Delta Green - [68]

“I am depressurizing my cockpit now, Boris”

“Be careful, Aleks. I do not wish to lose my pilot.”

“There is Yuri.”

“Yuri has never performed a reentry.”

“You and your computer do that, Boris.”

“Still.”

When the panel readout reported that the cockpit was fully depressurized, Maslov opened the canopy. He took the hook of the twenty-meter nylon line stuffed between the seat and the fuselage and snapped it to his belt, then released his harness. A push with his hands lifted him straight up out of the seat.

Dodging the raised canopy, he pulled himself outside of the craft.

And became so dizzy that he almost vomited.

Without the security of a familiar seat and cockpit, hanging over an infinity of nothingness, the mind rebelled. That slim nylon line was all that connected him with reality.

He hung onto the edge of the canopy, closed his eyes, and fought back the nausea. It took several minutes.

Maslov looked back, and the sight of his weapons system officer strapped securely under his canopy helped to reorient him.

Through the faceplate of his visor, Nikitin appeared very worried.

Maslov nodded to reassure both Nikitin and himself, then carefully placed the soft soles of his boots against the coaming and shoved with his hands. His body rotated forward and down, and when the airlock appeared to be in the right place, he flexed his toes.

He sailed softly across the abyss between the station and the craft.

Almost too slowly.

He thought he might not reach his destination and would have to pull himself back with the tether and attempt it again.

And then he realized he might have aimed too high.

The airlock passed by below him and he could not reach it.

But Bryntsev rose out of it and extended a hand. Maslov grasped it thankfully.

Together, they descended into the lock. It was an extremely tight fit for two men in bulky space suits, especially with Bryntsev’s EVA pack in place. Bryntsev pulled the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it. He fumbled at a control panel, and Maslov heard the hiss of gas being forced into the lock.

It was unlit and so dark inside the lock that they could not see each other. Maslov almost violated his own rule and activated the environmental suit’s radio in order to talk to Bryntsev. The chances of their unscrambled conversation being overheard were too great, however, and he fought back the impulse.

A green lamp illuminated on the panel, then Filatov opened the interior hatch and Maslov straightened out his legs and floated into the station.

The interior was brightly lit, but the finish was rudimentary and crude, and everything was painted gray. Conduit and venting pipes ran along the bulkheads. In seemingly random locations were consoles and control panels. Life aboard Soyuz Fifty was not intended to be luxurious.

He looked toward the rear, into the next component, and saw four bodies floating. One of them was Corporal Filatov, still in his space suit, but with his helmet removed.

Following Filatov’s lead, Maslov removed his own helmet.

“Are they dead, Corporal?”

“Not yet, Comrade Colonel.”

Bryntsev and Filatov had utilized dart pistols armed with tranquilizing darts. Explosive firearms might have punctured the hull of the station. And they had brought along the tank of nitrogen/oxygen in the MakoShark’s cargo bay just in case they had had to breach both hatches of the airlock and had lost the atmosphere inside. The station had an atmospheric recycling system, but they would have had to re-prime it.

Yuri Bryntsev got his helmet off.

“It went very well, Aleks.”

“So I see. You are both to be congratulated, and I will see that the Chairman knows of your heroic efforts.”

They both nodded their gratitude.

The three of them toured the station, noting where controls and monitoring equipment were located. Each of the eight components beyond the reactor could be sealed off, apparently in case of a loss of pressure in one of the modules. There was a full library of manuals which would be of great assistance in learning the many sub-systems. Several complex scientific experiments appeared to be underway in the laboratory modules, but they could be ignored.

“All right,” Maslov said, “I think we should finish the transfer. Yuri, you appear to have mastered the EVA suit. If you would reconnect the antennas and the video leads, then begin unloading the equipment in the bay of the MakoShark?”

“Of course, Aleks.” Bryntsev did a forward flip. “I am beginning to like this place.”

“Good. We would like to have the radio scrambler first, so that Corporal Filatov can hook it into the system. Then, we will have communications, and I suspect the Chairman would appreciate that.”

Bryntsev pointed to the three sedated cosmonauts. “And them?”

“I will take care of it.”

Maslov took care of it by taking one man at a time into the airlock with him and pumping the atmosphere out of the lock. Without light in the lock, he did not have to look at the man’s face as he died, his blood boiling in the vacuum of space.

Then he opened the outer hatch, and nudged the body outside, giving it a final push in the direction of the Earth.