Sphere

by Michael Crichton

Tired, Norman thought. We’re all tired. He watched Tina, who moved smoothly and continuously, adjusting the monitors, checking the sensor inputs, changing the videotapes on the bank of VCR’s, tense, alert. Because Edmunds was in the spaceship with Ted, Tina had to look after the recording units as well as her own communications console. The Navy woman didn’t seem to be as tired as they were, but, then, she hadn’t been inside the spaceship. To her, that spaceship was something she saw on the monitors, a TV show, an abstraction. Tina hadn’t been confronted face-to-face with the reality of the new environment, the exhausting mental struggle to understand what was going on, what it all meant. “You look tired, sir,” Tina said. “Yes. We’re all tired.” “It’s the atmosphere,” she said. “Breathing the heliox.” So much for psychological explanations, Norman thought. Tina said, “The density of the air down here has a real effect. We’re at thirty atmospheres. If we were breathing regular air at this pressure, it would be almost as thick as a liquid. Heliox is lighter, but it’s far denser than what we’re used to. You don’t realize it, but it’s tiring just to breathe, to move your lungs.”