Lifeline (13 page)

“Enough for a while,” Rurik said.

“Not long enough.”

“Enough … for a while.”

Tripolk stared at the long silver point of the last hypodermic needle, then turned her head away. She injected herself with the yellow drug.

She had stepped across the line now. No turning back. Onward, ever onward—even to this. She couldn’t call for help.

Her body began to feel as if it were turning to ice water, flowing away from her brain stem. She felt dissociated, apart from it and drifting. Her arms and legs flopped listlessly, like mannequins’ limbs.

Rurik gently helped her to lie down in the glass-walled cubicle. He smiled down at her. “I saved one bottle of brandy for myself. Tonight I will drink a toast to you—without Cagarin.”

“Thank you,” Tripolk managed to whisper. She found it hard to move her lips.

Rurik reached down and brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. “Yes. No need to worry. Everything will be all right.”

Yes,
she thought,
everything will be all right.
It would take years and years for anyone to come up and find them. She wondered what it would be like.

Her vision began to grow black and she couldn’t tell if she had closed her eyes or not. With a twitch, she moved her arm and bumped the smooth glass wall of the cubicle.
At least I’ll have a coffin if anything goes wrong.

Then the cold of space seemed to reach through her veins, through her limbs, and into her heart.

Maybe she would dream about Mars.

***

Chapter 17

AGUINALDO—Day 13

The crystal observation blister opened to the
Aguinaldo’s
exterior. Stars wheeled overhead, making a complete circuit every ten minutes as the colony rotated.

Standing on the translucent, segmented floor of the blister, Ramis kept his attention on the view below him, trying to stay out of Dr. Sandovaal’s way. He felt as if he were in one of the glass-bottomed boats a man had used back in the P.I. to take tourists around on the inlets.

Sandovaal fidgeted like an overeager child. Ramis held his breath as the scientist touched a finger to one of the micro-earphones on his head.

“They say everything is ready, Yoli.”

Magsaysay nodded, hands behind his back. “Tell them to proceed.” Sandovaal snapped an order into the transmitter. Magsaysay had let him command the mission, since the tether idea had been his and since it would keep him from complaining.

Ramis splayed his fingers on the crystal viewport, trying to peer down the long edge of the cylinder. The shadow shield on the far end of the
Aguinaldo
blocked the harsh solar radiation. Smears of light, reflected from the Earth and the Moon, splashed off the smooth external hull, but most of the colony lay in black shadow.

Ten kilometers away he could see the
Aguinaldo
’s opposite end drop off. Scattered glints of metal a hundred kilometers distant marked the construction site of the giant wheel of
Orbitech 2.

From his perspective he could not see the docking doors swing open or the team of suited engineers drift out. Dobo was supposedly directing operations down in the docking area. Ramis suspected that the engineers knew what they were doing, and he hoped Dobo wasn’t just getting in the way.

The other people clustered by the transparent ring around the end cap had a better view, but Ramis preferred to be with Magsaysay and Sandovaal, in the heart of things.

The viewport veranda remained quiet as they waited. He forced himself to be patient. Ramis knew how long it took for people in clumsy maneuvering suits to complete a simple task.

He caught a glimmer out of the corner of his eye. He paused a moment to make sure, then pointed it out to Magsaysay. “I can see the package of wall-kelp, and one of the suits, I think.” He squinted. “The tether is too narrow to make out.”

Sandovaal ducked his head down to Ramis’s level. Ramis refused to move, but the scientist did not seem to notice. He pressed his finger against the pane, indicating where a glimmer crept into view. In the dim Earthlight, Ramis found it difficult to see the compact package drifting deeper into space, reeling out from the
Aguinaldo.

Sandovaal moved to one of the joysticks controlling the exterior-mounted telescopes. “Come on, slowly now …” he muttered to himself. He located the package with the telescope and focused the image on the console’s inlaid holoscreen. Sandovaal squinted at the package, down at his timepiece, then at the package again before he jabbed at the transmitter. “Dobo—tell them they are playing the cable out too fast! Slow down or it will rebound!”

“Is the cable going to break?” Ramis asked.

Sandovaal scowled. “The engineers assure us it can take the strain. It is tape-wrapped carbon something-or-other. But they are playing it out too quickly, I think. If the wall-kelp reaches the end of the tether, it will rebound back to the
Aguinaldo.”

Ramis doubted the small package striking the docking end would do much damage—but they would miss a chance to send food to the lunar colony.

“I am sure they know what they are doing, Luis,” Magsaysay said, then tugged on his lip. “Though the backlash could kill somebody.”

Sandovaal blinked into the telescope. “Yes. Yes, it very well could.”

The president paced across the veranda and stared out the wide window plates. “It looks as if the package is slowing down.”

The wall-kelp crept away until they could no longer resolve the dim point of light against the grainy background of stars. Ramis joined Sandovaal at the holoscreen.

Sandovaal muttered, “Nineteen point eight eight three kilometers—not quite twice the length of the colony. It is trivial distance compared to the size of the orbits here. But the tether length must be exact, and that will bring my kelp to the Moon. Amazing subject, celestial mechanics—like witchcraft.”

Magsaysay turned from the window plate and smiled at Ramis with a look of satisfied relief. “We have already informed Dr. Tomkins at
Clavius Base
over the ConComm network. He is a bit skeptical, but anxious to try it.”

“And it will give us a chance to see how the wall-kelp fares in a planetary environment.” Sandovaal transmitted again to Dobo in the docking bay, double-checking everything.

After more than an hour, all of the cable had been reeled out. Dobo informed them that the tether was taut, holding the package twenty kilometers away from the colony by means of a small compressed air container.

Sandovaal fondled the transmitter button. “We will wait a moment to be sure the tether has stabilized. We have a rather large time window, if the initial orbital trajectory is correct.”

“It is correct on this end, Dr. Sandovaal,” Dobo’s voice answered. “But if we wait too long, the cable could stretch.”

“I will not wait too long.” Sandovaal pursed his lips. He looked at Magsaysay.

Magsaysay closed his eyes as if in prayer, then nodded. “Send it to them, Luis.”

Sandovaal turned back to the radio and gave the order. A charge severed the other end of the cable from the
Aguinaldo,
and the bobbin and cable were ejected from the bay. If it had remained secured to the colony, the twenty kilometers of cable would have gained angular momentum from the
Aguinaldo
’s rotation, turning the tether into a corkscrewing whip.

Ramis could see no change in the package, but over the next few hours it would drift away as the wall-kelp and the L-4 point continued along different orbits.

“In two weeks, the Moon will have a new food source.” Sandovaal looked pleased with himself. “Dobo, tell the engineers they can finish up now. Make sure the doors are sealed properly. We can do no more now—only wait. It is in the hands of God … and the laws of physics.”

“I will ask the bishop to say a special prayer at Mass,” Dobo replied over the speakers.

Magsaysay looked out to where he could no longer see the tiny package of wall-kelp. “Do you think we just saved the people of
Clavius Base
, Luis?”

“We have given them a better chance. They must save themselves.”

Ramis cracked his knuckles. “When are we going to help the Orbitech colony? They are probably in more serious trouble.”

“We have not heard from them in several days—they claim trouble with ConComm,” Magsaysay answered, avoiding Ramis’s question. “And we must also think about the Soviets—if I can convince the Council of Twenty to extend goodwill.”

Sandovaal switched off the holotank and used controls to retract the external telescopes into their casings. “Getting to L-5 is a much more difficult problem. We must use an exotic orbit, swing around the Earth. But we must first grow the sail-creature outside the
Aguinaldo.
You should order the preparations to begin soon.”

Magsaysay set his mouth, making lines stand out in his dark skin. His gaze drifted out the observation window, focused on infinity. He seemed to be avoiding Ramis, who sat holding his breath.

Magsaysay spoke without turning. His knuckles were white against the window. “Luis, you are forcing me to use Ramis.”

Sandovaal grunted. “I am trying to send food to save fifteen hundred people. If anyone can accomplish this mission, the boy can. We will make it as safe as possible for him.”

Silence, then, “Very well. You and Dobo do what you must. Prepare one of the sail-creature nymphs.” He closed his eyes, then looked directly at Ramis. He seemed to be pronouncing a death sentence, no matter how much Ramis wanted to go. “And I am very sorry, Ramis.”

***

Chapter 18

ORBITECH 1—Day 14

The mass spectrometer did not give the results she wanted. Karen Langelier felt tears of frustration brim in her eyelids. It was so difficult to work in fear.

After five years of testing and development, the weavewire she had developed at the Center for High-Technology Materials proved a growing success. Indestructible garments woven from the monomolecular fiber had just started to gain popularity before the War, first in protective clothing and then in expensive items of high fashion. It had nearly unlimited potential: surgical knives, new types of construction and engineering, materials processing. But drawing the weavewire out a few kilometers a day in their precious L-5 industrial complex was not economically feasible for Orbitechnologies Corp. Karen had been sent up to
Orbitech 1
only a few months before to work on a scheme for accelerating the extraction process. In theory, the weavewire should be able to form along its laser guide beam as fast as molecules could react.

In theory.

Karen felt frantic with pressure to perform. Perhaps the spinneret had been too small this time. Her hands had been shaking during the attempt.

In her anger, she tossed the Pyrex flask across the lab. It tumbled end over end, striking the curved wall and ricocheting back. The specimen hardened into a lump inside the flask. Karen scowled at it.
Give me the right answer, dammit!
Her thoughts brimmed with hysteria.
Do what you’re supposed to do!

Polymer research in zero gravity had so little history that everything was new. When a technique worked, they tried every variation, attempting to improve the process, or at least to understand it.

The complex had been a bustling outpost, with dozens of other chemistry team members working at their own brainstormed experiments. The laboratory bay contained imaginative apparatus with odd adaptations for zero-G: heating units were self-enclosed and mechanically stirred, since convection did not occur; gas-jet burners had been supplanted by high-intensity electrical-resistance heating units—without gravity, open flames remained spherical and extinguished themselves from lack of oxygen.

But the lab cubicles were without friendly banter after the RIF. Two of the testing stations stood painfully empty. A few of the other researchers looked up at Karen’s outburst and watched, but most kept working.

Primary researchers and their assistants sweated over their own projects, as if they could bring them to fruition by sheer force of will. Others, like Karen, worked independently, hoping for that one breakthrough, whatever it was, that might turn things around.

Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to,
Karen thought to herself. It had always sounded good to her before.
But what if it doesn’t work out?

She swallowed back her fear, pretending not to look affected. It would work next time. She would just try again. She needed to make a significant breakthrough.

Nobody competed for Nobel prizes anymore—this time, the reward was simple survival. And Curtis Brahms was the only judge.

Brahms had suggested they all work together, to cooperate more than ever. But Karen knew the teams would prefer to tear each other apart, gladiators in a scientific coliseum, squirming to climb on top and give themselves a few more moments of survival.

And only two weeks had passed since the War. What would they do when things began to get worse, much worse?

She thought again of Ombalal’s RIF—a hundred and fifty people dead, without warning. She had been in her quarters, reading
Soviet Physics JEPT
online, when the announcement had come over the PA system.

Ombalal’s words were slow and precise, as if he was reading from a prepared statement. It took a few moments for her to realize exactly what he was
saying.
Nobody questioned the orders of the director … why should they? Karen remembered dimming the light, switching off her book, and lying back in bed as she listened to the growing horror.

Her mind filled in all the details, over and over again, as she scrambled to a viewport, wondering if she even wanted to look. She had caught a glimpse of frozen bodies drifting along with the station, and her imagination showed their faces fixed in a scream, bloated and petrified in the frozen vacuum.

Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

Karen gave Ombalal credit for the resolution to admit his actions, rather than let rumors go wild. Viewed through cold logic, the way he presented his case, Ombalal had perfect justification for doing it, too. Karen wasn’t that cold—but she wouldn’t want to be in his place.

She had stood in the hall beside two other people and watched the low-res holotank announcement of Ombalal’s death. Brahms did not seem comfortable in the transmission, and kept moving from side to side, out of the best-focus zone.

“I want you all to see what you have done.” Brahms’s face dissolved into the awful images of the blood-spattered cafeteria complex and Ombalal’s body. “We are supposed to be civilized. We are supposed to be human beings—
not animals!”
A hint of horror seeped into his voice, but he spoke with absolute conviction.

“I have looked through the personnel files and selected a group of ‘Watchers’ who will supplement our minimal security force, since our security has proven itself inadequate. They will also assist in implementing new rationing schemes.

“It is not a measure I enjoy taking, but this appalling episode of violence has made it necessary. Now, as acting director, I must do everything I can to hold off another RIF as long as possible.”

As long as possible.

Karen and the other two workers stared at each other as if wondering whether they were really awake. Up and down the hall other doors slid open as people gawked in sick amazement at the acting director’s words, at the images of Ombalal’s slaughter. Karen felt a sudden urge to hide, to go someplace where Brahms could not find her. But on the sealed colony, no one could hide anywhere.

Brahms continued his careful explanation. Karen listened, trying to convince herself of what he was saying—that Ombalal had acted on his own, without consulting his division leaders. Watching the holotank in the hall, a middle-aged man started to grumble angrily, but Karen and the others hushed him.

“We are on our own,” Brahms said. “You all know that Earth will not rescue us. We are trapped with only our abilities and whatever resources remain here. If there is a way to survive, we have to find it without outside help. We must drive ourselves, work ourselves as hard as we can.”

Brahms turned his head, swiveling the picture around as if he were trying to stare down the entire population of the station. Karen shuddered.

“I respect science and I have a firm faith in human ingenuity. We have incredible technological resources here on
Orbitech 1
—we must find a way. We have raw materials of Moon rock outside the station—enough to supply us with air and water for years, but we can’t live on that alone.

“If we don’t come up with a new way to survive, then we’ll all be dead in a few months. This isn’t just a pep talk. Station Director Ombalal tried one solution with the RIF; let’s not allow the untimely deaths of our friends to be in vain. Turn your creativity loose, unlock the fringes of your imaginations. I want us all to live.”

Brahms swallowed hard, and his three-dimensional image wavered for a moment.

“To this end, I am assigning a team of assessors to oversee your work, to inspect what you are doing, and assess the importance of your research—how well it is done, how hard you are working.

“Naturally, we will be looking for new modes of food production and transport to the other colonies, or perhaps back to Earth—but we cannot be narrow-minded. A single discovery does not exist in a vacuum. Cooperate with each other. If one researcher creates a new alloy, then perhaps someone else can use that alloy for some kind of vehicle to get us out of here. I leave it to your imaginations. The assessors will report to me the importance of the new developments.

“My first two appointments are my remaining division leaders, Linda Arnando and Allen Terachyk. I will issue a formal statement describing their duties and responsibilities.”

Brahms scanned the screen once more. His eyeglasses seemed to be an absurd attempt to make him look serious.

“We must strive harder. We must find a way to save ourselves. We need to share the results of our work, so that others may use your discoveries in tandem with their own. Save us … you have to save us.” The image of Brahms faded into the gray, neutral pattern of the holotank.

Karen and the other researchers buried themselves in their work, frantically trying to make breakthroughs as fast as they could. They never said anything aloud, but they knew a useful discovery would keep their name off the RIF list.

The once homey touches in the labs now seemed pathetic. A spider plant drifted in the corner near a workstation, growing in random directions, sending streamers straight up into the air and sideways in search of gravity. Over by the lounge area, colorful personalized coffee containers, some with lids hanging open, bobbled untouched against the wall. The times when anyone could casually drink or eat throughout the day had passed, leaving nothing but harried work and restrained hysteria.

Karen Langelier did not want to know how well she had done in the Efficiency Study. When Brahms had collected his data, she had just separated from Ray, and she had taken too long to adjust to work up here … if she hadn’t been riding the coattails of her weavewire discovery, Karen might have joined the first hundred fifty.

The airlock door at the end of the laboratory complex opened and a chunky young woman drifted in. She wore a pale green jumpsuit with the insignia of
Orbitech 1
prominent on the left shoulder—the work outfit that had become the uniform for Brahms’s watchers. Karen kept a scowl from her face. She looked away, feigning concentration on her work.

Nancy Winkowski grabbed hold of the handbars on the wall and pulled herself across the room. Her hair was carrot orange, and she had a carpet of freckles on her arms.

Winkowski stood still for several moments, hovering close beside her. “Hello, Karen.”

Karen watched her, lips pressed together.

Winkowski floated up and steadied herself on the table. “Thinking about new lines of research? Are you going to save us all?”

Karen turned her gaze away. She resented how easily she felt helpless and intimidated. “That’s the general idea. But it’s hard to concentrate with distractions.”

Winkowski glanced at the mass spectrometer; somehow, she even noticed the bobbing flask near the wall where Karen had thrown it. Her sarcasm grew stronger. “Well, I’m sure it’s going to be something big and exciting.”

Nancy Winkowski had been Karen’s laboratory assistant. Never terribly helpful, Winkowski had always carried a grudge, angry that she had been with Orbitechnologies Corporation for years and had not advanced beyond technician, while newcomers from Earth, like Karen Langelier, just walked into important positions.

But that had all changed, now that Brahms had picked her as one of his watchers to look for ways to make the colony run more efficiently. It seemed so patriotic, and logical at first—after all, with everything so scarce, hoarding and laziness could not be tolerated. And now Winkowski apparently felt she had to get back at Karen, to harass her as much as she could.

Karen expected it, in a way, but she was still disappointed in her former assistant. Winkowski was not stupid. She was ambitious, but impatient, and she preferred to have her way directly rather than take the trouble to earn her position.

Karen glared at her, then snatched her Pyrex flask from the air and began to reheat the polymer batter. She worked her jaw, keeping her face turned away from Winkowski. “If you’ll excuse me, Nancy, I’m doing important work here.”

Satisfied at Karen’s reaction, Winkowski turned and drifted along the laboratory areas, puffed with her own importance.

Winkowski left through the opposite airlock, leaving it open so that one of the technicians had to drift over and close it. The other teams in the lab looked at Karen sidelong, trying not to be too obvious with their stares. They seemed relieved that Winkowski had chosen her, instead of one of them, as a scapegoat.

Karen found it difficult to breathe.
Orbitech 1
seemed dark and forbidding—a prison with no escape, where jailers and prisoners all waited side by side on Death Row.

By habit, she shut down her equipment, ran through the checks, and secured her experiments. It would be only a matter of time before the researchers started sabotaging each other’s work. The idea made her feel sick inside.

She needed peace. Quiet. And escape.

The door of the Japanese garden sealed behind her, and she stood in silence, breathing the humid air. She leaned back against the camouflage-painted wall, smelling the plants, listening to the artificial bird song. She heard no one else. Few people took the time to relax anymore.

Karen wondered how long it would be until the colonists were driven to the point where they would break in here and strip the garden bare to eat the plants. Some of the leaves and stems were probably toxic—would starving people care?

She already felt weak from low rations. She could picture herself, gaunt and sunken-eyed, haunted by hunger. Would she pause a moment to think of the beauty in the garden before she tore flowers off the shrubs?

First Ombalal and then Brahms had cut back their food. Hunger was a dull ache now: nothing intolerable, but knowing that it was only the beginning made it much more difficult. The nightmare would spiral deeper and deeper into darkness, and people would begin to do irrational things.

She stared at the splashing fountain with such an intensity that her eyes dried out, though she felt like crying. Her vision grew blurry as she tried to focus on the droplets of water hanging in the air and drifting slowly to the pool.

She ran her fingers along the tips of the leaves.