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be as helpless as a beetle on its back, especially with no one to help her upright if she tripped. Despite the low gees, the old suit was heavy and cumbersome.
About halfway (at least she hoped it was halfway, she now had less than an hour’s air supply left) she remembered that she had forgotten to contact the Copes back at the module to tell them she was coming. She tried them on the suit’s communicator. Nothing. She tried again: waited; and tried again. Still nothing. She could feel wetness on her face, not realising she was crying. She had never felt so terrified – and alone – in her life. Nothing Ogdan could do now would ever make up for this terrible ordeal. Clenching down hard on her teeth, and resisting the urge to scream, she pressed on.
It was with enormous relief when cresting a small ridge she saw the light streaming out of the Copes’ VC portal a couple of hundred metres away. She glanced at the meter: less than twenty minutes’ supply. She risked a slight increase in pace, and crossed the distance with a little over fifteen minutes to spare.
She reached the module, and with a huge wave of relief punched the entry panel with her gloved fingers. She waited for the Copes to respond by cycling open the door into the VC, but there was no response. She punched the panel repeatedly, to no avail. She could see it was working. The Copes were out. She was stranded, an hour from home. She could see the markers to the next module, but she had no idea how far it was.
It was at that point that she knew she hated Ogdan. She would hate him with her last dying breath; the lazy, self-opinionated, dead-shit of a man that he was. Well, she would be damned if he and the situation of his making were going to beat her. She would walk to the next neighbours, or die on the way. She turned away from the tauntingly cruel glow of the portal door, and turned to face the near horizon. She had never been along this route before, and she had to concentrate to keep sight of the markers. She carried on for another nerve-wracking ten minutes (by this time she was continually looking at the oxygen meter between clumsily running and trying to stick to the way markers), when an internal alarm sounded. A warning message, prophesying her doom flashed across the inside of the faceplate. She was going to die.
She yielded to despair, and began crying into the suit, lost in her own grief at her imminent mortality. Just one more breath, please! And another, please! When the final alarm sounded and she began to choke and rip at her faceplate in a frantic effort to take it off and breathe in the non-existent air, she was in no state to notice the beams of a large buggy’s headlights sweeping over her. She didn’t even respond to the vigorous shakes someone was giving her, for she was too busy slipping into unconsciousness and out of her body.