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The next morning Colin woke up early. He hoped Hannah would keep sleeping for a while. She would need her rest. It would, no doubt, promise to be an exhausting day for her. They had ended up returning to E-11, and Hannah had slept there. They had hoped to find a proper sized pressure suit for Hannah, but the previous occupant of E-11 did not own one.
Colin spent an hour or so searching E sector. Most of the crew quarters did not hold pressure suits. The few that did were the wrong size. There would be some in storage on deck F, but he did not want to go past the med bay; not without Hannah. Brother Anderson would be waiting. Thankfully, he did find a bit of food stashed in the crew quarters; some dehydrated fruit and meat strips, and a couple empty water bottles, which he washed and filled from a bathroom sink. It would be enough to get them through the day.
He returned to his cabin. He tried to read a book. It didn’t work. The words went in one eye and out the other. Finally, he went to E-11, and knocked lightly on the hatch.
“Hannah? Are you awake?”
He knocked louder and repeated his query.
“Uuugh yeah. Just a sec.”
“OK”
Hannah emerged, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her dark hair interfering as it fell across her face. Colin handed her a beef jerky.
“Protein to start the day. We have limited supplies today, since all the good stuff is now in med bay.”
Hannah looked only slightly disappointed. “Whatever, let’s get on with it.” She knew there would be a lot of hard work today, both mentally and physically, yet in a way she looked forward to it.
They managed to get passed med bay without incident. Colin knew that Brother Anderson was only trying to do his job and keep them safe, but didn’t want to sabotage his and Hannah’s relationship. He wouldn’t interfere further while Hannah was present.
Sector F was a bit of a maze-like structure, the corridors snaking around between massive pipes and cableways. Seemingly countless storage closets and cupboards were wedged into nooks and crannies between machinery, alternating with access hatches into crawl-spaces and narrow manways. They seemed countless, but of course, they were not. Someone somewhere in administration had a system, and had known the exact location and contents of each and every storage space on the ship, even down in sector F. Brother Anderson could probably access that system, but Colin could not. They would have to search the old fashioned way. It wasn’t completely random though. Colin knew there was an emergency escape pod bank on either side of sector F. Logically there should be some pressure suits stored near the pods. It actually didn’t take long to find the correct storage area. Once near the pods, they simply looked inside every hatch, eventually finding a deep narrow closet lined with pressure suits hanging on wall hooks. A few minutes later they had found one in Hannah’s size and Colin helped her put it on over her clothes. Then realizing he hadn’t brought his own suit, he grabbed one from storage as well, and donned it effortlessly. He then put on his own helmet, showing Hannah each step, before helping her with hers. This was usually day two of the safety training. Day one was all theory and background - boring stuff. The training allowed a whole day just for getting used to the suit, and they didn’t wear the helmet until after lunch break. He remembered that fact all too well. It was a really stupid way to schedule it actually, as he had heard of several occasions where a helmet induced panic attack ended in the trainee losing their lunch inside their helmet. It was almost sickening just thinking about it.
As Hannah’s helmet descended over her head, Colin noticed a slight shaking in her arms.
“It’s OK, Hannah.” He turned to face her squarely and lifted his gloved hands to cover hers, gripping her helmet and gently lowering it over her face.
“Look in my eyes. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just like a spaceship right? Exactly the same.”
She did look into his eyes. And somehow he gave her strength. Her arms stopped shaking. The helmet was just docking. Just like a spaceship. Like she had done a hundred times.
“OK?”
She nodded. A tiny nod, so as not to smash her face into the helmet, almost imperceptible.
“Alright, now here comes the click - OK?”
“OK.”
-Click - The helmet locked firmly into place.
“Now, let’s turn on your air - ready? It’s this one here, remember?” He pointed to the button on his own suit, and she copied his motion, crossing her right hand over to her left bicep and pressing the button.
-Wshhhh -
The air flowed into her helmet and she found its coolness soothing.
“Now take a nice deep breath,” instructed Colin, “nice and slow, that’s good. Just relax.” He talked her through a few minutes of relaxation breathing. She really was doing great. Few trainees took to the suits so easily, and Colin told her as much. His guidance, and more importantly his support, helped her enormously, and it wasn’t long until the pair were ready to proceed onto the cursory motion and control lessons.
Jumping, jogging, and grip were the three mainstays of pressure suit operations. Hannah reached a reasonable skill level in each of them with unprecedented speed. Mastery would take weeks of practice, but by the end of the day Colin was confident that Hannah could maneuver herself well enough that his own misgivings were quenched. This half-baked scheme of theirs might actually work.