Lifeline

Chapter 29

ORBITECH 1—Day 39

The Kibalchich hung in the silent blackness fifty miles away. Even outside of Orbitech 1, suited up and floating without any curved walls to block her view, Karen had to squint to discern the Soviet station. It looked like a brilliant point, smeared into shapelessness by reflected sunlight. She couldn’t even tell if it still rotated, much less if it displayed any signs of life.

She knew she would see some of the frozen bodies from the RIF. The Lagrange gravity well encompassed a huge volume of space, but they were still out there, desiccated by the vacuum, frozen solid, their final expressions intact.

Karen had never been outside before. She didn’t like listening to every breath echoing in her head. The air pressure in her suit made her feel stiff, like a knight in rusty armor. During history’s first space-walk, Alexei Leonov had found it impossible even to bend over enough to get back inside the airlock of the Voskhod 2; if he hadn’t risked a desperate vacuum decompression maneuver he would have died in space, a few inches away from safety. Sometimes Karen wished she had limited her Russian background to being able to read their technical journals, as she had originally intended.

She waited quietly, floating next to Ramis as he prepared himself for the journey, checking his suit, looking around with practiced ease. Karen was accustomed to zero-G from her lab space, but this felt colder somehow, blacker, with the whole wide universe waiting to gobble her up. She couldn’t think of any word to describe the absolute opposite of claustrophobia.

Hour after hour, Brahms had his communications people attempting to contact the Kibalchich. They sent greetings, messages of peace; they announced that Ramis was coming over. No reply. They asked to know why the Soviets had warned them away, why they had stopped sending radio transmissions. Karen could have understood the Russian language herself, but no one had asked for her to respond to any contact.

“There’s nobody over there,” Brahms had said.

“Then how is Ramis supposed to get inside?” she had asked. Brahms looked at her as if she had interrupted his thoughts again.

“Do not worry, Karen,” Ramis had said. “They have emergency-access airlocks studded around the hull—all the colonies have them left over from construction. The crews had to be able to get inside quickly if a disaster happened, or if somebody detected a big solar flare. Maintenance people still use them to go out and inspect the hull. Those airlocks are all over the Aguinaldo and Orbitech 1. I can get in even if the Soviets do not answer when I knock.”

Karen didn’t think it made any sense for the Soviets to break off contact, especially now, when they would all have to pull together and pool resources. The Kibalchich was the smallest of the space colonies; perhaps they had run out of supplies already.

Karen’s stomach felt queasy, though she wasn’t the one going across the gulf. Were they all dead over there? What was Ramis getting himself into?

Brahms’s competition had resulted in some innovative designs for Ramis’s passage. It was only after the director had realized that some of his brighter engineers might use their designs personally that Brahms had called a halt to the contest.

Ramis’s spacesuit made him appear much larger than he was, insect-like. He was dwarfed by the Manned Maneuvering Unit strapped to his back and the harness carrying the half-dozen air bottles he would need for the long journey.

In case he couldn’t find any food on the Soviet station, Karen had helped him lash some supplies and a sealed container of wall-kelp to his waist. Despite Brahms’s sour protests, Ramis had insisted the gift from the Aguinaldo was for both L-5 colonies. Mounted on the center of his chest, Ramis wore a small two-dimensional video camera to record the journey and whatever he found inside the Kibalchich.

Aided by the MMU, Ramis would Jump the fifty-odd miles of deep, bottomless space across the L-5 zone. The idea didn’t seem to bother him, and that concerned Karen. The Orbitech 1 telescopes had pinpointed several of the Kibalchich’s manually operated emergency hatches, so he could get inside without other assistance—but after the warning the Soviets had issued, what if they had active defense mechanisms against such an entry? Ramis was resilient, maybe even reckless. That could be dangerous.

If nothing else, Karen hoped she had managed to impress on him the extreme danger from the trailing weavewire on his back. The single-molecule-thick strand was sharper than the sharpest razor in the world. A nick could just as easily cut off an arm or a leg, or sever an air tank in two and make it explode. The other Orbitech engineers were scared silly of the lifeline fiber, and they had been reluctant to help Ramis prepare, though Karen had made the first hundred feet of fiber a million braided strands thick, so it posed no greater danger than any fine wire.

Finally, Karen had volunteered herself, though she hated to suit up. She felt obligated to give him the best possible safety factor. The odds against him seemed bad enough to start with.

Karen felt herself sweating inside the snug, temperature-monitored environment of her suit. But Ramis’s breathing came over her headphones—slow, measured breaths, with no sense of excitement. She knew his greatest emotion right now would be relief at escaping the sharp eyes of Curtis Brahms, if only for a time.

Karen scanned the diagnostic on the outside of the dispensing cavity mounted to the hull of Orbitech 1. Using absorption resonance, the unit kept track of the total mass of weavewire that had been drawn out. High above, the thin, discontinuous mirror that directed sunlight into the colony’s two toruses looked black and filled with stars, reflecting the universe back into itself.

Ramis tugged at the belt that connected the weavewire fiber to him. “Is it all ready for me?” He pushed closer to the dispensing outlet, moving slowly in his huge suit, and studied the apparatus.

The thick, braided weavewire trailed from Ramis’s belt, which had also been woven from the fiber to give an anchoring point. The tail-end of the weavewire showed thin and faint, Day-Glo orange but visible only when he knew exactly where to look. The remainder in the dispensing cavity would be completely invisible in its double strand when Ramis reeled it out behind him.

Karen still felt the tightness in her stomach, but she forced herself to speak. “It’s ready to go. Just be careful not to start spinning. If you get tangled in it—” Her voice trailed off.

“I will be like a fish that has been filleted!” Ramis said, then laughed over the intercom. “But I want you to think good thoughts, Karen. Your fiber is making this journey possible. If I needed to bear a steel cable behind me, I would have so much inertia I could never stop my Jump. I would be a yo-yo between these two colonies.”

She wasn’t sure if she should feel proud or guilty.

Ramis spoke optimistically, as if he knew that Brahms, and most of Orbitech 1, were listening in on their conversation. “This will be a much simpler journey than my trip from the Aguinaldo here. This time I have a margin for error, and I am in control.”

Before Karen could say anything, another voice cut in. Brahms. “Ramis, the entire colony is anxious to hear what you find in the Kibalchich. Is there anything more Dr. Langelier can do before you attempt your jump?”

Ramis swung around to face Karen. By his cautious movements, she knew he remained conscious of the weavewire. He held out both his hands, as if to ask a question. Karen shook her helmet slowly. Seemingly satisfied, Ramis spoke over the radio, “I am ready, Mr. Brahms.”

Karen reached out and grasped his space-suited arm, but the padding was so thick she couldn’t tell if he felt her reassuring squeeze. You’re our only hope to get out of here, Ramis.

Ramis took an unsteady step. The MMUs held him back momentarily, adding to his inertia. He turned to face the Kibalchich and bent his knees, planting his feet firmly against the metal hull of Orbitech 1.

Karen caught herself holding her breath.

“Do not worry,” he radioed to her.

Ramis pushed off and drifted out into space toward the distant Soviet colony.