The only thing a person could do was to inspect everything as carefully as he could himself, and have a backup for as many systems as possible. The suits were like that; with any luck, it wouldn’t matter if they worked or not, because they were the backup for the truck itself.
So they checked all the door latches and the window seals, then overpressurized the cab to 20 p.s.i. and waited for ten minutes to see if the pressure would hold. Trent checked to make sure the .270 in the gun rack was strapped down, and he looked for anything else that might be loose or get loose, but he’d taken care of all that last night. Donna turned on the radio and they listened to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and Lynard Skynard on KSIT while they waited, singing along to “Have a Cigar” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” When the station broke for commercials and the pressure gauge on the dash was still holding steady, Trent switched off the radio and looked over at Donna.
“Ready?” he asked.
She was the computer expert, so she held the laptop that controlled the hyperdrive. She checked its screen, then said, “Ready.”
He opened the stopcock by the door handle and lowered the pressure to normal again. Rock Springs was over a mile high, so “normal” was only 12 p.s.i. It felt thin after breathing nearly twice that for a few minutes, but they hadn’t been overpressured long enough to worry about the bends. He closed the stopcock, tugged his seatbelt tight so he wouldn’t bonk his head on the roof when gravity let go, and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do it.”