Gwendy’s Final Task

24

ONE BY ONE THEY float through the hatch, then up the hard line with its blue foam sides, and finally into Many Flags. Kathy Lundgren is first, Gareth Winston last. Gwendy’s between Reggie Black, the physicist, and Adesh, aka Bug Man.

Gwendy feels a slight tug of gravity as she enters. Her mind is currently as clear as a bell, and she remembers that the station’s slow spin has returned a fraction of her weight. She and the other newbies look around, bouncing slowly up and down: touch and go, touch and go.

Her first thought is that USA Control would look almost like a hotel lobby if the walls weren’t lined with equipment, monitors, and a nightmare spaghetti of cords and wires. And if the walls weren’t padded, of course. Her second thought is that it’s big. After two days in Eagle Heavy, the room looks enormous. The ceiling is at least four feet over her head, and one of the walls isn’t a wall at all but a long, gracefully curving window that gives a view of pure black punched through with stars.

“Okay to ditch the outerwear, guys,” Sam says. “Stow ’em there.”

He points to lockers along one wall. There are at least two dozen. Ten have lighted panels with the names of the Eagle Heavy crew. Gwendy bounce-floats to hers and opens it. There’s a hook for her suit and a magnetized shelf for her helmet. She’s carrying the steel box with CLASSIFIED MATERIAL stamped on it, and it would stick to the shelf, but she doesn’t want to leave it there. Not with Gareth’s locker right next to hers. She sees him watching her, and she doubts it’s with admiration for her butt in the red Eagle coverall she’s wearing.

“Crew to me for a minute,” Kathy says. “Gather round.”

Gwendy closes her locker and joins the others, holding the steel box by its handle. It makes her think of the lunchbox she carried to Castle Rock Elementary long, long ago.

“Air smells better, don’t you think?” Bern Stapleton asks her.

“God, yes. Sweeter and fresher.”

Also, there’s instrumental music drifting down from the overhead speakers. Maybe Seals and Crofts, maybe Simon and Garfunkel. Like in a mall or a supermarket, Gwendy thinks. She’s aware of something else, too. Below the humming of the monitors and equipment, there’s a faint creaking sound, almost like an old wooden ship in a moderate wind.

That’s a little creepy, she thinks. Then: Check that, it’s a lot creepy. Like a haunted house in a movie. Or a haunted hotel. Maybe that feeling is stupid, but maybe it’s valid. The MF station is huge, and except for them and half a dozen Chinese doing God knows what, it’s deserted.

They circle Kathy, rising and falling, touching and going.

“You know most of this from preflight orientation, but protocol demands I give you a quick refresher upon entry to the station. First, accommodations.”

She points at the doors marked SPOKE 1, SPOKE 2, and SPOKE 3.

“Spoke 1 is flight crew: me, Sam, Dave. Spoke 2 is science crew: Reggie, Jafari, Bern, and Adesh. Spoke 3 belongs to our passengers, Gwendy and Gareth, plus Dr. Glen. I think you newbies are going to be delighted by what you find. Someday not far in the future, TetCorp hopes those rooms and many others like them will be occupied by paying guests. Gwendy and Gareth, you have actual suites. Only a bedroom, sitting room, and a small bathroom, but quite luxy.”

“Don’t tell the taxpayers,” Gwendy stage-whispers. Most of them laugh. Gareth Winston does not, perhaps because the current administration has landed him in the 45 percent tax bracket. Or maybe he’s just impatient with the repetition.

“You’ll have to bring your own gear up from the Eagle; all the bellmen up here are on strike.”

There’s more laughter, and once again Gareth doesn’t join in. Gwendy wonders when he last had to carry his own luggage. Maybe when he moved into a college dorm. Maybe never.

“I’ll cut the rest of the lecture short, if you promise not to tell Mission Control, but I urge you to review the orientation video on your tablet again. It will guide you around the parts of the station available to us … which in this extraordinary circumstance is almost all of it. Jaff, you’ll want to visit the observatory and power up what needs to be powered up so you can start sending photos back to Earth. I believe your main interest will be Mars.”

“Correctamundo,” Jafari says.

“Gwendy, you’ll want to check out the weather deck. It’s small, but it has tons of equipment and its own telescope. Bern, your lab is next to Adesh’s Bug Suite in Spoke 5.”

Gareth interrupts. “What happened to cutting this short? I’d like to get settled in.”

Kathy registers momentary irritation at this rudeness, but a moment later it’s gone. Gareth is important to TetCorp’s plans for tourist travel above the earth and therefore must be cosseted. Up to a point, Gwendy thinks. If he has to be busted on his behavior, I think I can be the bad guy. She certainly busted the man she replaced in the Senate on his behavior, and on statewide TV. She just can’t remember his name at present. She’s never known such feelings of helplessness.

“I suggest we all settle in,” Kathy says. “After one more thing.”

Gareth gives a longsuffering sigh. But really, what does he have to do? It’s not like he has a job up here, and Gwendy certainly doesn’t intend to ask for his help on the weather deck.

“You all have the run of the place, except for Spoke 9. That one is currently Chinese territory.” She points to an info panel below the big window, where there are eight green lights and one red one. “Should they unlock—which they do sometimes, to use the exercise room and the International Room, where they play video games and use the canteen machines—you will still stay clear. They are not particularly hospitable. But all spokes lead to the outer rim and that’s common territory. I always enjoy a run there. In this gravity, which we call lo-no, I can do a mile in just over two minutes.”

“Please?” Gareth says, and Gwendy knows what he sounds like: a rich Type A passenger at the end of a long flight, dismissing the flight crew the minute the plane touches down. Sometimes Gareth can be friendly, even charming, but she thinks that’s just thin paint over a man who expects to be obeyed and kowtowed to. “How about it, Kathy?”

“Big Zoom meeting to get to?” Bern asks mildly.

“None of your affair, Plant Man,” Gareth says.

“Go,” Kathy says, making an amiable shooing gesture. “Get settled. My advice, take today to explore the station before starting whatever job you came here to do.”

Most of them head back down into the Eagle, Gareth Winston in the lead. Gwendy lingers, then makes her slow way to Kathy, who is talking with Dr. Glen. “Got time for a question?” Gwendy asks.

“Of course. How can I help?”

Dale Glen bounces his way over to the window and stands looking out into the infinite blackness, hands clasped behind his back. The others have gone.

“My room,” Gwendy says. She can’t bring herself to call it a suite. “Does the door lock?”

“None of them do, but your accommodation comes with a security safe, very much like the kind they have in hotel rooms. It is sort of a hotel room, actually.” She looks meaningfully at the steel box Gwendy’s carrying. “You punch in a four-digit combo. Your special cargo should fit quite nicely, Senator.”

She’s speaking officially because this is official business, Gwendy thinks. “Thank you. That’s something of a relief.” She glances toward Dr. Glen. He’s at a safe distance, but she still lowers her voice. “Mr. Winston—Gareth—has shown … um … an interest.”

“Perhaps he was interested in this, as well.” She reaches into the elasticized waist pocket of her jumper. What she brings out, to Gwendy’s horror, is her red notebook. The one where she keeps all the things she doesn’t want to forget, including the code that opens the CLASSIFIED box.

“He said your cabin door was ajar and he found it floating in the corridor. That must have been the case, because he wouldn’t have any reason to be snooping in your cabin, would he?”

“Of course not,” Gwendy says, taking the notebook and stowing it in her own pocket. She feels cold all over. “Thank you.”

Kathy takes Gwendy by the shoulder. “Do you think he was snooping? Because I’d have to take that rather seriously, Mr. Moneybags or not.”

The hell of it is, Gwendy doesn’t know. She doesn’t think she left the notebook unsecured, she doesn’t think she left the door of her cabin unlatched so it could float out in the constant circulation of the air purifiers … but she can’t be sure.

“No,” she says. “Probably not. Kathy … you have the Pocket Rocket, correct? It’s onboard?”

“Yes. Although what it’s for is apparently above my pay grade.”

“And I’m go for a spacewalk on Day 7?”

Kathy doesn’t reply at first. She looks uncomfortable. “That’s the plan, but plans sometimes change. Several people have been talking to me, including—”

“Including me,” Dr. Glen says. He has rejoined them without Gwendy noticing, and now he asks the very question she’s been dreading. “Senator, is there anything you want to tell us?”