inner airlock as she did so. As predicted, she shook a bit as pressure
returned to the chamber.
Ahrottl
let out a long breath and said, “All right.
Now I’m going to try and open this thing manually.”
Recalling
the sequence that the probe had touched that had caused the repetitive message
to play before, she began tapping buttons on the panel. This time, a different message appeared, and
she could hear faintly through her suit a different message being played.
The airlock
slid open effortlessly to a gruesome tableau.
“The Red Key…” Ahrottl murmured in her native tongue, and fell back on
her rump, dizzy and stilled, while the crew shouted their concern and confusion
for her over her suit’s comm. “The Red
Key…”
Coming back to this story after a break to write a bit, myself, this sequence relates to one of my perpetual problems: How much detail is enough? If you summarize this entire chapter, it is "Ahrottl opened the door." A different writer might describe the same set of actions in a paragraph. Yet more than just a few actions is happening. For one thing, the slower pace builds suspense. There's also the descriptive detail, which would be lost in a faster action sequence (which makes sense, the characters would be noticing less detail themselves). You also have to decide what the reader might miss if you left it out; they might feel cheated or even confused if you rush a transition between scenes. So is the answer a compromise? Probably not. It just seems to be based on the needs of the story. Is there something more that needs to be said, beyond the stark retelling of events?
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