Lifeline (5 page)

Brahms conducted a dozen interviews per day, every day of the week. He watched tapes of the interviews over again to double-check his impressions, then beamed them back to Earth for secondary analysis by one of the company’s other teams.

He spent weeks collating information, massaging numbers through a new computer model developed at Orbitechnologies. Looking at his preliminary results, Brahms called about a hundred of the people back again for a second interview. Brahms chose these interviewees carefully and watched their responses as he asked them questions about other colonists. By studying the way they responded to the questions, he gained a second impression about them, and gleaned some information about other colonists.

After four months of wearing himself thin, convincing everyone on the station that he was too cold and too hard, Brahms packaged up the results of his study and transmitted them to Earth. Orbitechnologies thanked him, told him to remain on the colony until further notice, and kept silent for a week while they interpreted the results.

Brahms waited, exhausted but utterly satisfied with his efforts. He was optimistic, hoping that with his background, some lucky breaks, and a hell of a lot of hard work on other projects, he might have a chance as associate director of
Orbitech 2,
the companion station now under construction at L-4.

Then Orbitechnologies unexpectedly relieved Roha Ombalal of most of his duties, and told Brahms to step in as associate director. He drifted in a state of shock for several days, not fully comprehending his good fortune and sudden responsibilities, until the day Ombalal’s wife had cursed him, just before she and her children had gone back to Earth in disgrace.

“No.” Allen Terachyk broke Brahms’s concentration. “We won’t last long.” Terachyk stood up and turned to leave the office. He hung his head and snuffled down the corridor without speaking further.

Brahms stopped himself from going after him. On the holoscreen glimmered the results of Terachyk’s model. His eyes widened at the numbers. With the recent arrival of the
Miranda
they had just restocked all their stores, and Terachyk hadn’t spent too much time with various rationing schemes, but in the simplistic, conservative one he had applied, the results still shocked Brahms.

Four months.

All the people on
Orbitech 1,
all fifteen hundred, would starve in four months.

Their gardens were ornamental—bright flowers and the occasional luxury of fresh fruit.
Orbitech 1
was not designed to be self-sufficient.

Earth could never recover in that time. Sixty years before, one shuttle had blown up and stalled the U.S. space program for years. Now the War had driven the entire industrial base to its knees … and
Orbitech 1
had only four months until it ran out of food.

Too many people, and not enough supplies. They couldn’t all survive. He looked at the numbers again; they were too large and too small. Fifteen hundred people. Four months.

We can’t all survive.

He looked to Ombalal. The man stared at the holoscreen, unblinking, as if he had expected nothing else.

Orbitech 1
had its scientists and researchers, whom Brahms respected and admired—but he did not worship them. As part of the big machine of the colony, all pieces had to fit together. The researchers, with their special skills, were just doing their job, as Brahms expected everyone to do.

The colony also had its production people, its workers, its maintenance people, its electronics technicians, its custodians, its medical officers, its gardener, the Personnel and Administration divisions, and they had families. All facets of society were reflected in
Orbitech 1
—they had to be able to make it a viable community.

We can’t all survive!

How long would it take him to find a way for the colony to live through this? He couldn’t do it alone—and he didn’t intend to. They all had to make a massive, concerted effort. All of the collective resources of
Orbitech 1
had to pull together as a team to find a way. But how could they possibly discover a radical new means of survival, develop it, and implement it in time to make any difference?

Fifteen hundred. There were still too many people. Four months. The time was still too short. He had to do something—riots would start once people found out they only had four months to live. But how could he stop it?

Brahms felt a drop of sweat trickle in a cold path down his back. His throat went dry. Fewer people would be able to survive longer on the same amount of supplies.

They couldn’t all survive anyway.

Brahms closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, the numbers on the screen were still the same.

The associate director got up from his desk. Ombalal had closed his eyes, as if trying to hold back tears. Useless man. Brahms thought briefly about calling for an attendant, but hesitated a moment, then turned instead to the holo unit and punched up a d-cube of Prokofiev’s “Kije Suite.” The mixed melancholy and optimism of the music would help him think.

As the d-cube played, Brahms used his thumbprint to unseal one of the compartments in the restricted file recessed into the wall. He found the duplicate memory cube containing the confidential results of his Efficiency Study.

Brahms held the hologram memory cube in his hand. It was cold and had sharp corners. He felt as if his insides had turned to metal—bright chrome. He stared at the cube, still reluctant to consider the possibility at hand.

He moved to Ombalal and turned the cube right before the station director’s eyes. Brahms said, “Do you know what this is?”

Ombalal blinked. “A data cube, of course.”

“Ah, but what’s on it?” Brahms squatted down and searched Ombalal’s eyes. He whispered, “We can’t all survive. But some of our people are more likely than others to come up with a solution—they’ve shown it by their track record. We might have a chance.”

Standing, he pushed the cube into a slot in his desktop, and listened to the quiet whirring as the internal computer read the information into Brahms’s private directory.

He pulled the keypad toward him, saved Allen Terachyk’s analysis, then called up the results of his Efficiency Study. As he scrolled down through the names and scores on the holoscreen, he looked at the rankings, forcing himself not to think of faces, of people—only numbers and names.

We can’t all survive.

He turned to Ombalal. The director’s eyes were wide with horror.

Brahms hesitated a long time before choosing the first name, the one with the lowest score. His eyes felt dry and gummy, yet he couldn’t seem to find the energy to blink.

But once he had chosen the first name, the rest came easier.

***

Chapter 6

En Route to the Moon—Day 3

The Moon’s blasted landscape swelled below them—craters, mountains, canyons, and black lava flows. The jagged peaks reached up as the
Miranda
swooped in its orbit, homing in on
Clavius Base
.

Stephanie Garland kept her eyes on the instruments. “‘How to get the whole universe to despise you in three easy steps.’ We’re good at that, aren’t we, McLaris?” Bitterness edged her voice, but McLaris did not rise to the bait.

“Knock it off. It’s too late to have second thoughts. You did what you did, and so did I.”

He could see Garland growing edgier, uneasy, as they neared the Moon. McLaris stared at the landscape beneath them until his eyes ached. “Shouldn’t we be close enough to see it by now?”

“You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew exactly where to look. Most of the huts are covered with a few yards of lunar soil for shielding. Everything else is underground. You’ll see towers sticking up, maybe a few access doors.”

Garland reached for the radio and flicked the switch. “
Clavius Base
, this is shuttle-tug
Miranda.
We will be landing in a few minutes. Request assistance.”

A voice broke in over the speakers. “We do not condone your actions,
Miranda.
You are not welcome here.”

Over the past two days they had listened in as Brahms and the intercolony community expressed outrage, condemnation. McLaris had chosen to maintain silence.

“I’m not asking you for the Welcome Wagon—I’m asking for guidance!” Garland snapped.

McLaris gripped the pilot’s shoulder to silence her. He spoke into the microphone himself. “Please give our regards to Chief Administrator”—he paused for just a moment as he searched his mind for the right name—“Tomkins. We will explain ourselves to him after we have landed safely. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to turn back, whether you welcome us or not. We are going to be forced to land.”

The
Miranda
had carried only enough fuel to take Garland back to Earth orbit, and landing in the lunar gravity field required much more than just maneuvering and braking thrust. McLaris had watched the pilot grow more and more insecure as they neared their destination.

After a pause, the voice on the speakers returned. “We have adjusted the homing beacon. If you’ve got an inexperienced pilot aboard, we warn you that
Clavius Base
is close to the crater wall. Watch out.”

“Inexperienced, my ass,” Garland muttered to herself, then spoke over her shoulder to McLaris. “You’d better suit up. And get Jessie suited up, too. All I have to do is skim a rock, rupture the hull—the suits won’t do much good, but let’s take all the protection we can get.”

McLaris squeezed back to the storage lockers and found the hanging suits.

“Jessie, come here.” He looked at the smallest one in dismay:
Oh, great.

Jessie unstrapped herself and floated over to the lockers. She looked at the bulky adult suit in his hand. “Diddy, that’s too big!”

“I know, baby, but it’s the only suit we’ve got. It’s just for a little while. I want you to wear it for protection. You don’t have to do anything in it. I want you to try to get your feet into the legs of the suit. I’ll seal everything else up. You won’t be able to see out of the helmet. You’re too short.”

“But I want to see!”

McLaris took a deep breath. “I can’t help that, Jessie. Just think of it like a big sleeping bag. You have to wear it. It’ll make you safe.” He smiled at her. “This is going to be rough. I told you. But I want you to be brave.”

“I am brave.”

“Good, I know you are. Let’s see if you can keep being brave for just a few more minutes until we land. Then we’ll be on the Moon.”

“Okay.”

McLaris kissed her on the forehead, then playfully tugged at her braids before he made her sink down into the voluminous suit. The suit ballooned as he sealed the helmet. It didn’t appear to leak; he hoped the seams would hold.

Dismayed at the way the suit fit her, McLaris lifted Jessie and carried her back to the acceleration seat. He strapped her in carefully and squeezed where he thought her shoulder was.

He brought a suit back for Garland and slipped into another one himself. As he tugged on the thick material, McLaris closed his eyes and thought back to the intense training he had taken before he, Jessie, and Diane had moved up to
Orbitech 1.

“You’d better hurry—we’re coming in,” Garland called back without turning her head. “
Clavius Base
, we’re on our way!” She switched off the radio again. “Does Jessie remember any prayers from Sunday school? You’d better have her start saying them.”

McLaris went cold. “Let’s not get her worried,” he said shortly, then sealed his own helmet.

Garland muttered, glancing at the cross hairs on one of the screens as the landscape streaked beneath them. She pulled on her own helmet, and McLaris heard her voice crackle in his headset. “Here we go!”

The
Miranda
dropped in its descent, and its rockets fired to stop the fall. The jagged surface of the Moon rose up toward them. McLaris felt his stomach clench.

The upturned lip of a crater opened before them, and a vast flat plain spread out. Suddenly McLaris could see the blurred forms of the buried buildings on
Clavius Base
, and the shining, kilometers-long rail of the mass launcher used for catapulting lunar material into orbit for construction of the Lagrange colonies.

The crater Clavius spread out like a giant bowl—it seemed so smooth, a perfect spot to land. But as they came closer, McLaris spotted sharp edges, jutting rocks of smaller craters and fissures.

“Diddy!” Jessie cried, muffled in her suit.

The far wall of the Clavius crater grew visibly with each moment. “It’s now or never.”

Garland fired the attitude jets in an attempt to slow them down further, to take the shuttle in gently. They still seemed to be descending too fast. The rockets sputtered.

“So much for the safety factor in the fuel supply!”

Garland clutched at the controls, but the shuttle did not respond. A last spurt from one of the engines tilted them sideways at a crazy angle. McLaris squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, only to see the saw-toothed wall of rock hurtling toward them.

“Stephanie, look out—!”

A ripping explosion tore out the belly of the
Miranda.
The shuttle pitched. McLaris thought he could see stars, then the lunar surface, through a gash in the floor. Ragged metal strips dangled like knives as their air vented out into the vacuum in a cloud of white frost crystals.

The
Miranda
crashed, nose first, half burying itself into the lunar surface. Explosive pain popped inside of McLaris.

The cockpit wall folded up and struck him.

Fighting a red haze, McLaris clawed back to consciousness. Part of him wanted to remain in the floating warmth, in the dark, but another part insisted on returning to life.

He squinted, focused enough to see flecks of blood spattered on the inside of his faceplate. He was hurt. McLaris faced the knowledge coolly, at a distance from himself.

He forced his vision beyond the faceplate, into the distorted wreckage of the shuttle. His eyes began to assess distance and perspective again.

He recognized with a sick detachment the torn remains of Stephanie Garland in the pilot’s seat. Frozen, iron-hard tatters of flesh and powder-dry blood hung from the ragged ends of the control panel. Half the cockpit yawned open to space.

McLaris realized that he was now sitting in hard vacuum. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He wondered how long the air in his suit would last.

Pain rose up inside his head, and his eyes refused to focus again. Something peaceful called him to come back into sleep … back into a blissful coma, away from all pain and worry.

McLaris fought against it.
Jessie!
He had to find Jessie. But movement was much more difficult than opening his eyes. He clenched his hand, feeling the fingers move, touching the fabric on the inside of the glove. He breathed, but it felt as if he had inhaled needles that tore at his lungs with each gasp.

He needed to turn only a little to see Jessie behind him. With each slight motion of his head, the nauseating shadows filled his mind again. He was going to faint soon …. for a long time. He didn’t know if he would ever wake up. But McLaris couldn’t fall into unconsciousness again … not without seeing Jessie one last time.

He wrenched his head too quickly. Blackness reared, but he did get a chance to locate her, strapped into the passenger seat.

Then he saw the jagged crack down the center of her faceplate.

Darkness filled his head again. He had to save her. He refused to consider that he might be too late, that the decompression and loss of air would be almost instantaneous. His ears began to ring loudly. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate. The only thing he could feel was horror—and then a baffled, nightmarish thought: why couldn’t he see her face? The space suit looked hauntingly empty, vacant, as if her body had vanished entirely.

But then he faded into the off-kilter sea of blackness again.

McLaris woke when they moved him. He blinked back a nightmare of a dwarf sitting on his back, stabbing into his spine over and over again with a sharp little dagger. Jessie … Jessie … Jessie!

His eyes focused again, rolling up to reveal a suited man hauling him from the wreckage of the
Miranda.
He couldn’t see the man’s face or his expression; his polarized faceplate was turned into harsh shadow. But McLaris stared at the name patch on his suit, glowing orange.

CLANCY.

He memorized the name, as if it was something sacred and important.
Clancy.
He couldn’t understand why Clancy was wearing the suit of an
Orbitech 2
construction engineer—weren’t they supposed to be at L-4?

McLaris tried to call for his daughter, but only a hoarse sound came from his throat—like the sound of air escaping from a cracked faceplate.

Clancy could not understand him, but seemed to recognize that McLaris had returned to consciousness. His words came clearly into McLaris’s suit radio, filled with a mixture of anger and dismay.

“You idiot!” Not too gently, Clancy set him inside a rover vehicle. “Do you think we’re any better off here?”

***