Lifeline

Chapter 40

L-5—Day 44

Karen didn’t sleep the entire journey. Hooked onto the pulley contraption, she slipped away from Orbitech 1. The ride was smooth, as if on a frictionless sea of ice, even as the pulley gently bumped against the weavewire. Otherwise, there was no sensation of movement, only the bulky straitjacket of the space suit and echoes of her own breathing in her ears. She could see no indication at all of the weavewire, only the invisible line where the dolly was attached to nothing, guiding her to the Kibalchich. She felt suspended in space.

Over the hours, Karen wondered how people could ever survive long space journeys. The Soviets had attempted one years-long journey to Mars, and it had driven them to destroy their own ship. Now that she thought about it, being cramped with other people in a tiny exploratory ship for all that time would probably push her over the edge, as well.

She raised Ramis once, and elicited a promise from him to meet her. She told him the time of her projected arrival, and he marked it on one of the command center chronometers.

Later, Karen flipped on her radio and trained the antenna toward the Soviet colony. “Ramis, this is Karen. Can you hear me?” Nothing. “Ramis. Are you near an airlock? I am almost to the Kibalchich.” She knew he could not send a reply if he had not remained in the command center.

Karen waited, then switched her transmitter off. The station loomed in front of her.

Through the middle of the torus, stars blinked in and out of view as the spokes rotated. Karen fumbled with her harness, shedding the webbing and preparing to disconnect her suit from the dolly frame. Everywhere was “down”—she seemed to be in the middle of a gigantic well that extended forever, in all directions. She flipped her radio on. “Ramis? Are you out here?” Still no answer.

She grew worried. She had told him when to expect her. The clock showed her to be right on time.

Russian letters now showed clearly on the metal hull, spelling out Kibalchich. She had checked out the name in the historical data base back in her quarters and remembered: Nikolai Ivanovitch Kibalchich had taken part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and had been arrested and sentenced to death. In his cell awaiting execution, Kibalchich had drawn up plans for a man-carrying rocket platform fed by gunpowder cartridges. After he was executed, guards filed his sketches in police archives. In his prison cell, knowing he had no hope, Kibalchich had written on his rocket plans, “I believe in the practicability of my idea and this faith supports me in my desperate plight.”

Karen wished she had the same faith in her own “desperate plight.” The large doses of drugs she had taken to protect herself against radiation exposure had made her feel ill. She feared they would also slow her reactions.

“You should be almost there,” said the voice from Orbitech 1.

“Gee, thanks,” Karen muttered. She tried to wipe Ramis from her mind and concentrate on landing, going over in her head how she would come to a stop. The engineers had designed the harness with an emergency release so she could unlatch herself easily. It seemed simple enough.

But then she remembered a time in Colorado, back when she had lived in Denver, before moving to the Center for High-Technology Materials in Albuquerque. A ski slope—Breckenridge?—where she and Ray had spent one spring day schussing down black diamond runs. The sky was impossibly blue, the ground white from a late spring snow; she and Ray laughed as the lifts pulled them up, when Karen realized she had forgotten to pull the tips of her skis up.… She found herself facedown in a clump of snow underneath the chair lift. Because she hadn’t been paying attention, a simple act had turned into disaster.

This time, if she let her attention lapse and released herself at the wrong time, Karen would suffer a lot worse than a faceful of snow.

She could make out the outer wheel’s grainy surface, even small pits from micrometeors. She rotated her body around to point her feet directly at the station.

The dolly slid above composite spokes and support struts as it followed the weavewire to the Kibalchich’s hub. Overhead, the mirror looked flat and glistening, reflecting an image of the torus back onto itself.

Above her, a streak of Day-Glo orange marking the end of the weavewire zipped through space. One hundred yards to go! she thought. She had only time enough to draw in a breath before she hit the station. The suit disconnected from the pulley apparatus, and she collapsed to the hub, absorbing the shock with her feet. She wasn’t sure if the magnetized soles would keep her in place. She remembered to reach up and catch the dolly support before it rebounded back along the nearly frictionless cable.

“Dr. Langelier, be ### and to #### …”A voice broke in and out of coherence as she turned about, her directional antenna sweeping the space where Orbitech 1 hung.

Her hand encircled the central graphite rod. It was too large for her fingers to fit around, but it served to stop her from drifting.

Karen drew in short, laborious breaths and closed her eyes, gripping the rod. If she let go she would be out in space right now where no one could reach her. She’d have only a handful of hours of air, even at one-quarter pressure.

She swung her antenna in the general direction of Orbitech 1. “I’m here,” she said. “Have you heard anything from Ramis?”

Silence. Then, slowly, “No. Didn’t he say he was going to be there to help you?”

It was her turn to ponder.

After her eleven-hour journey, she wanted to be inside—any place that had walls and a floor and a ceiling. She could find Ramis. He had found his way inside by himself; she could do the same.

Karen clicked at her mike. “Orbitech 1, I’m going to find one of the access hatches into the Kibalchich. A full report will follow.” Karen clicked her receiver off. She didn’t need anything from them. She could make her own decisions. She had left Orbitech 1 because of people always telling her what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

Karen started to shimmy along the support rod, searching for a way to get inside.