Lifeline (29 page)

Chapter 40

L-5—Day 44

Karen didn’t sleep the entire journey. Hooked onto the pulley contraption, she slipped away from
Orbitech 1.
The ride was smooth, as if on a frictionless sea of ice, even as the pulley gently bumped against the weavewire. Otherwise, there was no sensation of movement, only the bulky straitjacket of the space suit and echoes of her own breathing in her ears. She could see no indication at all of the weavewire, only the invisible line where the dolly was attached to nothing, guiding her to the
Kibalchich.
She felt suspended in space.

Over the hours, Karen wondered how people could ever survive long space journeys. The Soviets had attempted one years-long journey to Mars, and it had driven them to destroy their own ship. Now that she thought about it, being cramped with other people in a tiny exploratory ship for all that time would probably push her over the edge, as well.

She raised Ramis once, and elicited a promise from him to meet her. She told him the time of her projected arrival, and he marked it on one of the command center chronometers.

Later, Karen flipped on her radio and trained the antenna toward the Soviet colony. “Ramis, this is Karen. Can you hear me?” Nothing. “Ramis. Are you near an airlock? I am almost to the
Kibalchich.”
She knew he could not send a reply if he had not remained in the command center.

Karen waited, then switched her transmitter off. The station loomed in front of her.

Through the middle of the torus, stars blinked in and out of view as the spokes rotated. Karen fumbled with her harness, shedding the webbing and preparing to disconnect her suit from the dolly frame. Everywhere was “down”—she seemed to be in the middle of a gigantic well that extended forever, in all directions. She flipped her radio on. “Ramis? Are you out here?” Still no answer.

She grew worried. She had told him when to expect her. The clock showed her to be right on time.

Russian letters now showed clearly on the metal hull, spelling out
Kibalchich.
She had checked out the name in the historical data base back in her quarters and remembered: Nikolai Ivanovitch
Kibalchich
had taken part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and had been arrested and sentenced to death. In his cell awaiting execution,
Kibalchich
had drawn up plans for a man-carrying rocket platform fed by gunpowder cartridges. After he was executed, guards filed his sketches in police archives. In his prison cell, knowing he had no hope,
Kibalchich
had written on his rocket plans, “I believe in the practicability of my idea and this faith supports me in my desperate plight.”

Karen wished she had the same faith in her own “desperate plight.” The large doses of drugs she had taken to protect herself against radiation exposure had made her feel ill. She feared they would also slow her reactions.

“You should be almost there,” said the voice from
Orbitech 1.

“Gee, thanks,” Karen muttered. She tried to wipe Ramis from her mind and concentrate on landing, going over in her head how she would come to a stop. The engineers had designed the harness with an emergency release so she could unlatch herself easily. It seemed simple enough.

But then she remembered a time in Colorado, back when she had lived in Denver, before moving to the Center for High-Technology Materials in Albuquerque. A ski slope—Breckenridge?—where she and Ray had spent one spring day schussing down black diamond runs. The sky was impossibly blue, the ground white from a late spring snow; she and Ray laughed as the lifts pulled them up, when Karen realized she had forgotten to pull the tips of her skis up.… She found herself facedown in a clump of snow underneath the chair lift. Because she hadn’t been paying attention, a simple act had turned into disaster.

This time, if she let her attention lapse and released herself at the wrong time, Karen would suffer a lot worse than a faceful of snow.

She could make out the outer wheel’s grainy surface, even small pits from micrometeors. She rotated her body around to point her feet directly at the station.

The dolly slid above composite spokes and support struts as it followed the weavewire to the
Kibalchich’s
hub. Overhead, the mirror looked flat and glistening, reflecting an image of the torus back onto itself.

Above her, a streak of Day-Glo orange marking the end of the weavewire zipped through space.
One hundred yards to go!
she thought. She had only time enough to draw in a breath before she hit the station. The suit disconnected from the pulley apparatus, and she collapsed to the hub, absorbing the shock with her feet. She wasn’t sure if the magnetized soles would keep her in place. She remembered to reach up and catch the dolly support before it rebounded back along the nearly frictionless cable.

“Dr. Langelier, be ### and to #### …”A voice broke in and out of coherence as she turned about, her directional antenna sweeping the space where
Orbitech 1
hung.

Her hand encircled the central graphite rod. It was too large for her fingers to fit around, but it served to stop her from drifting.

Karen drew in short, laborious breaths and closed her eyes, gripping the rod. If she let go she would be out in space right now where no one could reach her. She’d have only a handful of hours of air, even at one-quarter pressure.

She swung her antenna in the general direction of
Orbitech 1.
“I’m here,” she said. “Have you heard anything from Ramis?”

Silence. Then, slowly, “No. Didn’t he say he was going to be there to help you?”

It was her turn to ponder.

After her eleven-hour journey, she wanted to be inside—any place that had walls and a floor and a ceiling. She could find Ramis. He had found his way inside by himself; she could do the same.

Karen clicked at her mike.
“Orbitech 1,
I’m going to find one of the access hatches into the
Kibalchich.
A full report will follow.” Karen clicked her receiver off. She didn’t need anything from them. She could make her own decisions. She had left
Orbitech 1
because of people always telling her what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

Karen started to shimmy along the support rod, searching for a way to get inside.

***

Chapter 41

AGUINALDO—Day 44

Big Brother Moving Company.

It was precisely what Luis Sandovaal felt like as he prepared for the trip to
Orbitech 1.
This would not be just a desperate test flight, as Ramis had made. In his own typical style, Sandovaal would make this a grand procession.

He ran one hand through his shock of white hair, making it stand straight up, then surveyed all the extra baggage they would need to ensure their return, plus Ramis’s. Magsaysay had insisted on that part. It had been the only way Magsaysay would even consider allowing Sandovaal to go; even then, the
dato
was reluctant.

Dobo had just returned from Mass, and Sandovaal put him to work. Since finding out he would be making the journey to L-5 with Sandovaal, Dobo had attended Mass twice a day. Sandovaal couldn’t understand his assistant’s actions—they had even less time to waste than usual.

Sandovaal squinted at the tanks nurturing the sail-creature embryos. The air smelled raw and wet, but Sandovaal did not notice. The thirty-six embryos nestled in the quiet sanctuary of one of the glass-enclosed wall-kelp alcoves were their only hope of returning from
Orbitech 1.
Sandovaal had no way of knowing how well the Americans had cared for the tiny embryos Ramis had brought with him, and the boy wasn’t enough of an expert to tell for himself. But the embryos would take years to reach maturity; Sandovaal was bringing mature nymphs.

He and Dobo would have time to instruct their American counterparts on how to nurture the next generation of sail-creatures and make them available for sails, in case they ever wanted to come to L-4. Magsaysay didn’t think they would.

Behind him, Dobo sloshed about in a vat of nutrient solution. Synthetic rubber boots rode up to his crotch, making him look ridiculous. The bittersweet aroma of the amniotic solution mixed with the rank smell of growing wall-kelp. On the other side of the crystal windows, sunlight poured through, illuminating the alcove like a weird jungle.

Sandovaal had never before considered mass-producing the sail-creatures. In fact, he was new to the entire idea of gearing his work to assembly lines. On Magsaysay’s insistence, Sandovaal had documented all his work and left dozens of assistants marginally trained to follow in his footsteps.

The wall-kelp grew by itself and needed little work, but the sail-creatures were much more complicated. With his tinkering in the lab, Sandovaal could produce one sail-creature embryo per day, at most, by cloning from the viable samples he had on hand. More than 90 percent of the clones died.

Now, though, for the trip to L-5, all the sail-creatures must be the same age when they left the
Aguinaldo.
Otherwise, it would ruin Sandovaal’s plans for getting back home. He had expanded his operation, finding ways to increase production, to take shortcuts.

Dobo’s feet made a plopping sound as he moved through the vat. It broke Sandovaal’s concentration. He turned and opened his mouth to snap at his assistant but stopped at what he saw.

Dobo was kneeling in the vat, leaning over a pocket of sail-creature embryos. Hands cupped, he delicately directed some of the amniotic fluid into the sac. It would dry sticky on his dark boots.

Memories flooded Sandovaal’s mind. The rice paddies, and the loving care the Filipinos gave to each seedling as they planted the sprouts in the flooded marsh. The Filipino culture was still here, present even in this giant rotating drum in space. And now, for the first time since the War, Sandovaal was certain that the old ways—the important aspects, at least—would still survive. Magsaysay had nothing to fear about that.

He composed himself and slipped from the chamber, leaving Dobo alone. Dobo hummed to himself—probably one of the hymns he had sung at Mass.

The viewport veranda afforded a view of the sail-creatures they would use. They were strung out in a line with their sails oriented at right angles to the sun, like gigantic, wispy butterflies. The creatures seemed to explode in growth, transforming from puttering, clumsy-looking animals into beautiful organic sails. They stretched out their skins to catch every photon within reach. They were relatively small now, but Sandovaal knew that in a short time they would be ready for the trip. The imagined sight made him draw a deep breath—an array of sail-creatures, clustered as a mighty armada of old, carrying Dobo and Sandovaal into new territory.

And if they were successful with their request, they would return with Ramis and enough weavewire to scale their next obstacle:
Orbitech 2.

***

Chapter 42

KIBALCHICH—Day 44

When the inner airlock rotated open, Karen saw only darkness. She removed her helmet and stared into the shadows.

“Ramis?” she called in a quiet voice, but the word sounded as loud as a gunshot. He would be somewhere inside, but she had no idea where, or why he had not met her. She was glad she had not been the first to enter the silent station.

A dark hallway curved up ahead and behind her. Wetting her lips, she stepped out of the airlock into the
Kibalchich.
She tapped a toe on the floor in an instinctive gesture, to make sure it remained solid. She dragged her pack of personal belongings just inside the corridor and plopped it to the floor. She started to set her helmet down, but decided to put up with the inconvenience of carrying it.

The
Kibalchich
was dead quiet. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears. All the lights were dim.

The airlock hissed shut behind her.

Karen drew in a breath to stop herself from shaking.
Ramis is here somewhere,
she thought.
Nothing is going to happen.

“Karen?”

She whirled, then her shoulders slumped with relief. She had not heard Ramis approach with his bare feet. Soft light outlined his face. His eyes looked bleary with sleep.

“You are very early. Two hours.” He pointed an elbow at one of the wall chronometers. “I am sorry I did not meet you. Have you been here long?”

“Early?” She noticed the digital time next to an intercom, a flatscreen, and several buttons. Frowning, Karen glanced at her own suit watch. “This clock is two hours fast.” Then she rolled her eyes in a ridiculous expression.

“They’re on Moscow time! Why didn’t they standardize, like everyone else?
Orbitech 1
is on Greenwich Mean.” She sighed. “We should have synchronized clocks, but who would have thought?”

She shook her head, still puzzled. “But why are you two hours late, and not early?”

Ramis tried to brush her question aside. He blinked his eyes again. “I must have gotten mixed up and subtracted the two-hour difference instead of adding it. I was sleeping, for the first time in days, but I planned to wake up before you arrived. I still needed some time to … to get something.”

He looked at her with his dark eyes, hesitating. “I was not certain it would be you. It could have been one of the other Soviets, or someone else that Brahms sent over …” His voice trailed off.

On an impulse, Karen wanted to hug him, but in the monstrous padded suit that would have been more comical than poignant. “The important thing is that I’m here.” She threw a glance at his loose, comfortable clothes. His space suit was conspicuously absent. “Where are you staying?”

“I have found several private chambers.”

“Sounds like a good start.” Karen handed him the helmet to carry. “Lead on, Ramis.” She hooked her belongings on the crook of her arm.

Ramis took her through several cubicles and down to a second deck. Karen felt as if she were in a three-dimensional maze. “You will learn your way around quickly,” said Ramis. “It is a monotonous arrangement.”

At first the station’s layout confused her, but after only a few minutes, she discovered a pattern: the three decks were all arranged identically, but offset from the decks above them. An octagonal pattern of compartments surrounded each staircase, holding emergency supplies of air, food, and water. One could travel straight up or down the decks if needed, but the main thoroughfares were staggered to break the monotony.

As they walked, she noted few displays of artwork or any kind of decor. In recreation areas, she saw murals depicting larger-than-life characters with a central hero, usually standing in a field or a city, looking toward the stars.

Ramis stopped before a row of eight cabins with doors open. Karen dumped her helmet and satchel onto the floor. The rooms were not all clustered together; several blank spaces separated the doors at random intervals. Looking closely at the bulkhead, Karen ran her hand along a hairline seam.

“There are doors all along here. I wonder why some of them are closed?”

Ramis turned away. “Most of them were open, or at least activated, when I arrived. They close behind you after you leave the room.”

“And how do you open them again?”

“That I do not know,” Ramis said slowly. “I have tried to get back inside.”

“I see.” Karen suppressed a smile. She lounged back against the polished bulkhead and crossed her arms. Ramis stared back, unblinking. She nodded to the row of closed doors. “If they used to be all open, then I bet you did some experimenting, trying to find out how to open them.”

Ramis nodded.

Karen pushed away from the wall. “And I suppose you slept in one of these last night?” She could not stop her smile from growing. “And I suppose you took your helmet and suit with you. It’s in one of these rooms, and now you can’t get the door open again?”

Ramis flushed and nodded stiffly.
No wonder he didn’t meet me outside,
she thought. Though the time lag on the chronometers had distracted her for a while, he was obviously too abashed at losing face, and had needed to make up an excuse that would not leave him appearing stupid. Losing his helmet because he couldn’t get the door open again! He probably thought he’d be stuck here forever.

Already, being away from
Orbitech 1
had improved her mood. The situation wasn’t funny, but if worse came to worst, they could always smash the door in with a Soviet forklift.

“Why don’t you help me out of this suit so I can move like a human being again? We’ll leave it right here in the hall. Then take me to the control room. That’s where you kept in communication with
Orbitech 1,
isn’t it?”

“Yes, I will show you.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, she struggled with the fastenings and seals of her suit. Ramis seemed patient and enjoyed being with her; they chatted about meaningless things. She realized he must have been terribly lonely.

The helmet and harness lay on the floor. Karen squirmed out of the bulky protective suit and stood hunched over in her cotton jumpsuit, breathing hard. She wiped a palm across her forehead and stared at the sweat glinting off the dim corridor lights.

“How can construction engineers live in those things?”

Ramis furrowed his eyebrows. “All the body functions are taken care of. You know how to activate the glucose tablet dispenser? That would give you energy. Vitamin supplements can keep you going for several shifts.”

Karen shook her head. “That’s not really what I meant. Right now I’m still a little dizzy from all that anti-rad junk I had to take.”

Kneeling on the floor, she dug through her bag and opened a Mylar satchel. It hissed when she broke the seal, indicating that air pressure on the
Kibalchich
was lower than what she had left behind. “I brought you some personal effects. I went into your quarters and took anything I thought you might want, since you left in such a hurry.” She looked into his eyes. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not.”

Karen handed him a clean set of clothes, his St. Christopher’s medal, and—with a smile—a pack of jerky made from unprocessed wall-kelp. “I thought you might miss this.”

“How can I ever repay you?” he asked, then made a wicked smile. “Or is the correct American phrasing, I’ll get you for that?”

She laughed, then stood up again. “Control room?”

“This way.” Ramis motioned her up the corridor. He bit into the wall-kelp and winced, but chewed. He tore off a chunk and extended it to her. “For such a good friend, I will share.” Ramis glared at her. “I insist.”

They walked up the curving hallway. A low hum pulsed through the station, hovering at the edge of her ability to hear. Karen breathed deep. The air remained stale and metallic from the reprocessers, but it didn’t have the smell of anxiety and fear hanging in every lungful. It seemed refreshing to a certain degree.

Unlike
Orbitech l’s
low- and zero-gravity decks, depending on their configuration in the colony, the
Kibalchich
kept gravity throughout its torus, except for the zero-G command center at the hub. As Ramis activated the lift platform to take them toward the center, she felt weight dropping away from her.

The ceiling opened overhead. She felt no gravity at all, but a room appearing above her knocked Karen’s orientation off kilter. Ramis kicked off the lift platform and rose into the chamber. Karen drifted up after him.

“The control room. As you requested.” He made a little bow, which caused him to spin in a somersault in the middle of the room. He started to laugh.

Pinpoints of red and green light burned from control panels. Data screens and attached chairs jutted from the curved walls. A central column surrounded by a holotank extended from floor to ceiling—the light pipe, or whatever it was that connected the shield and solar collectors below the station to the tilted mirror above. The holotank was a standard Hitachi, state of the art in resolution and contrast, but appeared to lack a tactile option.

“Everything is here.” Ramis spread his hands. “One person could seal himself up in this room and control the entire station. I wonder if that is what happened. It would explain the man’s body I found.”

Karen looked around, snagging the nearest chair as she floated by. “Are the computers voice activated?”

“I was able to transmit a message to
Orbitech 1.”
Ramis floated over to one wall. “Beyond that, I do not know. I cannot speak Russian, remember?”

Karen stared at the holotanks and the various input pads. “Well, let’s try it. First off, we should learn how to unlock all those doors. We’ll get your helmet back.”

Selecting what appeared to be the command chair, Karen strapped in. Clearing her throat, she tried to enunciate her words clearly. It had been years since she had last conversed in Russian, and the computer would have enough difficulty interpreting her odd accent anyway.

“Computer, present a map of the colony,”
she said in Russian.

Nothing.

“Computer, respond.”

Karen looked puzzled. Ramis hovered beside her. “What did you say to it?”

Distracted, she glanced at him. “Maybe I told it to calculate the value of pi or something. But I thought I said, ‘Computer, present a map of the colony.’ “

“{{AFFIRMATIVE: ALL USERS VALIDATED BY ACTING COMMANDER TRIPOLK.}}” The computer-generated voice, in English, startled both of them.

A sketch of the rotating wheel came to focus in the murk of the tank. The lines continued to add detail, forming a dense blueprint image, overlapping and growing solid as the computer reconstructed the
Kibalchich
from the inside out. The computer exposed sections to show how the inner core rotated inside the stationary outer layer of Moon rubble.

As she thought about it, Karen realized the computer responding to English instead of Russian made sense, too. “They must have found it simpler to use validated algorithms for speech recognition than to invent new ones for a whole different language.”

Karen placed a finger over her lips. “Ramis, when you were trying to get back into the sealed cabins, did you ask the computer to open the doors for you—out loud, I mean?”

Ramis turned away, looking angry at himself.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Karen said. “I’m not here to compete with you—or to show how smart I am. We’re in this together.

“Remember, I’m a good fifteen years older than you, and I’ve worked in control rooms and labs most of my life. It’s only natural that I’m going to hit on some things quicker than you. But I automatically thought this computer would respond in Russian—I make mistakes all the time, too.” A smile tugged at Ramis’s lips.

“I will remember that.”

“Okay. Let’s try this one more time.” She cleared her throat. “Computer, open all the doors to the sleeping areas.

“{{AFFIRMATIVE: ALL USERS VALIDATED BY ACTING COMMANDER TRIPOLK.}}”

Karen grinned. “According to this, all the doors are open again. Thanks to Commander Tripolk, whoever he is. I should check in with
Orbitech 1
and let them know I got here. Too bad this is the only place you can send or receive outside transmissions.”

“They can monitor them better that way,” Ramis said. He waited beside her. “Let me take you to the commissary. They left many supplies.”

“You didn’t mention anything about supplies in your transmissions!”

Ramis raised his eyebrows at her comment. “What do you think would happen if Brahms found out the
Kibalchich
had supplies left? What he does not know will not hurt him.”

Ramis ducked into one of the open rooms and retrieved his helmet, looking relieved. Before departing, he bundled the rest of his gear together and hauled it out to the open. As he stepped away from the door again, it slid shut and vanished into a flat wall.

“Now, let’s see that food,” Karen said. She felt her stomach roiling with anticipation, eager to gobble food that was not rationed or guarded by Brahms’s watchers. She wished the pre-radiation treatment hadn’t left her so queasy.

Karen soon discovered that commissaries remained the same no matter who ran the station. Drab and clunky, the eatery provided the Soviet equivalent of the high-protein diet she had grown used to. She chewed black bread so stale it reminded her of crackers.

Karen had purposely avoided the nicer company dining facilities on
Orbitech 1;
she liked to eat undisturbed in the commissary there. Now, with strict rationing and specified eating times, that luxury had slipped away.

Here on the
Kibalchich,
though, Karen wondered if she might have more solitude than she could stand.

The middle deck looked similar to the other two, but lacked the clusters of small rooms. Instead, large chambers filled the space: meeting halls, a gymnasium, and even a swimming pool. Karen later discovered three more pools, located at ninety degrees to each other. She supposed they doubled as water storage and ensured an even distribution of mass around the torus. Though the
Kibalchich
held only about 15 percent as many inhabitants as the American industrial colony, it seemed to have more total water in storage. Karen wondered why the Soviets were so paranoid about supplies. Whatever the reason, they had proved better prepared for this disaster.