While Tsim is talking Amina through the process by which the two will repair the pipe posthaste, Adah sets herself to the task of getting Tiphanie to someplace safe and dry again. Her first thought is to throw a rope, but that is far too difficult a thing for the electrician to grab a hold of.

Her second thought is to attempt to move furniture. And that idea has at least some merit to it. Adah spots a heavy bench, eyeballs its length and the space consumed in watery danger, and decides that it will have to be close enough.

Alone, the project manager starts to push the heavy metal bench away from its intended location. The bolts on its two legs strain as she shoves against them with all of her mass.

Surprise shakes the foundations of her focus as another person’s weight shakes the bench against its bolts. One sheers off entirely and the end of the bench pivots on the remaining one.

“Together?” Vasko queries, briefly gesturing toward the remaining bit of metal between them and rescuing Tiphanie.

Adah nods agreement, unable to appropriately process his presence, but perfectly capable of accepting his aid. She gives a countdown, and together they shove hard against the heavy bench.

The remaining bolt, intended only to prevent the bench from scooting around by frequent use, snaps away with a pop that’s buried in the roar of water from overhead and the scream of metal on tile. They force the heavy bench to obey their will, and push it into the shallower portion of the current.

It has too little surface area to be immediately caught by the moving water. The two of them together with the mass of the bench itself keep it thoroughly planted.

It doesn’t quite reach the electrician, barely keeping her head above water. Tiphanie stares in toward the gate with a glassy gaze that sees, but does not perceive. She holds desperately to the grate below her, murky dark water swirling in eddies around her crouching body. Every fiber of muscle on her form vibrates with tension that does not fail and cannot be dismissed.

Adah lurches, nearly losing her own grip on the heavy bench. Behind her, Vasko shoves hard against it. The man who makes his home in an abandoned psychiatric clinic pushes the heavy bench further into the current, stepping into the shallowest part of the deadly water himself to do so. Adah doesn’t consider stopping to thank him now. She braces her legs under the arm of the bench and reaches further out over the water toward the employee who is supposed to be hers to guide and assist.

The magnetic treads of Vasko’s boots find little purchase on the false plastic tiles of the ring gate’s manufactured flooring. But they slide less than the soft rubber soles of a regular station resident’s tread-less slippers. And that is a blessing he cannot deny.

Vasko bends his shoulder to the task of moving the heavy bench further into the current. As it moves deeper, Adah can almost reach their target. But he can feel the current begin to pull the bench away.

That is not permitted. He gives one last mighty shove, pushing the bench further into the water. And then he leaps over the bench’s arm and lands heavily on it next to Adah. His added bulk sinks the bench before it can be scooted any further away from the target. Water spills through the gaps in its back, covering the entire seat and leaving him with nowhere to go to actually escape the current.

At least it should not get any higher.

With the last push forward, Adah finally wraps her arms around the woman who is barely an inch from drowning on a space station.

“Got her!” Adah shouts, and drags heavily backward on the sodden burden. Vasko grabs onto her coveralls and pulls her bodily onto the safety of the bench.

Tiphanie clings to the seat of the bench like a magnet to a bulkhead. Adah keeps an arm over her, providing some gentle comfort of a sort while the electrician vomits fear into the already filthy water that very nearly killed her.

Over the wire on her ear, Adah hears Amina’s quiet comment.

“Emesis is not the solution to this problem.”

Adah has half a mind to tan the carpenter’s metaphorical hide for that, but she recognizes that this is counterproductive, and also that the wire message was directed only to her. Private comments are not as much of an actionable offense as something stated directly to the other party. But the statement has its intended effect. She looks up in toward the gate and spots Amina and a stranger working to lift the massive pipe and correct the bend that rips its belly open.

The two struggle with the weight, but a lever point around a hole carved over a door frame provides the needed assistance. Thick straps, intended for securing cargo, loop beneath the pipeline. The two women are able to slowly, inch by weighted inch, able to lift the pipe into something much closer to its correct place.

Adah realizes that this is going to move the flow of water. And sure enough, it does exactly that. With the altered course of the arched flow, the depth around their little island of bench-bound safety increases. And the bench, despite all the weight upon it, begins to move again.

The moving target of the flowing water places the trio on the bench at greater risk, but it also brings the edge of safety much closer. Vasko decides that they have to risk it. He grabs Adah’s shoulder and points.

Wordlessly, they come to an agreement.

Vasko and Tiphanie squeeze onto one end of the bench. Adah uses the little bit of extra room available to take two steps before leaping gracelessly across the narrow gap of flowing water. Tiphanie shakes her head to aggressively refuse to attempt the same.

But the bench has started moving now, and Vasko is aware that if he doesn’t act immediately there is no option that does not end in both of them getting a free ride to a cremation chamber.

The homeless man grabs Tiphanie into an emergency rescue worker’s over-shoulder carry. He stands and takes a couple confident, quick steps before also leaping across the narrow gap of flowing water.

And he doesn’t quite make it.