“Go ahead and take the ambient temperature with it,” I explain, not caring what the orbiter’s sensors say. “We need to check everything for ourselves as much as possible.”
“It’s twenty-point-five degrees Celsius in here,” or sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, Anni reports.
What we can’t do is take the bodies’ core temperatures. Were we able to do that, I would expect different readings than the ones we get when Anni points the infrared scanner at each victim’s forehead.
“He’s twenty-seven Celsius,” or eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit. “And she’s at twenty-five,” or seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, and I’m not surprised the female Russian crewmate is cooling faster since she’s smaller.
“What does that tell us exactly?” The vice president looks at me.
“It tells me that they’ve been dead in the eight-to ten-hour range at least. The best we can do is approximate,” I reply.
“Since about the time they were supposed to go out on their spacewalk,” Benton suggests. “Depending on when that was since there’s no video to tell us.”
“It was scheduled for half past eleven last night,” NASA says. “A little more than twelve hours ago.”
“Time of death isn’t an exact science, and we won’t have some of the same findings when there’s no gravity,” I explain. “But based on the cooling of the bodies and their extreme degree of rigor mortis, they died eight to ten hours ago.”
Next, I ask if Chip or Anni see something like a backboard, and in short order they find a folded fiberglass table inside a locker. Lifting it out, they flip down the metal feet, inserting them into the metal flooring’s receptacles.
“What is it you’re planning, exactly?” General Gunner meets my eyes across the table, everyone around it riveted to the sad drama playing out on the data walls.
“We need to see what they were hit with if possible,” I reply. “We can’t get them back home for a proper autopsy, can’t possibly manage something like that up there under the circumstances. We’ll have to improvise.”
EACH BODY WILL NEED to be strapped facedown on the table, starting with the male, I let Chip and Anni know.
“You’re going to have to be my hands up there,” I say to them. “And I’m going to keep reminding you to be careful about getting cut. I expect the projectiles inside the bodies to be fragmented, possibly quite sharp,” and I don’t need to add the other worry.
We don’t know what the two Thor scientists were hit with, and can’t assume it’s a material that’s familiar. Bluntly put, we don’t know what’s true. We also have no idea what we’ll find inside the bodies, and if it might be dangerous, as in radioactive or contaminated with something not indigenous to Earth.
The ripping sound of Velcro, and the rigorous dead male isn’t cooperative, as if trying to get away from his rescuers. Then he’s strapped facedown as securely in place as can be managed with his arms and legs bent, and I tell Anni and Chip to start by cutting through the right thigh of the long johns.
More formally known as a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, it includes three hundred feet of plastic tubing that circulates a gallon of chilled water, NASA explains to the room. But in this case, the tubing was perforated, the water long since evaporated.
“We’re going to dig out some of these projectiles, bits of shrapnel, whatever they are,” I continue to instruct. “You’ll need a scalpel, forceps, towels. Also, sterile plastic containers or something comparable. I need you to collect whatever they were struck with so that it can be examined in labs on the ground.”
Using scissors tethered to a string, Chip cuts through the cooling garment. The white cotton fabric floats away from the dead man’s skin, a swarm of more dried blood flakes released into the air.
“Now before we do anything else,” I continue, “let’s do ultrasound, see what we find. This will give you a little guidance, so you aren’t rooting around blindly. We’ll do him first, then take a look at his crewmate,” I explain as Anni floats over to the hardware locker.
“Which probe do you want?” she inquires.
“The linear one with a frequency of six to fifteen megahertz,” I reply.
Pulling a small table closer, Chip places surgical instruments on top of it, everything Velcroed so nothing floats away inconveniently, dangerously.
“Okay, here goes.” Anni has the probe in hand.