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The computer slowly turns up the lights in the dormitory when it detects my movement. Every morning it's like I get a little sunrise, even though I'm so far away from the sun or any star, really, that would give me this experience of building light. And warmth. Usually I wake up on what I think of as a pretty average morning in the spring, because the temperature in the Hail Mary stays at 22°C, always.
Today, though, the movement the computer gets from me is curling up tighter on my bunk under the blanket. I feel a little chilly. Closer to early spring and it's not quite yet warm enough at night to leave the window open, that sort of thing. So, when it's 4:30AM and my room has gotten a little cold I wake up to close the window and quickly tuck myself back into bed.
Except I know darn well that no windows are open or I would die instantly in the vacuum of space. I stretch my legs under my quilt but quickly pull my knees close to my chest again, curling up like a pillbug. The tip of my nose feels cold.
Before I can bury my face too, though, Rocky tells me good morning from his bulb in the dormitory, where he always watches me sleep. "You awake," he chirps. "Morning..." I mumble.
Rocky gets that my mood can be a little different depending on how I slept, depending on what I dreamed about—humans do that, but Eridians don't—we talked about it. "You sleep good, question?" He's certainly more curious than apprehensive. "Hnn..." I only say, still trying to orient myself. Actually, my whole face feels cold, and any body part that I poke outside. "Kinda chilly in here," I say finally.
"Temperature in tunnel is normal," Rocky tells me immediately. Yeah, I figured, or I guess it didn't occur to me that it wouldn't be. That makes me sit up in bed now, though. I notice I have goosebumps on my arms before I even pull the blanket off. So, instead, I wrap it around me tighter.
I should say, while I feel off, I don't feel sick or anything. No sore throat or stuffy nose, technically, there should be nothing and no one on board to give me a cold in the first place. But I put a hand on my own forehead, anyway. Feels normal, I decide after a few seconds.
"Was there a computer alert or anything?" If something is wrong the ship would have told me. "No," Rocky says. It would have woken me up, too, wouldn't it? I look around the dormitory where everything looks normal. The lights have come on about halfway. "Um, computer," I just ask for coffee when I wake up, normally, but what's the harm here. I still haven't brought myself to expect anything sinister. "What's the ships internal temperature?" "The Hail Mary's internal temperature is 22°C." Okay, as expected. But somehow I still know that's not right. Indeed, as I climb off my bunk and hurry to the lab, with Rocky in the tunnel behind me, the floor is ice-cold against my feet.
I grab the IR thermometer from the table that I use to keep a check on the Taumoeba farms. With my blanket swaying away from me, the ambient air feels cold around me. I know it's not going to give me a good reading, however, so immediately I point the thermometer at the wall.
-2°C...
Oh, crud!
I freeze, if not literally I just mean not yet. "What!?" I don't have to explain to Rocky that my reaction means something is severely wrong. "Is problem!" And if something is wrong with my—our—ship, we're in trouble. I don't know how long the temperature has been dropping exactly, but the air around me is probably a whole 10°C colder than when I went to sleep.
It's like having the number on the thermometer to read jump-started my body into shivering. That said, I'm sure my body temperature dropped while I slept, too. I need to get warm again. My nose and my lips feel colder as my teeth chatter.
Rocky has gotten even better acquainted with my ship in the months we've been travelling. After working on my generator, he all but demanded I let him take a look at the other parts. However, I don't think even he has an idea where the problem is yet. Another thing, as I stand in the lab, thinking where the issue could be too, is that I stupidly stayed in my pajamas and under nothing but the blanket. I need to put on more layers. I also need to purge all the water lines before we drop below freezing, though—if one of the froze pipes bursts we'd have an even bigger problem. Ugh... where do I even start? My brain already feels slow and primal. It's telling me to hibernate or something.
Thankfully, Rocky is my brain, and he's an engineer. I really am so lucky to have met him. He tells me to check the rest of the Thermal Control System, first of all. Maybe an external radiator panel got punctured by space debris? As far as we can both tell, though, the hull is intact. Okay, so I check if the computer recorded any software error or if the batteries are dead, or if there's an issue in the coolant pumps or... Unfortunately, it's only getting colder as I flick through screens and screens that the computer shows me.
It takes us nearly an hour to figure out what's wrong. I also finally noticed that the dormitory never got any brighter than when I just woke up. The ship is only running down its own batteries. The computer thinks the heating is on but the thermal control is drawing 0.0 amps.
How do we fix that...? I think about wearing my EVA suit but the gloves are too stiff and bulky for doing precision electrical engineering, and if I make one mistake in my pure oxygen atmosphere a single spark could cause a devastating explosion. At least, I put on the underwear layer.
After turning off all the ambient lights and screens to save power, I'm finally sitting there with a flashlight and basically a box of wires as Rocky is talking me through rerouting the cabin bus to the dead thermal bus.
I think about the hot, hot astrophage, but they need to stay right where they are. I'm huddled against the Xenonite.
Eridians, similar to humans, have a range of around 30°C where their bodies function well. I know it's warm on Rocky's side, I don't think we have to worry about the temperature sucking out through the Xenonite. "You know, I'd be p-pretty," I try, "pretty warm if I had a little bit of your atmosphere." 210 degrees of ammonia have never sounded so good.
Rocky finds a moment in between instructing me to be appalled, frankly. "My atmosphere hurt you."
Yes, we both remember me getting burned... But for a good moment I blankly stare at the wire I have out, like I forgot what I was actually doing.
The ship and I have been getting colder and colder, and I want to lay my head down on Rocky's tunnel wall. It's a dangerous, demanding urge to just sleep as my body's core temperature is dropping further. I'm making myself small, sitting with my knees tucked up to my chest again. I'm also not shivering as much anymore, which isn't good...
"Grace!" Rocky pounds a full fist against the Xenonite and I jerk back to awareness. "You are doing what, question?" He asks, as I put the wiring box down next to me. My fingers are numb, so I instinctively shove my hands into my armpits. "Give me a minute," I sigh. My breath fogs in front of my face.
"You are cutting second from left wire." "What?" Rocky demands, "Cut second from left wire. You say also." Ugh. My brain is so slow. I pick the box up again.
"Okay..." I need protocol, redundancy. "I am cutting the wire second from the left."
Rocky watches me do so. He's practically leaning over my shoulder. "Good good. You check voltage." "I am checking the voltage." Talking out loud forces my focus. That's why I sometimes talk to myself, I've explained to him, and that's what works right now. "Voltage is what number, question?" "The voltage is zero."
In the end, we do it and every remaining scrap of electrical current flows into the thermal controls. Rocky did it. I'm basically the robot arm he had on the outside of his ship. I feel like I did a whole workout routine, though. Now I can give in to my body's overwhelming need to shut my eyes.
"Grace." Again with the tapping, he makes me feel like a fish in an aquarium. I groan but Rocky ignores my non-response. "Check airlock."
I scramble to be on my hands and knees, crawling on the cold hard floor. There's something in the airlock about as big as my whole hand and rectangular, kind of flat. I don't know when Rocky put it in there, but against my better judgement I don't let the airlock cool off like I usually do. Actually, it's my good judgement right now.
The item is kind of...floppy. I reach in and at first it's really not even warm. As soon as it spends a few seconds in my atmosphere, however, it's getting warm.
"What is that?" "Iron, carbon, sodium." And fabric from one of his canvas-like bags.
Oh. I snigger. "You made me a hand warmer?" "It work in you air." "Yes." It's a pretty simple chemical reaction that didn't get going until it came into contact with the oxygen on my side. "Thank you." I change it between my hands, it shouldn't burn me. I should also be careful about warming up too quickly, being as cold as I am.
"Ship will warm up soon," Rocky reassures me. "Yeah." Still, I'm going to stay huddled up right next to his tunnel.