Lifeline (34 page)

“It may be a hundred years until the madness has been wiped out.” He was silent for some minutes. The d-cube recorded only the sound of his breathing. When he spoke, the words sounded forced.

“Using the medical computer and the pharmaceutical dispensary, I have found an appropriate and supposedly painless poison. After I record this, I am going to the command center. I will adjust the computer to recognize Anna Tripolk as commander of this station.”

She saw Rurik’s image sit up from the bed and walk over to the screen before the picture blanked out.

She felt angry to discover tears running down her cheeks. She brushed them away. Her fingers felt cold. Her confusion and grief funneled together into anger. How could Rurik do this? What did he mean he was ordered to destroy
Orbitech 1
—that was nonsense! How could he make her commander of this station? She wasn’t ready for that; she didn’t want the responsibility.

Commander Tripolk. She snorted at the sound of the title. There must be another reason—he had acted more as a coward than a commander.

She stood up and ejected the d-cube from the terminal. In Rurik’s holo her own face looked back at her, a younger face, before her dreams had been shattered. One thing she did know was that Rurik was a traitor—and a murderer.

Anna put the cube on the floor and crushed it with her heel. Then she brushed at her jumpsuit, searching for her own dignity, and walked stiffly out the door.

A commander belonged in the command center.

Very well. She would see just what she could do there.

***

Chapter 49

AGUINALDO—Day 60

From the
Aguinaldo’s
observation blister, the array of sail-creatures looked like a gossamer armada, ready to skim the Earth and crawl back up the gravity well to L-5. Techs had arranged the sail-creatures in a staggered two-dimensional mosaic, sails oriented perpendicular to the Sun.

Luis Sandovaal could barely make out their full outlines, the stubby central bodies with only a hint of the enormous cell-thin wings.

President Magsaysay stood with Sandovaal, Dobo, and Dobo’s wife. Sandovaal thought Dobo’s wife looked puffy—probably from living in low gravity for too long, or perhaps she had just been crying a lot lately. She should feel proud of the great adventure her husband was about to undertake, not whimper about it.

Outside the colony, spacesuited Filipino techs swarmed over the score of metamorphosed sail-creatures, attaching fiberoptic lines between the sails—wires that connected each creature to its nearest neighbors. The middle two sail-creatures were being readied to house Sandovaal and Dobo. Hormone capsules and a patchwork of electrodes had been inserted into the cavities of the other eighteen giants.

Sandovaal started to speak, but felt a lump rise in his throat. What an odd sensation! The sight outside looked so beautiful; it was a climax to his bioengineering career. The mosaic of sail-creatures was no doubt the largest cluster of life-forms the solar system had ever seen. He found it impossible to say anything—and the intense emotion embarrassed him. Sandovaal turned away and spoke in clipped sentences so his voice would not crack.

“Dobo. It is time for us to go.”

Dobo continued to stare out the crystal blister. He kept an arm around his wife’s plump waist. The
Aguinaldo
rotated, giving the group an encompassing view of the sail-creatures, the stars, and the vast distance they would have to travel.

Sandovaal began to grow cross. “Dobo—”

“Luis, Luis.” Magsaysay put a hand on Sandovaal’s shoulder and nodded toward the exit. “You have to go.” Sandovaal grunted and led the way from the veranda toward the airlock end of the
Aguinaldo.

When they arrived, Magsaysay studied Sandovaal’s ice blue eyes. “The techs are not through checking your sail-creatures. You want to make sure everything will work, do you not?”

“We tried it on one sail-creature. Ramis was successful. The neural network will ensure that it works for all of them.”

Magsaysay replied with uncomfortable silence.

What was taking Dobo so damned long? Sandovaal fidgeted and tried explaining further.

“Once the electrodes are implanted in the sail-creatures’ cysts, I can apply the same pressure to each one and steer them all as a group. The effect is the same as having one vast sail. The additional sail-creature nymphs we are carrying will provide more than enough means for us to return—unless the blasted American colony eats them or something.” Sandovaal felt annoyed—back to normal after that dangerous flirt with emotion.

Magsaysay sighed and turned to face him. “I know you think you must go to
Orbitech 1
to get the weavewire for our own use. But we could likely use MMUs to get over to the
Orbitech 2
construction site. Ramis proved that Jumping is possible, though it is not as efficient for transporting supplies.” The
dato
pursed his lips. “At least this way you will be able to bring Ramis back. But I do not want your confidence to blind you to danger.”

Indignant, Sandovaal drew himself up, though Magsaysay stared out one of the viewing windows. “I am a big boy, Yoli. I know how to take care of myself.”

“You are too crusty sometimes.” The voice came from behind him. Sandovaal whirled to find Dobo and his wife in a tête-à-tête.

“What!” Sandovaal squinted at Dobo, but he and his wife stood preoccupied, holding hands like juveniles. When Dobo failed to look at him, Sandovaal snorted and turned back to President Magsaysay.

Magsaysay suppressed a smile. “This has greater implications than just bringing back the weavewire, Luis. You are going to determine if we should continue these trips, bring the colonies together.” He hesitated. “I never thought I would see the day this would really happen.”

“This trip will never be an everyday occurrence,” Sandovaal said, wondering if Magsaysay was trying to lessen his accomplishment.

“Maybe not now, but it will happen. I assure you.”

“That is not my main concern. If we do not get moving, the sail-creatures will die before we reach
Orbitech 1.”
He snapped at his assistant. “Dobo! Finish kissing her and let us get out of here!” Sandovaal pulled on his helmet.

Dobo dabbed at his wife’s face with a tissue. Sandovaal started to admonish his assistant again, but realized that Dobo couldn’t hear him with his helmet on.

Sandovaal grumbled to himself and started checking his suit status. The anti-radiation treatment he had taken was already making him queasy, or maybe it was just anxiety about the long journey.

Minutes later a voice in his helmet transceiver interrupted him. “Dr. Sandovaal, are you ready?”

Dobo stood by the airlock, fully suited. At the other end of the room, his wife forced a smile. Sandovaal grunted something meant to be unintelligible and met Dobo by the airlock. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

As the airlock door swung shut, Sandovaal forced himself to wave. The holocameras would be recording all this for the daily intercolony broadcasts, suitably embellished with the appropriate Filipino patriotism. At least he had managed to avoid being present while the bishop blessed his space suit.

Magsaysay stood outside the chamber with his hand on the shoulder of Dobo’s wife. She held her chin up high, proud. Sandovaal felt a twinge of guilt that he had yelled at his assistant—it might be the last time that either of them saw the
Aguinaldo.
Dobo remained silent, much to Sandovaal’s relief.

The external door cycled open and left them staring at empty space. Outside, three techs moved forward, outfitted with compressed-air tanks for maneuvering. They steered Sandovaal and Dobo by the arms toward the waiting sail-creatures.

The magnitude of the fragile mosaic became evident to Sandovaal as they drew near. The delicate wings, extending scores of kilometers, could not withstand much more than the solar photon pressure that would push them on their journey.

A glimmer of light brought Sandovaal’s attention to the array of wires connecting the sail-creature bodies. With them, the sails would be somewhat limited in their ability to turn, but the increase in weight the array of creatures could carry more than made up for the limitation. Ramis’s trip had been by the seat of his pants; by comparison, this one would be a walk in the barrio.

Two of the techs turned and jetted off with Dobo to one of the central sail-creatures. Sandovaal allowed himself to be taken to the other. The cavity in the core of the creature widened like a womb, into which the techs inserted him. Sandovaal tried to cooperate and help them, but he soon lost his temper and yanked his elbow away from a too-persistent tech.

Before he pulled his helmet inside the organic darkness, he looked up at the universe; the
Aguinaldo’s
huge silvery cylinder; the broad, fragile wings of the sail-creature.

The cavity was just as he had imagined it—cramped, but pliable enough so that he could move around and push out with his legs. The techs had embedded a small flatscreen teleceiver in the cavity wall, allowing limited communications with the
Aguinaldo.
At the bottom of the cavity he found a computer wedged against one of the curved organic walls.

As part of the “payload” of the sail mosaic, a dozen sail-creature nymphs had been anesthetized into dormancy and packaged outside, sealed to keep them from being exposed to the vacuum. Wall-kelp made up the remainder of the cargo.

Wires ran into the back of the battery-powered computer. Since Ramis’s initial trip, a team of electrical engineers had worked out a method of controlling the sail-creatures’ movements through tiny electric shocks. The boy’s method of using a knife to prick the inside of the cavity was much too imprecise for any additional trips.

The computer controlled a neural network that coordinated the array’s movements. Sandovaal felt satisfied that most of the uncertainty was gone from using the sail-creatures, but plenty of things could still go wrong. He settled back into the cavity, pushing against the pliant walls so that he was firmly embedded and somewhat comfortable. He suspected he would grow to hate his space suit over the next week or so.

He watched the techs seal the cavity outside, closing off the dim wedge of starlight. Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic. The most frustrating part was that he would have to spend days with no one but Dobo for company.

It would only take a few hours for the wall-kelp inside the sealed cavity to generate enough oxygen so he could remove his helmet. He would have nothing but his own wall-kelp to eat during the entire journey, and that suited him just fine. Sandovaal thought briefly about suggesting that the techs double-check the outside sealant, but dismissed the idea. They had thorough checklists, drawn up by Sandovaal himself.

All communication lines checked out, and the electrodes were responding to the periodic queries. The sail-cluster appeared ready to launch.

He reached up and flicked on the flatscreen. They would want him to make some sort of speech, of course. After working with holotanks on the
Aguinaldo,
the primitive two-dimensional image seemed weirdly different.

President Magsaysay appeared on the screen. “Luis, Dobo is having some last words with his wife. Then you will be ready to go. We will switch to open broadcast.”

Sandovaal watched a tiny window lined in red at the top of his flatscreen. Dobo had blacked out his private channel, keeping Sandovaal and everyone else from eavesdropping.

“Tell him to wrap it up. I do not want this mission to fail because he cannot say good-bye in less time than it takes to make the entire journey!”

Magsaysay grinned. “Would you like me to do anything else before you go? Have the bishop say a prayer, perhaps? With your batteries, you will not be able to keep communicating with us for long.”

“I realize that—I just have to convince Dobo that we must only use them in an emergency.”

Magsaysay ignored Sandovaal’s complaining. “We and
Orbitech 1
will be beaming an open channel to you. We are broadcasting this over ConComm, making this an international voyage, Luis. The people on
Clavius Base
are attempting to send someone to L-5 using a new technique of their own, and they intend to arrive about the same day you do. It is truly an exciting time.” Magsaysay paused as he looked offscreen. He turned back to the camera and spoke again. “The techs are showing that you are free to launch.”

Sandovaal shot a glance at the computer. The network readout showed complete communication between all the sail-creatures. Sandovaal muttered to himself about Dobo once again when the direct window blinked green. “It is about time, Dobo.”

“What was that?”

Sandovaal cleared his throat. He switched the flatscreen from Magsaysay to the outside view, but kept the audio channel to Magsaysay open. A small solid-state transmitter was affixed outside Sandovaal’s cavity, showing a wide-angled view of space. The Earth hung in one corner, half lit by the Sun. They were near the optimum time for launch, when the sail-creatures could take best advantage of the solar photon flux.

Sandovaal felt a rush of adrenaline. For a moment he imagined the array of sail-creatures as a pack of snails straining at the starting gates.…

In front of him lay the grandest adventure of his life, made possible only through his years of research in developing the sail-creatures. Nothing else seemed to matter—the Earth beckoned him onward, enticing him to dance in a dangerous ballet of gravity.

Sandovaal reached out and initiated the command that would send a tiny voltage jolt to the electrodes embedded in the array. Imperceptibly, the sail-creatures began to recoil from the irritating sensation. Their bodies moved scant millimeters as they started to swing their vast wings around, until they were fully exposed to the light pressure from the Sun.

Minutes passed before Sandovaal could detect any sensation of movement by watching the image of the
Aguinaldo.
The acceleration process had begun, and they continued to gain momentum from the solar photons. In a week’s time they would be skirting the Earth.

When he first noticed that his armada was moving at a crawl, Sandovaal whispered into the audio channel. “Yoli, is the recorder on? I wish to say something for posterity.”

After a short pause, Magsaysay’s tinny voice came over the speakers in his helmet. “Go ahead, Luis. We are anxious to hear you.”

Sandovaal smiled and drew a deep breath.
“Aguinaldo,
do not fear for us. This is another triumph for all Filipinos. And, in the immortal words of the great General MacArthur—I shall return!”

***