Chapter Four: Black Mass — Part 1

It doesn’t take Jynx long to learn that a nosebleed in low gravity is a bad thing. She is slippery smart though, and starts exhaling only through her nose, so the blood won’t drain back into her throat, where it nearly choked her just moments before. Her heart is racing, as she has just woken up from the nosebleed, drowning in her blood. The rage of the storm outside is hardly a bother, considering that she has just coughed blood out of her throat and she’s now staring at it as it drifts away from her, destined to spatter against the distant wall. Only now that she is breathing, while her three best sleep, her heart rate slowing. The Blood slowly splatters into the wall, and Jynx ignores it. Only now is her attention brought to the storm.

She’s certain it’s been going awhile, the ship is held firmly against its wind, and she doesn’t know what to think about it. She can’t smell anything, but she knows by the tingle on her skin and the sizzle-pop of lightning outside that the storm is an unending fury of electrical activity. She can hear rain pelting from all sides, sounding off and funny, the sound competing with a furious wind. While she sits awake, careful to breathe in through her mouth and out through her nose, blood soaked rag keeping her from adding to the mess that has sort of settled just left of their entry hatch. Jynx listens for what seems like hours as the storm slowly dies down, leaving the ship in an unsettling silence.

Though she is the first out the door, leaving her sleeping lovers behind, she is not the first into the hall. Floating, working carefully along the guide, is Joe, who, sees her blood spattered face and is suddenly worried.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this figured out.” Jynx says, blowing into the rag.

She sounds like she has the world’s worst Cold, and Joe knows now that they have to get her into a normal gravity environment, and soon. He takes her hand, surprising Jynx, who is pulled along behind him as he works his way to the hatch. Joe opens it and first sees the distortion of stars, soon to be fading with the sunrise, bending and creeping unexpectedly. He notices a strange bend in his vision, and a reflective surface that seems to cling to, and have been pulled in with the door. It takes him all of a minute to realize that he’s staring through an enormous volume of water, and slowly, almost fearfully, he closes the hatch, the water pushed back into position much like taffy. Slowly he turns his attention to Jynx, who has just started to digest exactly what kind of trouble is sitting all around them.

“Looked like we were a hundred feet under.” Jynx says.

“I would say that is an optimistic assessment.” Joe replies, feeling as if every breath might be his last.

“I wonder if the oxygen exchange rate between water and air is enough to keep us lucid.” Jynx seems to be considering something.

“Why ever do you wonder?” Joe asks

“Ship was tight before it got put at the center of all this. We got nothing coming in if the water isn’t bringing it, so if we don’t close off everything and push on out . . . ” Jynx doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.

“Why do I get the feeling we brought this on ourselves.” Joe says.

“Fuck why.” Jynx grumbles. “What can we do to fix it?” She asks. “It’s not like we can place anchors and pull the ship from the pond in these conditions.”

“Daria seemed to swim just fine before.” Joe says, sounding uncomfortable.

“Daria had gravity to pull the anchor with her.” Jynx says. “Now all she has is water at 15 pounds per square inch, no gravity, no buoyancy, and constant resistance.”

“Where’s a NASA trained astronaut when you need him?” Joe says sarcastically.

Jynx doesn’t let it get to her. “Those rebreathers you found. They’re for diving, right?”

“We uh, adapted them to the ship. They’ll buy us a couple of days if we need air. Not gonna work out there.” Joe opens the hatch, sticks his hand into the water, and pulls back, tasting it cautiously. “Good news, it’s fresh water.”

Would have expected that, since we’re in a forest, and it rained. Jynx thinks but does not say. She doesn’t entirely remember how she knows this, thinking maybe ChoCho had told her. “That’s good why?”

“Less issues with dry rot once we get the ship to open air.” Joe says.

“Way to think ahead.” Jynx says sarcastically, then thinks quickly. “Daria.”

“What?”

“She swims well.” Jynx says, wiping the blood from her nose.

“Yeah?”

“We just need to get her enough air to make it to the edge.”

Jynx and Joe hang in space, Jynx thinking about how to get the air into a tank so Daria can breathe as she goes, while Joe’s mind is blank. He’s trying not to think at all, trying not to imagine the tons of water the storm left around them, trying not to fathom what would happen if normal physics restored itself, and the water came crashing down. Within a moment his breathing is slowed and long, like he is sleeping, and then he gets an idea. It is all dependent, of course, on the new physics, physics he can’t begin to understand. He opens the hatch again and blows on the water. It gives, and does not immediately return. There is no needed equilibrium between fluid and air, no required pressure. There is simply the constant atmospheric, pushing in on all sides, and the residual atmospheric pushing out. Still, the air is starting to feel moist, and Joe closes the hatch. He doesn’t want to test the physics to see when they will fail him; he merely wants to exploit the new laws at the most opportune time.

Joe’s smile causes Jynx some concern. “Dare I say, Eureka?”

“Only if you mean it.” Jynx answers, blowing gently out her nose and catching the blood before it can drift.

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