Lifeline (23 page)

Chapter 30

AGUINALDO—Day 39

Dobo rushed into the laboratory, red-faced and short of breath. Sandovaal looked up from what he was doing and growled. “This had better be important, Dobo.”

Sandovaal released the red grips of the micro-waldoes he used to guide the nucleus-sized needle tip into a cellular mass. On the holotank image in front of him, an electron micrograph showed his work surrounded by a dashed bull’s-eye pattern. Without his guidance, the tiny needle slewed off to the side of the target.

“I thought you knew by now not to disturb me. You could have ruined this entire series.”

Rising from the lab bench, Sandovaal wiped his hands on his white apron. He was annoyed, but not overly so. The experimental grafts had been successful, and Dobo’s entrance served to release the tension in his neck—yelling at someone always made him feel better.

Dobo shifted his weight from one foot to another, as if standing on a hot plate. “It is about Ramis!
Orbitech 1
has decided to allow him … I mean, Ramis has asked the
Orbitech
director for permission to—” He gulped a deep breath.

Sandovaal tapped his fingers together. “Well, out with it!” He waved for his assistant to take a seat. “Is Ramis in trouble again?” Sandovaal eased himself into his chair, which was far more comfortable and lower than the lab bench.

Dobo could barely keep his excitement to himself. “He is going to Jump from
Orbitech 1
to the
Kibalchich!”

Sandovaal straightened in his chair. His long white hair fell into his eyes, and he flipped it away with such force that it dropped back into his face again. “What nonsense are you talking about?”

“It is true! Ramis has volunteered to cross the distance and see what has happened to the Soviet colony—”

“A hundred kilometers by Jumping?” Sandovaal snorted. “If he is only a little off course he will float forever! No, he will probably carry air tanks with him for maneuvering. Hmmm, I thought his journey in the sail-creature would make him grow up.”

“Ramis is ready even as I speak.
Orbitech 1
is broadcasting it over the ConComm.”

Sandovaal rocked forward in his chair and sprang up to pace across the room. He punched up the
Aguinaldo
communications center on the holotank. A man’s face came into focus, startled at Sandovaal’s override.

“What is this nonsense about Ramis Jumping?” Sandovaal said.

The face in the holotank blinked at him. Behind him, the nerve center of the
Aguinaldo
went about business as usual: safety operations in the zero-G core, housing emergencies, micrometeorite drills. “We are monitoring the
Orbitech 1
transmissions over ConComm, Dr. Sandovaal. They are beaming us a view from outside their colony. Ramis has attached himself to some sort of wire and will secure it to the
Kibalchich
once he completes his journey.”

Sandovaal raised his hands and shouted at the communications officer. “Now I know the Americans are insane. They have so polluted their bodies with pizza and nachos that my wall-kelp must have sent them over the brink.”

The officer’s image faded, and was replaced by a starry view outside
Orbitech 1.
Dobo leaned forward to mutter to him. “I believe the Americans are using a new type of wire. It is very dangerous, I think.”

“New type of wire?” Sandovaal turned away from the holotank, raising his bushy eyebrows. “A hundred kilometers of wire? Do they have enough material to make a wire that long, or a place to store it?”

The holotank’s picture rotated around Ramis, taking in the giant Manned Maneuvering Unit strapped to his back and resting on a small orange canister mounted to the colony’s surface. Trailing from the canister, a thin Day-Glo orange strand was barely visible against the colony, enhanced for the broadcast. The image focused on the strand, and a voice started describing the wire in English.

“That is the stuff they make clothes out of!” Sandovaal made a deprecating sound with his lips. “I thought they could only draw that out a few kilometers a day.”

As the explanation grew more detailed, Sandovaal frowned and leaned forward in his seat. “Turn the volume up.” The footage took on the air of a documentary, with only Ramis’s breathing to punctuate the background as the broadcaster’s voice continued. It seemed rehearsed. At least the Americans would leave a good record of the efforts they had made, in case they did not survive.

Sandovaal strode to the holotank, squinting. “Magnify the image, Dobo. There, where it connects to Ramis’s suit.” Seconds later the weavewire filled the holotank; the sharp image warbled at the edges with the intense magnification.

Sandovaal’s voice rose imperceptibly. “Do a data search, Dobo—request all information
Orbitech 1
will give us about how they draw out this fiber of theirs.”

Poking his finger into the hologram image, Sandovaal tried to touch Ramis. “And make a note about those tactile-response holotanks. Times like these are when it is worth putting the damned things together.”

Sandovaal traced the thin orange line from a belt around Ramis’s waist. Another space-suited person floated in and out of the recorder’s view. The narrator’s voice grew quiet as another voice came over ConComm. “I am ready, Mr. Brahms.”

The holotank swelled with the vision of Ramis. He squatted on
Orbitech 1’s
surface with his knees bent deep. The bulky MMUs looked as though they were going to make him topple backward.

Then Ramis sprang from the hull. The holocamera followed him as he receded from the colony. The view swung down for a parting shot at the unit reeling out the weavewire. A space-suited figure stood by the mechanism, stroking its surface as if it were alive.

Sandovaal remained quiet, staring into the holotank. The fiber seemed mystical to him.

“Dr. Sandovaal?”

Sandovaal waved Dobo quiet. A full minute passed before he whispered, “I must speak with Yoli Magsaysay.”

The
dato
did not share his enthusiasm. Sandovaal blew his nose and spoke slowly, controlling himself. His impulse was to explain again, as if to an uncooperative child. But he knew that would annoy Magsaysay more than anything.

“The weavewire is the key, Yoli. I did not know they could produce useful quantities of the stuff. But apparently this is a new discovery. We must have this weavewire—it is the only way.”

Magsaysay studied him before answering. “The only way, Luis? That sounds like a dangerous assumption from the outset.”

Dobo relaxed beside Sandovaal, and thankfully kept his mouth shut. Magsaysay drummed his fingernails on the table and continued. “We are doing well now, are we not? Your projections show a sufficient distance between ourselves and starvation. This weavewire is the only way for what?”

“The only way for us to exploit the
Orbitech 2
site—all the resources left there.”

He kept a smile off his face as Magsaysay reacted. Sandovaal continued. “Did we not learn from our pigheaded ancestors, who were so enamored of the old ways that they refused to accept help, to consider more efficient methods of production?” A sudden vision of tractors rusting in rice paddies filled his head.

“Yes, we can survive and live forever in our little colony. We will keep the status quo and never achieve anything else. And when the Americans survive and reach higher and higher, we will be their little brown brothers again, even if we outnumber them two hundred to one. Look what happened to the Chinese, and they outnumbered the Americans by a thousand times!”

Sandovaal narrowed his eyes and leaned across the table to the president. “We sent Ramis to
Orbitech 1
because we believed in helping people. It is time now to help ourselves. With the weavewire, we can safely Jump to the construction site and ferry all the supplies back here. The American crew left plenty of things there, including superior computers, materials, tools. With that, perhaps we can maintain our position as equals.”

Magsaysay shifted uncomfortably. “Improving our way of life is one thing—changing our culture is a different matter.”

Dobo seemed about to say something, but Sandovaal jutted out his jaw. “If we are growing antibiotics, then it is all right! But using the processing plant left at
Orbitech 2,
that is forbidden? This is like a race. Everyone else is riding a horse. We should not insist on walking because we are too lazy to look in the stable.”

The two men stared at each other. Sandovaal had known Yoli Magsaysay for scores of years. They had butted heads often, but they shared the goal of bettering the Filipino people. Down Magsaysay’s path, the Filipinos would keep to themselves, and the wall-kelp would see them through—just barely. But down the other path, they faced the danger of losing themselves and their culture, becoming ensnared with the Americans’ obsession with breakneck progress. Or what was left of it.

But the
Aguinaldo
also had the opportunity to hold its own, to be equals instead of patronized “little brothers.”

Sandovaal smiled plaintively. It was all an act, and he knew it. Magsaysay knew it, too. “Yoli, I followed you into space because I believed in your dream for us. Now I am asking you to follow
my
dream.”

After some
moments, a grin came to Magsaysay’s lips, then he sighed. “You, my friend, have a point. But tell me—how will we get the weavewire to the
Aguinaldo?
Assuming
Orbitech 1
will even give it to us.”

“We gave them the wall-kelp, did we not?” Dobo interrupted. “How can they refuse our request?”

Sandovaal shot a sidelong glance at Dobo. “Ramis used a sail-creature; so can we. And if we carry other sail-creature nymphs with us, and launch them at appropriate times during our flight, we can complete the circle and sail back to the
Aguinaldo.”

Magsaysay looked puzzled. “Who is ‘we,’ Luis? Only a few of us have Ramis’s tenacity to survive the journey.”

Sandovaal looked surprised. “Why, Dobo and myself, of course. Who better to ensure that the sail-creatures will make it back?”

A chair tipped over and clattered to the deck. Both men turned, startled at the sound. Dobo lay crumpled on the floor.

Sandovaal shrugged. “You see, Yoli? He has fainted with the excitement.”

***

Chapter 31

L-5—Day 39

Ramis felt regret the moment he Jumped from
Orbitech 1.
He knew the measured burst from the MMU added to his velocity, but he could not tell the difference. He was always bouncing from situation to situation, afraid to stay in one place too long. He always felt he had to show off, to take risks, to push himself to the edge.

The glaring metal hull of the industrial colony rushed away from him, rotating slowly around its axis. The weavewire trailed behind him, drawn out of its chamber on
Orbitech 1’s
nonrotating section, dangling him like a lure on a long fishing line. This time he felt vulnerable and alone without the protective womb of Sarat around him.

Relax,
he told himself. This journey would not be as long as his previous one. Depending on how much force he had used to push himself away from
Orbitech 1
and the extra thrust from the MMU, it might take him six hours to cross the gap, or it might take a full day.

The
Kibalchich
looked so far away. It would be a long time before he would notice it growing any closer. He drifted with absolutely no sense of motion. The Soviet colony, Earth, the stars, even the gibbous section of the Moon, seemed to hang like props in a silent movie. The stars did not help; cold and bright, they peppered the vast darkness with an immovable reference frame.

Twisting his head around, but careful not to pull the weavewire across his MMU pack, Ramis assured himself that he was indeed receding from the American colony. The video camera on his chest would record everything he saw.

He tried to estimate how fast he was drifting. His depth perception grew worse the farther he moved away, making it harder to judge.

A voice from the
Orbitech 1
control bay came over the link, answering the question before he could ask it. “We’ve got him at a velocity of four point eight meters per second—”

Ramis finished the calculation in his head: that was about seventeen kilometers per hour. Divide that into a hundred kilometers to the
Kibalchich.
The trip would take him six hours. Not as good as he’d hoped, but he couldn’t change now without jetting from his MMUs, and he needed to reserve the fuel there for corrections. For good or bad, his course had been set.

Ramis could hear Curtis Brahms and Karen speaking to each other. Karen wanted to remain outside for as long as possible, ostensibly to monitor the weavewire dispensing cavity. Ramis knew she felt as much urgency to get off the claustrophobic colony as Ramis did, but she didn’t seem willing to admit it to herself.

Ramis tuned out the radio chatter in his helmet, the babble of reassuring comments, good wishes, redundant instructions. He was by himself now, in control of everything in his own small environment. Despite the constant sensation of falling, he felt somehow at peace.

He let his arms and legs dangle loose. The closed environment of his suit felt huge and bulky, but not uncomfortable. As he sweated, the temperature controls of the suit cooled his skin. He felt nothing—nothing to touch, nothing to feel. He sensed the mass of the air tanks, the MMU pack, the sealed boots, but none of that mattered in weightlessness.

He was swimming in the ocean of space, tethered by a line so thin it was invisible to the eye. He’d have to hang there for hours, vulnerable.

The thought of a solar flare spewing out deadly protons and x-rays gnawed at the back of his mind. If that happened, he would be drilled by high-energy particles, fried crisper than a “dog on a log” back home on the Philippines.

He wished he could use the MMU again to add to his velocity, speed up the trip. Maybe he could use one of the air tanks. With nothing else to occupy him, Ramis began to run through mathematics in his head. If he doubled his velocity and finished the trip in half the time, he’d need only half as much air. And he could use compressed air from his tanks as easily as he could use propellant gas in the MMU. A couple of blasts from the nozzle of an air tank, and he could double, maybe even triple his speed. And if he did get inside the Soviet station, he could recharge his tanks. That meant he really only needed enough air for one way, not two.

He pursed his lips. He vowed not to be like the bickering senators in the
Aguinaldo’s
council meetings, endlessly considering options until the problem got around to resolving itself. And besides, what did he have to look forward to if he returned to
Orbitech 1?

It sounded like a good enough risk to him.

Ramis took a few moments to rig one of his spare bottles, pointing the emergency bleed nozzle directly behind him over his shoulder. He wondered why none of the Orbitech theoreticians had come up with that solution.

He had to be extremely careful not to send himself into a tumble that would get him tangled in Karen’s weavewire; the first hundred meters were thick multistrands that wouldn’t cut him, but a tangle could still cause him big difficulties.

He blasted a jet of air behind him. In the padded suit, he felt the jerk of sudden acceleration, then rapidly lost all sensation of movement again. The
Orbitech 1
monitors would probably lecture him for altering his plans without letting them know.

Let Director Brahms come give me a spanking, then,
he thought.
I can make my own decisions.
As if in defiance, he let out two more bursts from the air tank.

“—Ramis, what in the living hell are you doing out there?” He clicked off Brahms’s voice, leaving his helmet in silence.

He decided he should try to get a little sleep. He could do nothing else. Newton’s first law—or was it the second?—would keep him drifting until something made him stop.

Ramis jerked his eyes open. Stars rotated around him in a slow drift. Waving his arms in panic, he tried to see what was happening. The
Kibalchich
was nowhere in sight.

Fumbling with the controls on his suit’s forearm, Ramis squirted the MMU to compensate for his rotation. He felt the vibration of the hissing attitude jets. The bright wheel of the Soviet colony centered itself in his visor again.

The sound of breathing filled his helmet. He kicked on his heads-up display and scanned the suit diagnostics as they were bounced from the control panel below his chin into his front view plate. His air tank supply and the propellant in the MMU looked good. The carbon dioxide count was a little high in the suit, but that made sense with his recent burst of rapid breathing.

He kicked back on his radio.

“—detected a click. We’ve got him back on line. Someone get the director.”

A minute passed but no other sounds came over radio, until, “—Ramis, Curtis Brahms here. We lost you there for a while. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” His voice came out rough from sleepiness. He cleared his throat. “I am fine. I took a short nap—”

“We know,” said Brahms. “We were monitoring your vital signs, and we show your breathing rate greatly increased. Is anything wrong?” Brahms paused a beat. “Why did you turn your radio off, Ramis?” His voice had an edge to it.

Ramis scowled to himself.
Even here, he is watching me.
“I started to rotate, but I have made the appropriate correction with the MMU.”

Karen Langelier’s voice broke back into the conversation. “Diagnostics show the weavewire has twisted but is not now rotating. He’s doing just fine.”

“Good. Good job, Ramis.” Brahms’s voice still sounded tight. Ramis closed his eyes and scowled. “I’m leaving now. You will follow directions, won’t you, Ramis?”

“Of course.” Ramis cut the transmission short.

Hours passed as the universe coasted beneath him. Karen occasionally broke in to chat, and Ramis was glad of the company. Off and on he tried to signal the
Kibalchich
himself, but received no answer.

Now, it was less than thirty minutes away. The station’s outer sheath of rubble hid the rotating living quarters. He could make out the giant mirror suspended above the colony. Unlike the
Aguinaldo,
which was built as an immense rotating cylinder, or even
Orbitech 1’s
dumbbell of counter-rotating wheels, the Soviet colony looked like the classic doughnut-shaped space station conceived by Willy Ley more than a century before.

As he grew close, though, the station took on an alien look: jutting struts, weirdly placed objects on the exterior, even the paint scheme looked dark and brooding. The silent Soviet colony looked dormant, devoid of life. Tiny darkened portholes dotted clear patches on the outer hull.

Ramis remembered his approach to
Orbitech 1
while riding in the organic solar sail, watching as the flatscreen broadcast the view from the external cameras mounted on Sarat. He had been half an hour away from the American colony when he had injected Sarat with the hormone that collapsed the huge, beautiful sails. He had been half an hour away when he had caught sight of faces in the colony windows—weary and frightened faces, watching him with hope.

Now, thirty minutes from the
Kibalchich,
he saw nothing.

“I will use the maneuvering units to guide me in,” he said into the radio.

“Be careful—every time you punch those MMUs, you’re adding some component to your forward velocity,” Karen said. “It might not seem like much, but remember how fast you’re already going.”

“I will manage.” Ramis thought to himself that with all her concern, Karen did not know of his experience flying in the
Aguinaldo.
He had hit the Jump squares peppering the Sibuyan Sea going twice as fast as he was moving now. The
Kibalchich
should have had two hundred people aboard, waiting to greet him. But instead, the colony refused any contact. It hung dark, like a giant empty house in space.

***