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" I think that computers today allow us one last opportunity to provide something like a level playingfield in America."
- William Gibson
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| Emergency Shelter | ||
| A small cubicle that provides a last refuge in case the spacecraft's atmosphere is lost. |
| But all this was of no use to Bowman. There was no one aboard Discovery who could recompress him. He had to reach safety in the next few seconds, by his own unaided efforts.
Fortunately, it was becoming easier to move; the thinning air could no longer claw and tear at him, or batter him with flying projectiles. There was the yellow EMERGENCY SHELTER sign around the curve of the corridor. He stumbled toward it, grabbed at the handle, and pulled the door toward him. For one horrible moment he thought that it was stuck. Then the slightly stiff hinge yielded, and he fell inside, using the weight of his body to close the door behind him. The tiny cubicle was just large enough to hold one man – and a spacesuit. Near the ceiling was a small, bright green high-pressure cylinder labeled 02 FLOOD. Bowman caught hold of the short lever fastened to the valve and with his last strength pulled it down. The blessed torrent of cool, pure oxygen poured into his lungs. For a long moment he stood gasping, while the pressure in the closet-sized little chamber rose around him. As soon as he could breathe comfortably, he closed the valve. There was only enough gas in the cylinder for two such performances; he might need to use it again. |
| Technovelgy from 2001: A Space Odyssey ,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Del Rey in 1968 Additional resources -
|
This minimalist survival room reminds me of the locker in which Gully Foyle barely survived the wreck of his spaceship in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
He felt through the locker shelves and located a torn spacesuit. It was the only one aboard Nomad and Foyle no longer remembered where or how he had found it... Foyle got into the suit. It would hold enough air from the locker to allow him five minutes in vacuum... no more. Foyle opened the locker door and plunged out into the black frost of space.
The air in the locker puffed out with him and its moisture congealed into a tiny snow cloud that drifted down the torn main-deck corridor...
Thanks to @nyrath for tweeting about this.
Compare to the escapecraft from The Ethical Equations (1945) by Murray Leinster, the
emergency space-boat from Revolt of the Star Men (1932) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the escape pod from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas, the life tubes from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson, the life ship from The Invisible World by Ed Earl Repp and the emergency lifeboats from Triplanetary (1934) by 'Doc' Smith.
'Foyle awoke. His heart hammered and his throat burned. He groped in the dark for the air tank which shared his [locker] with him and checked it. The tank was empty. Another would have to be moved in at once...
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
