“I’m going to need you to check a few things for me,” I let Anni and Chip know, starting with the usual postmortem changes.
I tell them what to look for, and moving close to the female’s long-johns-clad body, Anni tries an unwilling arm. Rigor mortis is fully set, weightlessness having no effect on that. But there won’t be the telltale dusky discoloration caused by livor mortis, the settling of noncirculating blood due to gravity.
That would tell you if a body was moved after death, and in this case the answer is yes. In fact, the bodies haven’t stopped moving on the blowing air, and I haven’t a clue what position they were in originally.
“I need one of you to turn them very slowly so I can take a good look from every angle,” I explain.
“Wilco,” Anni says.
“While she’s doing that,” I tell Chip, “I’d like you to find the spacesuits they were wearing on their spacewalk.”
“They should be in the airlock.” He looks around to get his bearings. “Going there now, will tell you what I find.”
“I’d like to see for myself, please,” I reply.
“Copy. I’ll show you the suits on camera.” Changing his trajectory with the gentlest touch, he follows the lights along the blood-tinged ceiling.
Floating upright through a gory haze of particulate, he’s literally walking on air, passing through the galley with its Nomex bags of space food Velcroed and bungee-corded in place. He slings a left, gliding past exercise equipment that prevents muscle and bone from atrophying during long missions.
Snaking through another open hatch, he enters the airlock where two sets of disassembled white spacesuits eerily float about. It’s obvious that the Thor scientists hurried out of them, the torsos, pants, helmets and boots stirred by fans blowing.
“I’m wondering how long it might have taken them to return to the airlock, repressurize and then take off their suits?” I look around the Situation Room. “Because it can’t be an easy feat even under optimal conditions.”
“If they went out the hatch, turned around and came right back?” NASA says. “At least thirty minutes and more like forty, and that’s doing an extremely expedited suit doffing.”
Grabbing a spacesuit torso size small, Chip looks it over carefully, announcing there are two holes in the upper right side of it. He maneuvers himself so his body-mounted camera shows us what he’s talking about, and we can see the images on the data walls.
The holes in the heavy fire-retardant fabric are perfectly round and about the diameter of a dime. They correspond with the location of the two holes in the female’s upper right side and shoulder, and she and her crewmate bled out considerably based on the amount of blood I’m seeing.
I suspect that whatever hit the female crewmate nicked a major blood vessel, and she hemorrhaged, the blood drying quickly, most of it carried away by the fan-stirred air. I’m noticing right away that the two perforations in the torso of the spacesuit seem identical, as if made by the same hole puncher.
I wouldn’t expect that necessarily if we’re dealing with space debris that likely varies considerably in size and shape. Rather much like shrapnel from a pipe bomb, and rarely are the entrance wounds perfectly round when caused by that.
“Chip, what about exit holes or tears?” I ask as suspicions gather. “If you look at other areas of her spacesuit, are there any defects that might be from the projectiles exiting?”
“Negative, not seeing them,” he reports from inside the airlock. “But it was just their luck that whatever hit them somehow managed to miss the integrated impact shielding,” he adds as I doubt that luck had anything to do with it.
Next, he inspects the male crewmate’s spacesuit, size extralarge, first the torso, then the pants. There are two similar perforations in the right shoulder and arm, and one in the right thigh. They correspond with what Anni looks at in the lab as she levitates near the bodies, and the picture I’m getting is an awful one.
CHAPTER 23
THE CREWMATES MUST HAVE taken off their suits before making their way to the lab section where the medical supplies are kept. Perhaps they lived long enough to help themselves or at least try before they couldn’t anymore, and the implication is unforgivable.
“Their suits, the EMUs have holes in them, indicating they were wearing them when they were injured,” I summarize to the Situation Room. “That much is a fact.”
“Would they have survived long?” the president asks.