Acid Sky by Mark Anson

time?’
    ‘Sure. I’ve got one last surprise for you though, and it won’t take a minute. Are you okay with heights?’
    ‘Most of the time,’ Clare said cautiously. She followed him down some more stairs to a small deck below the engineering level. He opened a locker and handed her a facemask and a long insulated jacket with a fur-lined hood.
    ‘You’ll be needing these as well,’ he added, handing her some gloves, ‘we’re going outside.’ He indicated a red airlock door, and laughed at her look of astonishment. ‘It’s okay, it’s perfectly safe.’
    ‘You’re kidding me.’
    ‘No. Really. We can go outside. We’re in the wake of the ship, there isn’t any danger.’ He shrugged into his jacket and pulled the facemask straps over his head.
    Clare followed suit, and Coombes checked her air. ‘Can you hear me?’ His voice came from a speaker on the front of the facemask.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Okay. Follow me.’ He pressed a button to open the airlock door, and they stepped inside. The door closed behind them, and he pressed another button to cycle the airlock. The airlock display changed from green, to blinking green, blinking red, and finally the steady red of the outside atmosphere.
    ‘You okay?’
    ‘Sure am.’
    Coombes opened the outer door, and a tremendous roar of air assaulted them. He stepped out onto a metal latticework deck that ran all the way across the end of the ship, across to an identical airlock on the port side.
    Clare followed him out of the door, and froze. The expanse of air opened to infinity on her left, and below – there was nothing below her, and she could see sky through the open latticework. The rear edge of the deck was curved, following the shape of the engineering deck above their heads, and a guardrail running along the edge was all that separated her from the sky. The wind pummelled her body as it swirled and buffeted round the rear of the ship, and it was cold , well below freezing. She reached out and clung onto the metal guardrail with her gloved hands as the world swayed beneath her feet.
    Coombes turned to her, grinning behind his facemask. ‘Now for my next trick,’ he said, and promptly pulled off the facemask, and breathed in. He stood there for a moment, before putting it back on again.
    ‘It’s okay for just a moment, it won’t kill you,’ he said.
    Clare looked back at him from where she held on to the guardrail. She could barely stand. She wasn’t going to give in and dash back inside, though. She straightened up and, keeping one hand firmly on the rail, reached for the straps securing the facemask to her head, and slid it upwards.
    There was a brief sucking noise as the air in her mask rushed out. The scream of the wind whistled in her ears. Coombes lifted his hand, palm upwards, miming breathing in. She opened her mouth and breathed in once, exhaled, and took a deep breath, properly. The air was icy cold. She felt … nothing.
    She put the mask back over her face and breathed deeply to flush the Venusian air from her lungs. She felt a faint sensation of breathlessness for a few moments, but it passed quickly. Somehow, the experience had calmed her nerves, and she summoned the courage to move along the rail and look down – down through the kilometres of empty air to where the cloud deck rolled past. She watched the scene for several moments.
    ‘You okay?’ Coombes sounded worried.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she grinned, looking back at him. She felt wonderfully, incredibly alive , and one thought kept on going round in her brain.
    She had breathed the air of another world.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    PART II
    Endless Sky



 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    ‘Come in.’
    Clare opened the door into the Langley’s small but well-equipped sick bay and found the medical officer, Captain Donahue, seated at a desk, typing up some notes on her console. It was the morning of the next day, and Clare felt refreshed after another solid night’s sleep.
    ‘Ah, Lieutenant