Lifeline

Chapter 50

CLAVIUS BASE—Day 69

A cluster of people milled just inside the main airlock. Tomkins had always felt uneasy in groups. He also hated going outside, where he had to devote 99 percent of his attention just to stepping in the right place with the right speed, constantly checking his gauges and monitor lights, responding to incessant chatter through his suit radio.

It was crowded as everyone suited up and checked connections. Tomkins pushed away an elbow that bumped against his side. He was amazed at the chaos in which Clancy’s engineers worked together, packed in and moving with a dizzying choreography, but somehow they all suited up faster than any of Tomkins’s Clavius Base personnel did.

In the prep room, McLaris moved to him and groped for his hand, pulling off his thick glove for a firm handshake. “Dr. Tomkins.”

McLaris searched Tomkins’s eyes; he seemed at a loss for words, frightened. He had shaved off his patchy beard, and one of the other assistants had helped him trim his hair so that he would be a presentable ambassador to Orbitech 1. His gray eyes looked wide and glittering.

Tomkins returned McLaris’s grip, clasping the smaller man’s hand in what he thought was a warm and paternal gesture. “Three days from now you’ll be there, Duncan.”

McLaris set his mouth. “I know.”

“Who am I going to get to run this place? You’re always welcome back. You know that.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. This place has become my home—I feel useful here. I’ll miss it.”

Tomkins laughed. “And I’ll miss you. I’ve gotten more research done in the past few weeks than in the first three years I’ve been up here. You’ve got a gift for administration, Duncan.”

“Some skills are more useful than others, but not all the time.” McLaris pressed his lips together, letting the uneasiness show again.

Tomkins squeezed his shoulder and stepped back. “The yo-yo will work just fine, if our Mr. Clancy says so—Dr. Clancy, I mean.” He laughed. “You’ll be safe.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” McLaris mumbled.

“I know.” McLaris had his own ghosts to chase, and until he confronted them, Tomkins knew that no words would put the man at ease.

Standing a full head taller than most of the people in the prep room, Tomkins searched the crowd with ease. Clancy stood trapped in a corner, surrounded by eight members of his construction crew, all of whom insisted on checking his suit seals to make sure he would be safe. Glued to his side was his deputy, Wiay Shen.

Shen had done fine emergency work hauling him back to the base after his fall. Clancy seemed almost disappointed that he had sustained no greater injury than a minor concussion, which was what had knocked him unconscious. Shen still took every opportunity to mother him. Since the accident, everyone else on Clavius Base had noticed how inseparable the two were.

Tomkins made his way to them, flexing his arms in the tight suit. Few of the standard-issue garments fit his tall frame, and he was unaccustomed to the restricted movements. He held his helmet in his hands, ready to seal it into its collar.

Shen and Clancy turned away from the rest of the crowd. Clancy flailed his arms to get the crew away from him. “All right, already! I know how to put on my own blasted suit!”

Shen added her own admonishment. “Didn’t you guys ever hear the one about too many cooks spoiling the microwave dinner? Or whatever it was …” Regardless, she took a moment to check all of Clancy’s connections herself.

“You take care of yourself,” Clancy told her in a quiet voice.

“Look who’s talking, hotshot.” Shen ran a hand up and down his side. Her glove made a crinkling sound against his suit. “You sure you’re going to be up to this trip? There’s no one to get you out of a jam if something happens.”

“Besides bruising my leg, all I got was a bump on the head. Dr. Berenger gave me her blessing. This’ll be just like riding an elevator—a heck of a lot safer than riding in a six-pack with you.”

“Knowing you, you’ll find a way to get in trouble.”

Tomkins cleared his throat to interrupt their private discussion. “Dr. Clancy?”

“Dr. Tomkins?” Clancy swung around and shook Tomkins’s gloved hand. He moved with a slight limp, but seemed no worse than before the accident.

“I can’t think of two better people to make the first trip on your yo-yo. Good luck, Clifford. I’d like to stay, but I need to get out to Clavius-C if I’m going to watch your ascent.”

“That’s all right,” Clancy said. “Duncan and I need to be ready for the weavewire when it arrives. We should move out the same time as you do.”

Shen interrupted. “Orbitech 1 plans to start reeling in the weavewire less than an hour after it arrives—whether you’re hooked up or not. That doesn’t give you much time.”

Tomkins smiled. “Very well. Have a good trip and all that. Best of luck, and I expect to see you back in one piece. The radio telescope project will certainly need your guidance when you return.”

Clancy nodded to Shen beside him. “Wiay can manage the crew while I’m gone. In fact, she might kick a few more butts than I do. Now that they’ve got this fire lit under them for the project, you’d better take advantage of their willingness to work.” He grinned and looked at his crew jostling around in the prep room. “If I get back—”

“When you get back,” Shen chided.

“Okay, when I get back, and if this yo-yo method of getting to the Lagrange colonies turns out to be feasible, the whole crew is going to be antsy to get off here. They want to work in space, you know—not with rocks between their toes.”

Tomkins nodded. “You’re right, of course.” He turned to Shen and bowed, bending down to her height. “And my apologies if I doubted your competence, Ms. Shen.”

“You couldn’t offend me if you tried.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Tomkins rubbed his big brown hands together. “Would you like to accompany me to Clavius-C, Ms. Shen? We’ll have the best live view you can get of the ascent. Or would you rather see the official broadcast that goes out to all the colonies?”

“I can watch the recording any time I feel like it. I’d rather have a front-row seat.”

McLaris stepped up to join them. “Clifford?”

“Let’s do it.”

Tomkins stood back as the two started for the airlock. McLaris turned for one more wave, then pulled his helmet over his head, sealing it down around his collar.

Clancy grinned at his crew as Shen held his helmet for him. She reached over with one hand, pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him. He blinked and put on his polarized helmet quickly, as if to cover up a blush. Two other people from Clancy’s crew followed them into the airlock, ready to escort them out to the yo-yo capsule, which they had dubbed the Phoenix, where they would help attach the harness falling down from the American colony.

The big airlock door swung shut and began its cycle. Shen stood watching it with a fixed expression.

“Ready?” Tomkins asked. “Uh? Oh, yeah. Just a minute.” Shen blew her nose.

“The six-packs over in area two should be ready to go.”

“After you, then.” They waited for the airlock to cycle.

Shen insisted on driving the six-pack and seemed to make a point of not using the inertial guidance system. Tomkins sat in silence, occasionally acknowledging Shen’s conversation, other times just listening to the hollow echo of his own breathing. They rode out, leaving tracks in the lunar surface, swinging past the Phoenix.

Spotters were staggered across the plain of Clavius, some up on the rise of the crater wall. Nearly every holo-transmitter on Clavius Base scanned the sky overhead, searching for the harness preceding the weavewire. On the open channel, one of the other base scientists, bored with his regular duties, took a turn giving the commentary for the event. Tomkins decided he would listen to it all later.

Out here, on the sterile lunar surface, he pictured the vast radio telescope, the shining accomplishment that showed how human beings could still construct their own wonders, even when everything else had been taken away from them. Arecibo II. He knew it was pretentious to include it among the grand monuments of mankind—the pyramids, the great bridges, the tall buildings, the giant dams—but perhaps Arecibo II would last longer than all of those. The project would show how people continued to strive, even when they had lost so much. The Earth might have fallen silent, but the universe would not be able to hide its secrets much longer.

Their six-pack rolled over the lunar dust. Tomkins craned his neck to look up into the starry blackness, but only ended up straining it inside the helmet.

“You’ve got to bend your whole body backward,” Shen said, seeing what he was trying to do. “Like this.” She leaned back in an exaggerated curve. “Otherwise, you’ll just see the inside of your helmet.”

“I hope we can spot the harness before it lands,” he said.

“Visually, not much chance of that.” Shen stared straight ahead at the unbroken crater floor. “But Orbitech 1 coated it with radar-reflecting paint. That should make its cross section a hundred times bigger on radar than it actually is.”

Tomkins thought for a moment. “The Moon is still a big place for it to land.”

Shen turned toward Tomkins, but her gold-coated visor blocked off any view of her face. “You didn’t see how close that first harness hit where it was supposed to. Dead on. It’ll get here.”

“Then everything should go as planned.” He sensed some other worry in her. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Yes, it should, shouldn’t it?”

Tomkins started to reply, but he kept quiet. Shen’s sarcastic tone left him puzzled. It seemed out of place, especially on such an important occasion. He could understand her feelings for Clancy and her concern for his safety. Yet the sense he was getting was more than just “my lover is leaving.”

Tomkins sighed. Much as he had disliked his years in management, they had left him with a few rudimentary processes for dealing with human problems.

He asked softly, “Did I miss something about the journey? I was under the impression that the yo-yo was straightforward—once the weavewire hook arrives, it’ll be attached to the hook already in place. It’s a thousand times less complicated than building and piloting a spacecraft.”

He heard Shen snort at him. He hated these helmets—he could not see her expression. He continued, “Well, a constant tenth of a G acceleration isn’t going to harm them, either. So what’s up?”

The six-pack bounced over a rock Shen didn’t bother to avoid, jarring Tomkins. The vehicle seemed to have sped up during his conversation, and the textured ground flowed along beside them. They began to climb the side of the crater wall. He heard a long sigh over the helmet speakers.

“Dr. Tomkins, I know you wanted to stay out of the details once you let McLaris take over the base administration, stuff, but—” She paused. “Well, I’m surprised you kept yourself so completely in the dark. Four days from now, McLaris and Cliff will be zipping along at more than two thousand miles an hour straight toward Orbitech 1, with nothing to stop them but a couple of revamped engines from a crashed shuttle. They won’t have any gravity to slow them down, no weavewire pulling in the opposite direction to halt their progress. If those engines don’t fire exactly when they’re supposed to, and for exactly as long as they need to, the Phoenix will smash into Orbitech 1 like a meteor. I’d have to be crazy not to be worried.”

Tomkins looked straight ahead without seeing the outside view. He hadn’t even noticed that Shen had stopped the six-pack. She lifted one of her legs over the seat and eased out onto the lunar surface. Tomkins followed her, planting his feet on sturdy ground with a clear memory of Clancy’s fall a few weeks before. Two miles away and a thousand feet below their level, Tomkins could see the activity in the center of the crater, where the skyhook would hit.

Below, McLaris and Clancy would be strapping themselves into the compartment where they’d remain for the next several days, if all went well.

It had been so easy to hand over the operation of Clavius Base to McLaris. He had been so efficient, so methodical in his work. Shen was perfectly right—Tomkins had divorced himself entirely of management responsibility. He had not even taken time to review what was happening on the base. McLaris took care of everything while Tomkins was wrapped up in the radio telescope—his true love. He prayed he wouldn’t have to give that up.

Shen stood on an outcrop jutting from the crater wall. Tomkins joined her. The Phoenix looked alone and unhindered out on the flat plain, like a hitchhiker waiting for a ride. Once the hook fell out of the sky, the crew would have to scramble to hook it up before their time ran out. The old patched hull of the Miranda looked contorted by its airtight welds and grafted metal plates. While Clancy’s engineers had begun to restore the manufacturing facilities on the Moon, they had not yet rebuilt the industrial facilities enough that they could construct a new vessel.

With the salvaged hull of the crashed shuttle, and extra materials dismantled from unnecessary equipment on Clavius Base, they had turned the Miranda into a completely new kind of vehicle, a true phoenix. The rocket engines had been removed and mounted on top, test fired once to make certain they could provide braking thrust. The thing looked like a bastardized hodgepodge of leftover parts.

Which it was.

Now that Tomkins was in line of sight of the operation, a voice crackled in his helmet. “We have a visual on the skyhook, everybody. It matches the radar echo. Give us five minutes and we’ll have you linked up and ready to go.”

Clancy’s voice came over the Phoenix’s radio. “Just stay clear of that weavewire. I don’t want anyone getting sliced up.”

“Everything’s under control out here, Clifford. You two just make sure you’re strapped in. You’ll be in for quite a yank when that cable starts hauling.”

Tomkins and Shen watched the scene without speaking. Though they couldn’t see it themselves, they learned that the tiny package had indeed struck the far side of the crater. A specially modified six-pack racer sped across the floor to retrieve it. Tomkins realized ironically that no one would ever be able to see the fine thread tying the colonies together.

Tomkins waved a hand to the yo-yo assembly below. “When Duncan explained this trip, I naturally thought everything was well known—very little risk and all that. I guess it’s a naïve way for theoreticians to view the world—just assume that things are ‘engineering problems.’”

Shen let out a short laugh. “‘Engineering problems’ can really screw you up bad if your survival depends on everything working just right.” She continued with vehemence: “Once Cliff got it through people’s head that it didn’t matter how fast the yo-yo was pulled up, everyone bought it. Escape velocity doesn’t mean beans when you’ve got a constant force pulling you up.”

Excited voices filled the radio. The six-pack racer returned to the Phoenix, and suited figures scrambled over the top. Tomkins wished he had some sort of binoculars, but the curved faceplate would have made them useless.

Once the hook was attached, the figures jumped back down to the crater floor and rolled away in their six-pack. The vehicle wheeled a safe distance away, then turned and waited.

“We don’t really know how long it’s going to take,” Shen said. “It should be soon now.”

“Clavius Base and Orbitech 1, we are ready to go!” Duncan McLaris’s voice broadcast. Since the sound speed in the monomolecular strand approached the speed of light, as Clancy had predicted, once Orbitech 1 started reeling in the weavewire, the Phoenix would start moving.

“See ya later, Cliffy!” Shen broadcast.

Before he could reply, the Phoenix suddenly jerked up, hauled off the surface of the Moon in a puff of lunar dust. The modified hull of the Miranda pulled away. From this distance, it looked to Tomkins like it was levitating. The yo-yo shot up into the black soup of stars at an angle to the horizon.

Clancy’s voice came over the radio. “We’re off! The acceleration is less than lunar normal, so we don’t feel too bad. But boy, we are getting a sight you would not believe!”

Whoops from a dozen different microphones filled Tomkins’s helmet. Down on the crater floor, where dust still settled to the surface, he could see tiny figures outside the six-pack making superhuman leaps in the lunar gravity.

The Phoenix ascended into the deep blackness. Shen stood staring down at the launch site.

“If you bend over like this, you can see better!” Tomkins said to Shen, bending backward as she had shown him. “Are you still worried?”

Shen continued watching for a moment, then turned to their six-pack. “Now it’s that guy Brahms who concerns me.”