LJ Idol Season 9 Week 6 - Step On A Crack
This is more from the same world. Kara's gotten a hold of my muse and won't let her go. You can see previous episodes at Week 4 and Week 5.
- - -
Kara's mind swam up from dreams of oceans and fish, swimming and leaping, to a distressed call for help. She sat up quickly and banged her head against a bulkhead.
“Dammit! Every time? Really?”
Kara rubbed her forehead as she rolled out of the bunk and onto the deck, making sure she was clear before standing. She went to the head to drain her bladder and was walking back to her bunk, eyeing the bulkhead before she rolled back in, when the distressed squeal sounded in her head again.
'Keelie? Is that you? Is something wrong?' Just as her thoughts could follow Eekeelie fathoms down in the ocean, they crossed the ship with the greatest of ease.
'Come Kkkkkkkkara... Come! Scared!' The multiple K sound in Kara's name was a warning. Eekeelie hadn't done that in her thoughts in years.
Kara tried to calm Eekeelie as she dashed out the door and ran into the hall. 'Calm down Keelie, and tell me what's wrong!'
'Air bad. Sounds “ssssssss”. Scared Kkkara. Come. PLEASE!'
'I'm on my way Keelie, just calm down. Please calm down. You're making my blood pressure go up!'
Kara was glad that it was the middle of the night shift. No one in the hallways to slow her down meant that she made good time from the passengers' area to the cargo hold. Dammit, if they had just let her bunk in Eekeelie's area, she would have been there already. But nooooo, we had to hold to the captain's sense of propriety: people in the people areas, animals are cargo. Passenger areas are shielded and much safer than...
Her thoughts spun to stop as she hit the button to enter Eekeelie's tank room and the door didn't move. “What the...?” She slammed the emergency entrance panel open and pumped until the door was open enough for her to slide through. The breeze coming in with her told her that something was definitely wrong. The air handling system was too well designed for breezes.
'Eekeelie? I'm here. Tell me where?' Her nerves were showing now. She had never called Eekeelie by her full name, not since they became friends.
'Kkkkkkara...' The name echoed in the room and in her mind. 'My tank. Next to my tank.'
Kara moved through the room, skirting the other tanks. As she closed in on Eekeelie's tank, she started searching the area for something wrong. Something that would scare Eekeelie enough to wake her. Something that would make the air bad and make a hissing sound. The automated lighting did not help her search, being dim for the night shift to help maintain their circadian rhythms.
“Sunnuva...!” She had found it.
There was a teeny tiny hole in the outer bulkhead. It couldn't be more than 1 centimeter across. But there it was, leading straight to the vacuum outside. No wonder the air was bad. With the door sealed, the oxygen had been leaking out, possibly for hours.
“It's okay Keelie, I've got this.” She ran to the emergency station and pulled out a thin, flexible bit of aluminum and rubber composite. Running back to the hole, she stripped the protective backing off of the adhesive side and slapped it down. She slumped against Eekeelie's tank in relief as it seemed to hold.
“I'll have to get the maintenance crew in here to repair that hole, Keelie, but I think it can wait until morning. I'm going to head back to bed, and ...”
Kara suddenly realized that she hadn't solved all of the problems. It hit her that she was standing in a thin layer of water when the floor should be perfectly dry.
Eekeelie must have caught the edge of her thoughts because she dove to a spot in her tank and poked it with her nose. 'Here, Kara?'
“Oh, holy mother of... Keelie, you have a crack in your tank! Stop poking at it, you'll make it worse!”
Kara ran back to the emergency station for another patch. She repeated her actions, but wasn't at all sure how well this one would hold with the tons of water pressure on the other side.
“I've got to get maintenance down here now, Keelie. I don't think this one is going to stay fixed.”
She leaned down to inspect the patch on the tank. Yep, there was a tiny rivulet of water sneaking through. She was definitely going to have to call maintenance right away. Then a small hiss, the softest of noises caught her attention.
Scared to look and knowing she would have to anyway, Kara turned to look at the bulkhead. Small as the hole had been, it was not longer fully sealed and the patch had been pulled partway through into the vacuum.
“Shit.”
She was going to have to find some way to brace both patches or Eekeelie would die a very uncomfortable death - not to mention the other dolphins in the tank room. Kara looked around quickly but couldn't find anything that would serve. The door had sealed itself again, and there was no emergency exit panel to pump it open from this side. For the moment, Kara was on her own.
'Okay, ' she thought. 'No problem. I need to press against both patches until someone gets here. It's not long until the morning shift, I can hold out that long.”
Kara slid down the tank and pressed her back against the crack. The distance between tank and bulkhead was almost perfect. She could press her boot against the bulkhead and press on the tank with her back. The hissing sound seemed to diminish, but the rivulet of water seeping down her back told her that she wasn't keeping Eekeelie's tank from leaking. And she had no way of telling if the crack was growing, either.
'That tears it,' she thought, and stripped down to her skivvies. Kara folded the jumpsuit as best she could and placed it over the hole in the bulkhead, then plopped her buttock down on it. She pressed her boot on the crack in Eekeelie's tank and locked her knee in place. Perfect fit. The trickle seemed to have stopped. So had the hissing, and Kara felt a slight, but not uncomfortable tugging on her backside through the fabric.
'I think we'll be okay until maintenance gets here Keelie. I think I've stopped both leaks. I'm tired though. Can you help me stay awake? Talk to me? I don't want my leg to bend. If it bends, the leaks will start again.'
Eekeelie chattered to Kara about the ocean back home, about the oceans they were going to explore soon. About the nasty fish that she'd had to endure on this voyage since they'd woken her. About the odd dreams she'd had while she was cold. Eekeelie loved to talk and it was rare that Kara let her talk without interrupting.
'Keelie, can you 'hear' Dr. Hiller?'
Eekeelie concentrated for a moment. Kara could almost see her furrowing her brow. “Hear, but not talk. He dreams.”
'You need to wake him Keelie. I can't stay awake much longer, and I need help. Can you tell him to come help me?'
'I will try Kkkkkara. He dreams happy. Hard to wake from happy dreams. I will try.'
'That's good Keelie. Wake him. Tell him we need him. Tell him...'
- - -
Kara awoke to a bright light shining directly into her eyes. She tried to move her arm to cover it but found that she could not. Squinting her eyes, she looked around the room. Sick bay. Okay, I'm in sick bay. What the hell...?
'Keelie?'
'Kara! You are awake!'
Kara heard the echoes of Eekeelie joyfully squeaking and dancing around her tank in her mind. The night's events rushed back to her.
'Your tank?'
'Is fixed. Doctor man woke, I told. He came. Carried you to people doctor. Fix-it men fix tank and wall. You sleep for long time!” Eekeelie made it sound like an accusation.
'I'm sorry Keelie. I couldn't wake up.'
'I know. Doctor man tell me people doctor make you sleep. You have strange dreams Kara. No fish, no ocean. Just doctor man.'
Kara sent an embarrassed, 'Hush. It's not nice to talk about someone's dreams Keelie.'
The door opened on Dr. Hiller. His concerned face peered in at Kara as he caught his breath. “Eekeelie was happy squealing. I had hoped that meant you were awake.”
Kara smiled a nervous smile. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
'Not okay Kara?'
'Not okay Keelie.'
'Not even when his happy dreams are Kara dreams?'