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// Suit Breach 
// Story: The Eagle Is Sealed 
// by Cyanblackstone 
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Neil Armstrong really needed an aspirin.
He had just landed on the moon, become the first man to touch its surface—and then turned around to see an alien. Contact had gone about as well as could have been hoped, but now what was he to do?
“Houston, what do we do now?” he questioned. “We only have seven hours of air left now.”
Charlie sounded distracted. “Um, well, one second,” he said, before Neil could hear a muffled, “Yes, Mr. President?” He waited anxiously for a few minutes, until suddenly Charlie broke back into the line. “We’re going to take you off the air first,” Charlie said, more confident now. “And there’s someone who wants to speak with you.” Giving no explanation, he quieted, and Neil could hear noises of something being adjusted.
He stiffened as an unmistakable voice came over the line. “Mr. Armstrong,” it said.
“Mr. President!” Neil blurted.
“Mr. Armstrong, you have my thanks for dealing with this situation in such a calm and collected way,” President Nixon complimented. “And I can say with confidence a medal is probably already in the works for you, son.”
“I’m honored, sir,” Neil gulped, stiffening even further as he saw the alien watching curiously in the corner of his eye. “May I ask why you are speaking to me?”
“Of course!” Nixon said. “I’m calling because I need to tell you a few important things. First, no risks are to be taken with the alien or your mission. Let me make that absolutely clear. My number one priority is to get you home safely.”
His voice took on a humorous edge. “A very close second priority, however, is to get that alien down here, where we can examine and question it. We have an unprecedented chance here—the Soviets, even if they launched a mission here within the day—which is highly improbable—could not get to the Moon for three days, and they can’t intercept you on the way back home.
“We don’t know if that will be the case if we have to come back. Apollo 12 is being moved up as far as humanly possible, but this chance may never come again. We need you to use any means at your disposal—short of force—to convince the extraterrestrial to come back with the mission. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Neil said shakily. “I understand perfectly.”
“Good, because America is counting on you—even more so then she was before.” The president ended the conversation, and after a few moments, Charlie came back on the line. “Wow,” he said.
“Yep,”Neil agreed, before shaing his head. He winced at the headache starting to throb in his temples. “Back to business,” he stated.
Turning to the alien, he waved one arm in a beckoning motion, then pointed to the Lunar Module. He turned and took a few of the peculiar hopping steps preferred in low gravity, then turned to see if she had followed.
She had, but certainly not in the way he had expected. Large, feathered wings extended behind her, instinctively flaring with each bounding stride. Neil took a step back in instinctive surprise, putting himself off-balance. How had he not noticed those?
Unfortunately, she overshot her target by a few feet, and slammed directly into Neil.
“Falling, falling!” he cried in panic, flailing his arms to no avail. He fell slowly, taking in the embarrassed and anxious face of the unicorn (It really was amazing how expressive those huge eyes could be, he thought) even as he came into contact with the surface of the Moon fully. He felt a rock dig into the left forearm of his suit, tearing a rip, two inches long, in the tough surface. ‘I’m probably dead,’ he realized with sickening clarity as air began to hiss out of the puncture in his suit. Space countenanced no mistakes.
“Neil!” Both Charlie and Buzz yelled in concern. “What happened?”
“An accidental collision,” he reported as he twisted the heating elements to full, and then slapped a hand over the puncture in his suit, trying to stem the rush of escaping gas. “I’ve got a suit rupture.” He could almost see the air begin to condense and then freeze in a small, but growing plume by his arm. He could also tell instantly both Charlie and Buzz’s faces had blanched.
Charlie cursed, and Buzz said hurriedly, “I’m going to repressurize the LM. Get in here now—if we have to, we may be able to share oxygen for a little bit.”
His arm was already beginning to feel a little colder—the vacuum of space was leaching heat straight out of his suit now. “Coming, coming,” he said, stumbling to his feet as best as he could. He spared a glance towards the—what did you call a unicorn with wings anyway?—alien, who had an expression of shock on its face. It was quickly replaced by fear.
Obviously it at least realized something had gone wrong. Neil turned away fully and made his best time to the lander. He had to let go of the tear to grasp the ladder, and his arm now felt genuinely cool.
As he slipped through the hatch and into the LM, Buzz gave him a once-over. “Houston, it’s going to be close,” he said. “A patch isn’t quite big enough to cover the tear.” He grabbed the handle on the door, ready to close it and immediately jumped back in surprise, swearing, as the alien jumped through the hatch and into the LM. The already-tight space became stiflingly close.
Buzz shut the hatch, and spun to the controls, pushing the buttons that started repressurization. Slowly, air started to hiss into the chamber. Too slowly.
Neil checked his air gauge. Already, it had dropped a notch, and the needle was moving steadily downwards. It wasn’t much above half now.
Of more concern, however, was the fact that the relentless, near-absolute-zero temperature of outer space was systematically stealing all the heat from his body. He couldn’t feel his arm at this point, and his left side was cold now.
The heating elements in the LM were worthless until it was pressurized. He may not asphyxiate, Neil realized, but it seemed much more likely he would simply freeze to death before the air warmed up sufficiently.
Neither of the humans had paid attention to the alicorn—pegasus—being, but it had been paying rapt attention to the silent drama unfolding in front of it.
Something changed in its expression, Neil noted absently, as the air spewing out of the tear in the spacesuit began to slacken and he started shivering. It had gone from fascinated and worried to determined.
Then, its horn glowed with a strange, shimmering blue light. Buzz lurched away from it as best as he was able, but there wasn’t much room in the capsule and Neil couldn’t move at all. Something was going to happen.
Neither even realized that Charlie had been frantically calling to them for at least a minute. “Tranquility! What’s going on?” he demanded, but still they refused to respond.
Down on Earth, he threw his headset down in frustration.
On the moon, Neil watched with alarm as the glowing horn touched the rip in his suit. The nimbus of energy surrounding it was hot—he could feel just a little bit of it with numbed nerves, but he supposed it would have been a little painful had they been fully functional.
With a burst of heat, the light flashed painfully bright, blinding Neil even through his polarized faceplate. He was too cold now to do much than blink (he couldn’t feel very above his hips or below his chin now—it was at the least a moderate to severe case of hypothermia), but he heard Aldrin gasp. “It’s fixed!” he cried in bewilderment and elation.
The alien withdrew its head, smiling broadly, and Neil examined his spacesuit in fascination. It was indeed fixed—there was no sign it had ever been torn in the first place. It huffed broadly, a cloud of condensed water vapor puffing from its mouth.
As the heating coils in his suit began to make slow progress on warming him back up, Neil finally noticed the yelling of Charlie. “What is going on up there?” he was screaming in perplexity.
“Houston, this is Tranquility,” Neil said tiredly. “I’m going to be fine. The alien did... something, and it fixed the tear in my suit. I’ll live.” He could hear cheering erupt behind him. “Also, did I mention the unicorn has wings, too?”
“Right, copy,” Charlie said, too relieved to even really listen.
Neil said halfheartedly, “Well, I guess I got the alien in the LM, right? Perhaps not in the way we wanted, but it’s done now.”
Buzz said, “Your attempts at humor are really bad today, Neil,” in an equally bad attempt at some kind of humor. The irony was not lost on either of them.
The click of a phone came over the line, “Mr. Armstrong, you are one lucky man,” Richard Nixon said. “I thought I said that not endangering yourself or the mission was the first priority!”
“With all due respect, I didn’t exactly plan for a suit breach, sir,” Neil replied. “It just happened. Luckily, it turned out well and everybody is alive.”
“Again, son, you’re lucky,” Nixon reaffirmed. “But good work. And God be with you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Neil said, and then leaned back with a sigh. There was no removing the suits until the LM warmed up, and that would be a matter of quite some time. The alien appeared to be content to wait, perhaps knowing the situation, and Buzz was busy monitoring both him and the LM’s status.
Neil needed a few more aspirins than he had previously, but everything was fine.
For now, at least.