We're Gonna Have Some Fun Tonight

[Ethan Neufeld 0]

"Mine," she said. "Your feet are too big."

 

Ethan quietly snorted and smiled wryly, faintly shaking his head and shifting his gaze away. Pher was something else. And this, he thought as he glanced at the others and his smile faded; this may well be a bona fide suicide mission.

 

They could have made more probes on the defensive systems. It would have been a relatively small delay in the expedition's schedule and well worth it if their risks were reduced. But Captain Manning was operating on a different timetable. Ethan had to admit there was no guarantee that they would have found a better way if they'd kept probing. Still, why try cheating the odds?

 

He'd considered keeping silent and not volunteering for a second. Remaining on the Qob and letting the rest play like guinea pig commandos; then landing safely on Zoalus over the trail of their broken bodies. He had no reason to unnecessarily risk his life for them and every reason to survive. Courage in warfare was a companion of calculated risk, not recklessness.

 

The argument really hadn't worked. Duality was a funny thing. With the same sense of distrust, he couldn't convince himself they were truly expendable. That was the risk of having a bit of humanity, a moral fortitude conditioned to service and self-sacrifice. He wasn't contented sitting around; he always ran straight toward the front lines of trouble when common sense said to run the other way. Wherever turmoil emerged in the galaxy, he instinctively wanted to be there to deal with it and protect others. And if today was the day that trouble finally killed him? Well, calculated risk rarely came cheap. Warfare was a costly business and sometimes, even with the best calculations, the enemy wasn't the only one who paid the high price.

 

It'd been a relief when Captain Manning had announced that he wanted Ethan on this mission. Though he would have decided to go on his own, it'd ended his internal debate all the same and he didn't have to say a word. He was going.

 

It was time to set his personal conflicts with them aside. They'd be committed to this plan soon. It'd have a better chance of succeeding if they were all on the same page. From his seat in the aft of the shuttle, with the unqualified eye of a grunt he glanced over the modifications that had been made. An airlock built on site in just twelve hours out of a force field and pumps from the head: imaginative. But it was untested and he wondered how well it would hold up underwater. Thinking of it, he disapprovingly smirked at himself. Why had he relied on them to secure the diving gear? Stupid. No fixing that now; they'd have to make do with what they had.

 

There'd been a suggestion to use EVA suits and, on paper, it looked like a good idea. The problem was EVA suits were purpose-built for zero or low pressure environments. If filled to one standard atmosphere, expansion could make simple movements like bending a joint difficult and exhausting. As a result, EVA suits employed a layer that discouraged changes in volume and generally operated at only a third of the pressure found at sea level. But using lower pressure in the suit also required pure oxygen to promote the proper exchange of gasses in the body, and the extra step of pre-breathing before donning the suit to prevent decompression sickness.

 

It was a higher pressure environment they were entering under 100 feet of water. That would necessitate higher pressures within the suit and an air mixture that contained less oxygen and included inert gasses. Underwater, too much oxygen could cause toxicity and pure oxygen generally wasn't used except to speed decompression from significant depth. Adjusting the internal environment of a suit wasn't a problem. It was easy to do in modern EVA suits. Ethan had done it numerous times. In fact, he'd adjusted his suit during the hostage situation on the Verbistul, given he hadn't had the time to pre-breathe. He'd compromised on the pressure as much as he safely could. The higher pressure had reduced his mobility while handling the bomb in Engineering, but it'd been better than becoming physically impaired.

 

But the more a suit's pressure was increased, the more it worked against the wearer. Then there was the issue of floating. Given they were meant for low pressure environments that were also often zero-g, EVA suits didn't include ballasts to control buoyancy. Without weights, the suits would pop up and become trapped on the surface like soap bubbles. But, weighted or not, swimming in an intact EVA suit could be extremely tiring at best. There was the natural impedance of the water to overcome, clumsy boots and poor overall mobility caused by internal pressure. They could discard their helmets and boots once they reached the surface, but the suits would fill up with water and act like anchors for even the strongest swimmer. He'd hit that snag before - grace of a rock even if it did float. And if the internal pressure wasn't properly reduced before being opened, the sudden change, however small, could still contribute to decompression sickness.

 

Unless someone made an executive decision or had another bright idea, it looked like they'd be freediving. He caught Pher's gaze again. She may have simplified it a bit for convenience, but she was right. 100 feet was too deep. If they were freediving, the closer they could get to the surface, the better.

 

Decompression sickness wasn't overly common, but it was worth taking steps to prevent it. Not necessarily a product of depth alone, it was a result of too rapid an ascent from depth or rapid changes in atmospheric pressures. Diving in water wasn't the only cause; the principles were the same between water and air or a sudden lack thereof. With higher pressures, inert gasses dissolved in the body. Change pressure too fast and the body couldn't dispel the inert gases through the lungs, causing them to become trapped in the tissues as bubbles. A number of scenarios contributed to DCS, but the cause was generally the same. Rising too quickly from a deep dive or climbing too quickly in an unpressurized aircraft; ascending and descending repeatedly and too often in a short amount of time; staying in a significantly low or high pressure environment for too long; using improper proper air mixes; moving to a low pressure environment too soon after exposure to higher pressures. There were also personal factors to contend with. Even with guidelines designed to reduce the chances of DCS, the same dive between two different people could produce different results.

 

But that wasn't the only concern. They were ascending from underwater without air. A number of human divers had built incredible world records around freediving. Some had reached 100 meters or more in nearly 4 minutes on a single breath. The static apnea record on Earth had recently been broken by a woman at 12:05 minutes. But, overlooking cases where reaching those records had also caused medical issues, they'd had help and preparation: weights, time to pre-breathe special air mixtures before diving. Though remarkable, static apnea was conducted in shallow pools and didn't require movement or physical exertion.

 

They were underprepared and didn't have those luxuries here. Their ascent from the shuttle was going to be relatively short. But, at sea level, the basic civilian recommendation was to ascend no more than 10 meters per minute when deeper than 6 meters, and pause for at least one minute at the last 6. Military dive tables were less conservative in some cases. But with inexperienced divers it was better to err on the cautious side. At 100 feet their total dive time would likely end up in excess of five minutes. Maybe some of the better swimmers on the team could take it a bit faster and hold their breaths long enough, but not all of them. Holding your breath for long periods wasn't a mental hurdle that could be overcome in a few minutes, Ethan knowingly reflected.

 

Ethan had suffered from decompression sickness before and it was something he agreed they definitely wanted to avoid. The worst case for Ethan hadn't been caused by diving, ironically, but a zero pressure incident. He physically shuddered at the memory before he managed to stifle it.

 

Explosive decompression wasn't quite the swift horror that science fiction liked to imagine. The effects of zero pressure on an unprotected body were mostly negligible. But it might have been better if it was like what everyone imagined.

 

Maybe it was the fact that the human psyche was disposed to believe that anything 'black' was also super cold. But, in reality, the void didn't have a temperature. Your body didn't instantly freeze to death. Heat was lost through thermal radiation and evaporation as it sought for equilibrium; that took time and you'd still be 'warm' for some time after you were dead.

 

Despite belief to the contrary, human skin was gas-tight. There was no over-inflation to Stay Puft Marshmellow proportions. Your skin expanded a bit without a compression suit, but it still maintained its form and the internal pressure of your body. That also meant your blood wouldn't boil. Boiling was a function of both temperature and pressure. So long as the skin wasn't compromised, everything stayed where it should and your blood still flowed like any other liquid. At most, your saliva boiled from exposure to zero pressure through your mouth and nose. Not at a temperature that could burn you, but it was an odd sensation like you were eating Pop Rocks.

 

Your ears might hurt; in the rarest cases they ruptured. But more often than not your ears could still hear all the little sounds that vibrated through your body. There was a brief sound of the air rushing through your cavities until it was gone. You couldn't breathe. It happened swiftly, but unconsciousness was relatively long in coming; some lasted for a life-long fifteen seconds or more. During that short eternity was when the terror set in, but without air you couldn't hear yourself screaming. Eventually, you passed out and quietly suffocated to death.

 

If you survived, you wouldn't forget the experience. If you survived, but hadn't pre-breathed pure oxygen before exposure, there was the potential for decompression sickness. You might develop air embolisms from those inert gases in your blood. But both were easily treated or prevented, respectively, in a hyperbaric chamber.

 

The painful thing if you survived was the potential lung trauma. It was another one of those human dispositions: to hold your breath before entering an environment where there wasn't air. It was also the greatest mistake when exposed to zero pressure. Though your skin would keep you in one piece, the air pressure in your lungs instantly expanded with the sudden loss of external pressure. It got your attention. It burned like hell; it was like your guts were trying to explode through your face. Sort of like when a concussive explosion knocked the breath out of you, except that it felt like someone had stuffed you with more air than you could possibly hold and it all wanted to rush out of you at once. Combined with decompression sickness, it'd put Ethan in a world of pain and intensive care.

 

He exhaled and leaned his head back, eyes on the shuttle's overhead. It'd become something inspiring to breathe after that. The nightmares had faded a long time ago, but there were times it still made his skin crawl with a chill.

 

He pushed the unsettling recollection aside and glanced at his watch. They still had details to iron out for this ride. Nickles, Rosetto, Dracal, Pher, Macen: he would have preferred at least one person from the Verbistul's security department on their team, but the selection was up to Captain Manning.

Edited June 17, 2011 by Ethan Neufeld