The Aftermath (10 page)

Theo was sitting at the head of the little table, Angela on his left. Pauline herself sat with her back to the row of freezers and microwave ovens. She had placed a meager bowl of thawed fruit on the table and a glass of reconstituted juice at each of their three places.

Theo was saying, “I've been working with the navigation program at night, trying to figure out some way to cut our trip time down and get us back to the Ceres area in less than eight years.”

“And seven months,” Angela muttered.

“And four days,” Theo added, grinning at her. Pauline realized that six months ago he would have lost his temper with his sister. Now he simply let her grumbles roll off his back. Theo's growing up, she thought. All this responsibility is making a man of him.

Angela is maturing too, she realized. She's become a real help to Theo; she can run the command pod's systems just as well as he can. Pauline smiled to herself: The idea of Theo and Angela working together on repairing the ship's antennas would have been preposterous six months ago; yet they've slaved away at it together without fighting, without calling each other names. Even when it became painfully clear that they wouldn't be able to get the antennas functioning again, they didn't blame each other.

Theo blames his father, though. He says Victor didn't store the proper supplies for repairing the antennas. Maybe he's right. None of us expected to be attacked. None of us expected the antennas to be so badly damaged.

That was her greatest worry. Not that they were drifting halfway to Jupiter, alone and unable to call for help. Not that they might run out of food or have the recyclers break down past the point where they could be repaired. Pauline's greatest worry was that Theo blamed his father for this, blamed Victor for not supplying the ship adequately, blamed him for running away and abandoning them.

“We might be able to cut the trip time in half,” Theo was saying, “but it's an awfully risky maneuver.”

With an effort of will, Pauline focused her attention on what her son was telling her.

“We put it all on a graph,” Theo said, fingering the palm-sized remote in his hand.

“We?” Pauline asked.

“Angie and me.” He hesitated, then admitted, “Angie's a lot better at math than I am.”

A multicolored map appeared on the smart screen on the galley's far bulkhead. Thin yellow lines looped across its gridwork background. Pauline realized that they were the orbits of major asteroids. A pulsing red dot was at its center.

“The red dot is us,” Theo explained. “And here's our current trajectory.…”

A blue curve arced outward. The view enlarged to show
Syracuse
's trajectory soaring out the far side of the Asteroid Belt halfway to Jupiter before it finally swung back toward Ceres again.

“I've gone through all the numbers a dozen times—”

“We both did,” Angela said, without a hint of rancor.

He dipped his chin in acknowledgement of his sister. “And here's what we might be able to do.”

A dotted blue curve appeared, much shorter than the solid one.

Theo explained, “The nav program shows that we can get back to Ceres in a little more than four years if we fire the main engine and decelerate the ship.”

“Four years, two months and sixteen days,” said Angela, looking almost happy about it. “Right, Thee?”

“Right. Give or take an uncertainty of five percent.”

“Couldn't we make it less than that?” Pauline asked.

Theo grimaced, then answered, “We don't have the fuel for a longer burn, Mom. This maneuver's gonna use up our last drop of hydrogen.”

Pauline thought about that for a moment. “You don't mean
all
our hydrogen?”

“All of it, Mom. Down to the last molecule.”

“But how will we generate electricity if we use all the fuel? The reactor needs hydrogen.”

“That's the risky part.”

“We can't run for four years without electricity! We couldn't last four days.”

“I know. But we have water.”

“Drinking water,” Pauline said. “Which we need.”

“We recycle it,” said Angela.

“But what's our drinking water got to do with hydrogen for the fusion reactor?” Pauline asked. She was fairly certain she knew the answer but she wanted to hear what Theo had come up with.

Theo gnawed on his lip for several heartbeats. With a glance at his sister, he explained, “Here's what Angie and I have figured out. Water contains hydrogen. We electrolyze some of our water and feed the hydrogen to the reactor to keep it going.”

“We use the electricity that the reactor generates to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen,” Angela added.

Pauline felt confused. “Now wait a second. You use electricity from the reactor to produce hydrogen fuel for the reactor?”

They both nodded.

“It sounds…”

“It's a bootstrap operation, I know,” said Theo. “But the numbers show that it could work.”

Angela said, “The hydrogen fusion produces a
gajillion
times more energy than it takes to split the water molecules.”

“Something about this doesn't sound right to me,” Pauline insisted.

“Angela's right, Mom,” Theo replied. “The fusion process produces a lot more energy than it takes to electrolyze the water. We'll be on the happy side of the curve.”

“You're certain of this?” Pauline asked.

Again Theo hesitated. Then he said, “That's what the numbers show.”

“Then why can't we produce enough hydrogen to feed the main engine and get us back to Ceres sooner?”

“Propulsion needs reaction mass, Mom. Our hydrogen doesn't just generate electrical power; we use most of it to push through the engine's jets and provide thrust.”

“That's what most of the hydrogen in our tanks was for,” Angela chimed in. “Reaction mass. Only a fraction of it goes to generating electricity.”

To make sure she understood what they were telling her, Pauline said, “So you think you can generate electrical power for the ship even after you've used up all the hydrogen in the fuel tanks.”

“Yes.”

“And cut our trip time in half.”

“Just about.”

“And the risk is…?”

Angela said, “The risk is that we might use up too much of our drinking water to keep the reactor generating electricity.”

“The reactor doesn't need all that much fuel to generate electricity,” Theo explained. “A glassful of water can produce enough electricity to keep the ship running for a month, just about.”

“Fusion's a powerful thing, Mom,” said Angela. “It's what powers the stars, y'know.”

Pauline looked from her daughter's eager face to her son's more somber expression. Theo looks so much like his father now, she thought.

“We can do it, Mom!” Angela urged. “We can get back to Ceres in four years!”

She's so anxious to get back to civilization, Pauline thought. But what if we use up all our water before we get back?

“Theo,” she asked, “do you really think this will work?”

“That's what the numbers show,” he repeated.

“But what do
you
think?”

“I think we can do it, but it's not just up to me. We all have a vote in this.”

“Let's do it!” Angela said.

Realizing she would be outnumbered if she decided to vote against the scheme, Pauline made herself smile at her children.

“All right,” she said slowly. “Let's try it.”

CARGO SHIP
PLIEADES
: INFIRMARY

It was weird, knowing that the medic was the captain's cloned daughter. Victor allowed her to put him through the scanners for a thorough physical, then sat in a soundproofed cubicle for more than an hour with the psych computer, answering questions while hooked up to blood pressure, voice analysis and other stress sensors. Finally he went through the thoroughly unpleasant experience of having his blood pumped out of his arm, through a detoxifying dialysis machine, and back into his arm again.

The medic said barely a word to him through the whole long procedure. At last she pulled the tubes from his arm and sealed his wounds with medicinal spray-on patches.

“You're free to go now,” she said in her near-whisper.

Victor swung his legs off the gurney, got to his feet and took a deep, testing breath. He felt good, no shakes, no weakness.

“I'm sorry I got you into trouble,” he said to the medic.

“It was my own fault,” she replied, hardly looking at him. Then a tentative smile emerged on her face. “She doesn't stay angry very long.”

“Your mother?”

The medic nodded. “The captain.”

“Well,” he said, “thanks for everything.”

Her eyes evaded his. “Good luck.”

It wasn't until Victor had left the infirmary and was halfway along the passageway that led to the ship's galley that it struck him that “Good luck” was a strange thing to say. What did she mean by that? he wondered.

The galley was jammed with crew members eating dinner. Victor had to squeeze in at a table already occupied by six of his mates.

“Took the day off, didja?” one of the men said, elbowing him in the ribs hard enough almost to make Victor slosh the coffee out of his mug as he edged his tray between the others already on the table.

“The easy life,” joked the woman sitting across the table from him, grinning widely at him.

“I wasn't up to it today,” Victor said, turning his attention to the dinner tray before him.

One of the other women said, “We heard about what you picked up yesterday, Vic.”

The table fell silent.

Victor put his fork down and looked up and down the table. They were all staring at him.

With a shrug he said, “Let's forget about it.”

“Yeah. Shit happens.”

“Not much you can do about it.”

They all started eating again.

Victor half-finished his meal, then hurried back to his own cubicle. A message was blinking on the wall screen above his bunk:
REPORT TO CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS AT 2000 HOURS
.

“Aye-aye, captain,” he muttered.

At precisely 2000 hours, dressed in fresh coveralls, Victor rapped smartly on the frame of the captain's sliding doorscreen.

“Enter,” she called.

He slid the door back and stepped in. Captain Madagascar was still in her black uniform, sitting at her desk. She blanked the computer screen and got to her feet.

“Exactly on time. Good.”

“I went through the medical—”

“I know,” said Cheena Madagascar, jerking a thumb toward the dead display screen. “I reviewed your medical records. You're in good condition, physically and psychologically.”

Victor nodded.

She slid a partition back and Victor saw a kitchenette laid out along the bulkhead: steel sink, minifridge and freezer, microwave, cabinets overhead.

“Had your dinner?” the captain asked.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I haven't.” She pulled a prepackaged meal from the freezer. “Sit down, relax.”

The little round table in the middle of the room was already set for two, he saw. He pulled out one of the delicate little chairs and sat on it carefully.

“Want some wine?” the captain asked as she slid the dinner package into the microwave.

“You said I shouldn't drink anything alcoholic.”

She broke into a wry grin. “I told my daughter I didn't want her to give you any alcohol. That doesn't mean you can't have a glass of wine with me.”

Thinking of the detox dialysis, Victor said, “I'd better stay away from—”

Cheena Madagascar interrupted, “When the captain invites you to have a glass of wine, you say, ‘Thank you, captain. I'd be delighted.'”

Victor saw where this was heading. With a shrug he said, “Thank you, captain. I'd be delighted.”

He sipped at the chilled white wine slowly as she ate her dinner. The wine tasted like biting the cold steel blade of a knife.

“We're almost finished with this body hunt, you know,” the captain told him as she chewed away. “There's only a few dozen more to account for.”

“George Ambrose won't be satisfied until every single one is found,” Victor said.

Madagascar nodded. “He's got the clout to make 'em do what he wants.”

“Them?”

“The IAA. Selene. The university consortium that runs the research stations orbiting Jupiter and Venus. The big-ass corporations.”

“The powers that be,” Victor muttered.

“If they don't do what Big George wants, the rock rats won't supply resources.”

“What's left of the rock rats.”

“There's plenty of 'em left. The people on
Chrysalis
were mainly storekeepers and clerks. The miners and smeltery workers were on their own ships, scattered all across the Belt.”

“My family's out there somewhere,” Victor said.

Madagascar took a healthy slug of wine. Putting the stemmed glass down on the tabletop, she said, “Face it, Zacharias: Your family's most likely dead.”

“No,” he said.

“You know better than that,” she insisted. “If they're not dead already they're as good as dead, drifting out there in the Belt somewhere. Nobody's going to find them.”

“I will.”

“You will? How?”

“I'll need a ship.”

“Damned right you will.”

And then it hit him. “And I'll need Big George's clout.”

Captain Madagascar smiled like a lynx. “I could help you with Big George. And with this ship.”

Victor nodded. He knew what she wanted in return.

ORE SHIP
SYRACUSE
: BACKUP COMMAND POD

The command pod was crowded with all three of them in there. Theo felt the body heat of his mother and sister, the tension of their anxieties, their expectations, their fears.