Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (13 page)

           
If you were
in a bad mood, she decided, the sleep module could be a depressing place.
Because of Silver Tower’s lower than Earth- normal atmospheric density, and
because the real noisemakers on the station—the four attitude-adjustment
thrusters—were almost two hundred yards away on the ends of the station’s
center beam, the station was already a very quiet place to be. But the sleep
module, which was well insulated and isolated from most of the station’s
activity, was even quieter; and, despite its light, cheery atmosphere, its
plants and its decorations, it resembled a mausoleum. With three groups of two
horizontal telephone-booth-sized curtained sleep chambers on each side of the module,
she could not suppress the thought of rows of caskets stacked all around her.

           
Putting the
sleep chambers out of her mind, Ann retrieved a bathrobe and headed for her
PHS, personal hygiene station.

           
Showers in
space were little more than complicated sponge baths. She first donned a pair
of plastic eye protectors, like sunbathers or swimmers wear, then wet a
washcloth with a stream of water. As she directed a short stream of warm water
along her body, the blobs of water that didn’t shoot out in all directions like
soft BBs made eerie amoeba-like puddles. The puddles moved everywhere—up her
back, up her legs, under her arms—as if they truly did have tiny little legs.

           
Next she
sprayed a little liquid soap on the washcloth, scrubbed herself with the cloth and
a handy water blob, then rinsed. Even a relaxed vacuum shower used about five
gallons of water; the occupant might actually drown in floating water blobs if
there was more than five gallons of water loose in the shower.

           
Before
opening the shower door and reaching for a towel, she activated a
rubber-covered button. A powerful fan built into the shower floor sucked the
water blobs from their orbits all around her down to collectors in the floor.
She swept a few persistent blobs from the shower walls, took off the plastic
eye protectors, opened the stall and reached for a towel. A wide mirror mounted
on the wall caught her reflection, and as she had done three weeks before in
the visiting officer’s quarters back in Vandenburg she stopped to take stock. Space
was
murder
on a woman. Even though
daily exercise had kept her face naturally lean, fluids and fat cells had
redistributed themselves, giving her a slightly Oriental look, which contrasted
with a noticeable increase in height—microgravity had awarded her three extra
inches—and a loss in body weight of about six pounds.

           
Well, maybe
as usual she was too hard on herself, but she certainly didn’t feel too
desirable at the moment, although normal female desires were intact. Part of
it, she knew, was that her work on Skybolt had gone forward in fits and starts,
with more problems to overcome than she’d anticipated. Any time her work was
not going well her self-image took a hit. She knew it was irrational to link
her desirability as a woman with her progress in the laboratory, but she
couldn’t separate the two.... She had been using her intelligence and
professional acumen to win acceptance for so long.

           
Telling
herself to cut it out, she promptly ignored her own injunction, wondering what
the station’s commander, Brigadier General Jason Saint-Michael, thought of her
work so far. A strange man, Saint-Michael. Difficult to get a fix on.
Considering what Colonel Walker had told her about the general’s sponsorship of
her project, she had expected a warm welcome from him. But their first meeting
the day after she arrived had been a very perfunctory affair indeed. When the
conversation turned briefly to the laser, he had shown little enthusiasm. It
seemed he was preoccupied with something else and not really listening to what
she had said.

           
As she
pulled on a fresh, powder-blue flight suit and set off for the station’s
galley, she mentally reviewed what else she’d learned about Saint-Michael in
the short time she’d been here. Most of her information had come from the talkative
engineering chief, Wayne Marks. The way Marks told it, Saint-Michael was a
legend in Space Command—what some called a “fast burner.” After graduating at
the top of his pilot class he’d made captain easily and become an Air Training
Command instructor pilot. From ATC it was on to Air Command and Staff
college
at Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama
,
where he wrote a paper laying out fundamentals of what would later be called
the United States Space Command, an organization that would control
America
’s
space-based defensive armaments.

           
Saint-Michael’s
paper somehow found its way to the desk of the president, who liked what he
read, and Saint-Michael, at age forty, found himself with a general’s star and
stewardship of the nascent Space Command—an organization that at the time
existed only on paper. How Saint-Michael was able to build up Space Command to
its present level was never precisely clear to anyone outside the inner circle
of power, but it was said that the general, by sheer charismatic force, had eventually
been able to make converts out of his strongest adversaries. It seemed he had
that sort of effect on people.

           
At least
that was Marks’s version. For her part Ann, feeling a bit let down, she
admitted, by her nonreception, had failed to discern any special magnetism,
animal or otherwise, in the man. He was efficient, no question, in complete
command of the myriad operations aboard
Silver
Tower
. But there was also
a remoteness
about him, a detached air edging on
imperiousness that tended to leave her cold. If indeed he was a fast burner, he
hadn’t turned any of his heat her way....

           
She moved
through the cargo docking area and across to the connecting tunnel leading to
the primary docking module. As usual she stopped and admired the spectacular
view of
Silver
Tower
orbiting above planet earth. The most eerie sight was space itself—a deep,
pure, haunting blackness that was remarkable for its uniformity, its lack of
gradation. As a child growing up in
Massachusetts
she had always felt insignificant somehow, watching an approaching thunderstorm
darken the landscape. During the summers she had often camped in the
Maine
woods, where it had been so dark she literally hadn’t been able to see her hand
in front of her face. But space was
a
a million times
more so. The darkness was
total,
absolute, shrinking, swallowing everything in it. Space somehow seemed like a
living thing, like two giant hands cupped together around the tiny station,
cutting out all air and light....

           
It took
less than a minute for Ann to reach the galley and begin the delicate task of
making coffee: put “coffee bag” into an insulated drinking cup, snap lid on,
watch as hot water is injected in cup. By the numbers, like so much else around
here.

           
“One for
me, too, please,” a deep voice called out behind her. She turned and saw Jason
Saint-Michael floating through the hatch.

           
“Good
morning, General,” Ann said. As she placed a coffee bag into another cup, she
watched the powerfully built officer plant his feet on a Velcro pad six feet
away and stand with arms crossed.

           
“I take
mine black,” he said.

           
She nodded
and reached for the first cup of coffee, which had just finished. She tossed
the cup over to Saint-Michael, noticing with satisfaction that it sailed
directly into his hand. “You’re really becoming a pro at this.”

           
“Fixing
coffee isn’t exactly high-tech, General.”

 
         
“How’s the space-sickness?”

           
She looked
at him.
Why the sudden interest in her?
“All right. I still feel the ‘leans’ when I move upside-down but the nausea is
going away.”

           
“It takes
some people longer to adapt.” He seemed to study her for a long moment, then
asked: “And how’s life on the station going?”

           
“Life? As
opposed to work?”

           
“I guess
that’s what I mean. I know there have been some problems getting the laser
ready for the first beam test, but maybe you’re worrying too much. You stay off
by yourself when you’re not working on Skybolt....”

           
“Does that
worry you?”

           
“It does,
frankly. You don’t have to be a shrink to realize that someone who stays by
herself so much may be having trouble coping. Problems like that get
exaggerated in space. Up here we’re all our brother’s keeper   
”

           
Ann took a
sip of coffee (actually “sipping” with a strawlike drink tube on the cup was
very difficult) and squinted as the liquid stung her throat. “I’m sure you’re
right but I don’t think I’m a candidate for special treatment—”

           
“Anyone
hassling you, bothering you in any way?” he persisted. “I know being the only
female on the station can be a little awkward—”

           
“You
know what it’s like?” She smiled
when she said it.

           
“Well, I’m
guessing it’s a little like being the only general officer on this station.” He
didn’t return the smile. The lady seemed pretty damn defensive.... “I can’t
exactly be ‘one of the boys’ around here, but I can’t afford to alienate
anyone, either. I walk a tightrope, which I
imagine
you have to do, too.... Look, I’m just trying to help. Sorry if I’m out of
line.” He watched her for a moment. “You don’t much like it up here, do you?”

           
“What I
like doesn’t matter. I also don’t want any special treatment, okay, General? I
have a job to do—and that’s what matters ”

           
An awkward
silence, then: “You’re really very attractive, you know.”

           
She just
looked at him, started to say something, then set down her coffee cup on the
Velcro counter. “General, if you really knew what it’s like to be the only
female on this station, you wouldn’t have just said that.” She pushed off the
floor, floated past him out through the galley hatch.

 
         
He watched her receding form, shook
his head. Way to go, Jason. You really can be an ass.

           
“Attention
on the station, two minutes... mark. Report by station when secure for test.”

           
Ann took
one last sip of water from the squeeze bottle, then stuck it on a Velcro strip
on the ceiling. On earth she might have squirted the rest of the water down her
shirt to help battle the heat and perspiration, but in space such a luxury was
impossible. The Skybolt control module was oppressively warm, stifling; the
equipment air conditioning and cooling fans may have been keeping her
instruments comfortable, but the module’s lone occupant felt as though she was
in a sauna.

           
She sat at
her tiny control station completely surrounded by equipment. The only
illumination came from the twelve-inch computer monitor in front of her. A
narrow corridor, too narrow for two people to pass by each other, led from her
station to the sealed module hatch and connecting tunnel. The air had the faint
smell of ozone, electrified air and sweat.

           
But soon
after beginning work on
Silver
Tower
,
Ann had learned to ignore such things. She had no room to work in because she
had four times more equipment than any other scientist or any other project
ever had before. Today all the hard work and sacrifice... if that’s what it had
been... was about to pay off. Or so she hoped....

           
“Skybolt is
ready, Control,” she reported. “System is on full automatic.”

           
“Copy,
Skybolt,” Saint-Michael said over interphone. “Good luck.”

           
“Thank you,
sir. Thirty seconds.”

           
She made
one last systems check. Her master computer would make a three-second self-test
of the superconducting circuits, microprocessors and relays under its control.
The results of the self-test flashed on her screen: all systems go.

           
It was
working, Ann thought. It was working perfectly.

           
“It’s not
working.”

           
Chief
Master Sergeant Jake Jefferson pointed to his large two-foot by three-foot
rectangular display screen, representing the one-thousand-mile scan range of
Silver Tower’s huge space-based, phased- array radar. He had electronically
squelched out all objects detected by the SBR that were less than five hundred
pounds, all ground returns and all previously identified objects; even so, the
screen was filled with blips. Each blip had a code assigned to it by
Silver
Tower
’s surveillance computer. On
the margins of the rectangular screen, data on the object’s flight path and
orbit were displayed. Any object within fifty miles of
Silver
Tower
’s orbit was highlighted. The
tech pointed to the nearest such object on the screen.