There was no sound of escaping air.
It did not reassure Darae. S-6’s heat warning had been quieter than a pressure alarm, and lingered longer in her ears. A room did not need a hole in it for people to lose the strength to endure it.
Seo requested another photograph of the coolant instruments. He matched supply and return readings, flow indication, and measurement locations. Darae looked at the pouch before her. A sound, unused pump lay inside.
“How much would the new one help?”
“There’s flow now. Making it faster won’t give the heat somewhere to go outside.”
He gave Haeseong the same explanation. S-6 was a service module for brief periods of work. Twenty-three evacuees staying for an extended time, without the main habitat’s support, were outside its original operating conditions.
“Like pouring a big teapot into a small cup,” Darae said.
“What’s overflowing is heat. More is being generated inside than we can reject outside.”
Explanation required a choice. Open the pump pouch, or leave the working flow system alone and give other support first? After reviewing records and current measurements, Seo deferred replacement. Changing an unbroken part could add work to ventilation and cooling.
Darae added AWAITING ASSESSMENT to the pump’s function label. Delivering something that could not be used immediately felt like failure. But opening its wrapping without a place for it to work was not a handover.
Mujin received the passage-verification status. Mechanical coupling and sealing tests were complete. Before opening inner doors, rescue criteria required checks of both environments and the passage. One side’s urgency did not justify simply drawing air from the other vessel.
Through a small window, Darae saw into the connecting space. Another door stood at the short passage’s end, with a hand-drawn leaf attached. She could not see a person yet, but she could see worn paint around the handle.
They really were close now.
That did not make her the person who should reach for it first.
The Safety Office and medical support staff confirmed the necessary conditions. Seo assigned roles. He would enter S-6 to its designated work position and install and check one temporary sorbent canister. Haeseong would receive him as the adult maintenance contact. Everyone else would remain in position. Darae would support identification and handover from Narae.
The sound replacement cartridge, second canister, and pump would stay aboard. Without continuous-operation conditions for the main cartridge and a clear work space, they would not send everything at once. This handover was one temporary canister that could operate without regeneration.
Darae read its seal number. Haeseong read it back; Seo checked the physical item. The record described temporary emergency consumable support. This was neither the return of faulty 7-B nor final receipt of the main replacement.
The door-opening procedure began.
Darae held the canister’s handle so it would not rise in front of her. Seo checked separate restraint points for his body and the item before accepting it. One handle slipped free of her glove. She opened her fingers only after seeing it held in his hand.
She had done that movement countless times at the office.
Today, a single passage had taken so long to exist.
Warm smells came through the door: damp cloth and a tool cabinet closed too long. Even outside the briefly opened boundary, S-6 felt warmer than Narae. She resisted moving farther to see the people. Standing in the passage herself could block it.
Haeseong’s hand appeared, a small white bandage across its back. He did not haul the canister toward him. He kept his own handhold while Seo secured it. The black-lettered function label turned between them.
“The sound replacement comes after further preparation. This is temporary sorbent support,” Darae repeated.
He acknowledged. His face looked more tired than on screen. She did not turn an expression into a health assessment. She made sure there was a chance to speak to the medical team, then moved back.
Seo entered S-6. Once the passage cleared, Darae returned to her designated position aboard Narae. The doors were managed for each successive movement. Leaving them open could not make Narae absorb the heat of twenty-three people indefinitely.
Seo’s shoulder appeared on the interior camera. He and Haeseong reached the workbench. From farther away, Maru passed documents, without pushing off to fetch tools. An adult checked that residents’ restraints did not cross the new work route.
Darae straightened the cartridge box. She marked one item handed over and changed the remaining canister count to one. Unless she knew which inventory field had lost the little cylinder on screen, she could promise the same one twice later.
Mujin checked fuel again, comparing attitude-holding consumption after docking with the plan. Narae was not a car parked beside a wall, using none. Darae noted connection duration beside arrival time on her paper.
Inside S-6, the temporary scrubber began operating. Seo read its initial state while Haeseong showed an independent instrument. Carbon dioxide did not immediately drop sharply. Air needed time to mix around people’s positions; sensor differences also mattered.
“Will it get cooler now?” someone asked.
Darae waited for Seo.
“This captures carbon dioxide. It doesn’t remove heat. We’ll watch the measurements improving separately from those still getting worse.”
The other end fell quiet. She wanted to add kinder words, but did not. Less danger in one measurement did not make the whole place safe.
A short cough came from off camera. Seo turned, first putting his tool in its pouch. A blanket edge shifted. An adult checked someone’s restrained position and asked how they felt. Seo reported the change through the medical route rather than diagnosing it himself. Shared audio was lowered while the person gave their account.
Darae touched her wrist loop. Seeing inside still left things she could not do. Reading her own report more loudly at a quiet screen would help nobody. She found the single equipment instruction Seo had requested and waited.
Soon the adult reported that the person had drunk water and could converse. Medical staff would assess the details and any transfer need separately. Haeseong checked positions again. As one person changed the way they leaned, a neighbor’s blanket rose. Making one person comfortable in the small room needed two other people’s hands.
That little space came to Darae before the total of twenty-three. Even if they could not move everyone now, they had to ask who would find it harder to wait. She packed her belongings before the question was settled, so a terminal would not delay anyone if space was needed.
Seo requested the main habitat’s radiator records. External observations showed one folded and the other stopped partway out. Comparing cooling-system logs clarified the sequence: declining heat rejection, then evacuation to S-6.
They did not yet know which actuator component had failed. Nor had they verified pressure, power, and connection conditions well enough to approve return. One command to unfold a panel would not give all the rooms back.
Haeseong spoke.
“We used to send heat to the main habitat. Now we only have this small panel. It used to handle work equipment while nobody was living here.”
“We’ll assess whether that panel can handle twenty-three people and the equipment running now,” Seo said. “Forcing a regeneration heat source into the system could make it worse.”
Darae looked at the main cartridge’s label: CONTINUOUS-OPERATION CONDITIONS REQUIRE SEPARATE VERIFICATION. She was not pleased that the sentence she had attached at the port proved necessary. Some warnings could not be celebrated for being right.
On screen, Haeseong wiped his forehead with his sleeve. A bead of sweat floated away instead of falling. He caught it immediately with a cloth. For the first time, Darae felt the heat concretely in that one drop. The readings moved by fractions. People sweated between them.
Maru started to pass water, then handed the pouch to the adult. It went from hand to hand, limiting movement. The places where they had just verified faces became a route for water.
Seo drank too. He seemed to know that a technician who only told others to rest would eventually delay the work. Darae helped check his tool count on camera, so finding a missing tool later would not generate more heat.
Mujin put two displays side by side. Main habitat: return not yet possible. S-6: temporary sorbent support operating, heat rejection insufficient. Narae still retained a return margin. Things that looked solved along one line pointed in different directions together.
“What about staying here while we go back and repair the main habitat?” Darae asked.
“That needs entry verification and a separate work crew. If Narae takes on everything, we may lose our transfer and return options here.”
Repairing a home and moving someone somewhere less hot today could not fit on one cargo sheet. The flight in which they replaced a cartridge and went home had already ceased to be their plan.
The Safety Office would review additional support vessels alongside Narae’s priority-transfer plan. No other ship immediately appeared outside. Orbits, departure preparations, and a receiving berth all mattered. Darae told S-6 that help had been requested, without promising an arrival time.
Seo finished the temporary unit’s initial checks. Carbon dioxide was rising more slowly, with readings elsewhere still under observation. Temperature was 31.7 degrees. The same object slowed one danger while doing little about another.
He gathered his tools and returned. Haeseong read the fault-reporting items. Two adults, rather than Maru, would take inspection shifts. Darae checked the returned tools and touched the space where the canister had been.
They had handed over help.
Now they had to decide how to use the time it could buy.
Haeseong’s voice came through with the shared screen off.
“Can we write down an address for contacting Raon first? Some people are afraid that once we leave here, we’ll be people who don’t exist anywhere again.”
Darae took out a blank name label.
For the first time, a place where a person could receive a message mattered before a place to stick a label on an object.