Lifeline

Chapter 31

L-5—Day 39

Ramis felt regret the moment he Jumped from Orbitech 1. He knew the measured burst from the MMU added to his velocity, but he could not tell the difference. He was always bouncing from situation to situation, afraid to stay in one place too long. He always felt he had to show off, to take risks, to push himself to the edge.

The glaring metal hull of the industrial colony rushed away from him, rotating slowly around its axis. The weavewire trailed behind him, drawn out of its chamber on Orbitech 1’s nonrotating section, dangling him like a lure on a long fishing line. This time he felt vulnerable and alone without the protective womb of Sarat around him.

Relax, he told himself. This journey would not be as long as his previous one. Depending on how much force he had used to push himself away from Orbitech 1 and the extra thrust from the MMU, it might take him six hours to cross the gap, or it might take a full day.

The Kibalchich looked so far away. It would be a long time before he would notice it growing any closer. He drifted with absolutely no sense of motion. The Soviet colony, Earth, the stars, even the gibbous section of the Moon, seemed to hang like props in a silent movie. The stars did not help; cold and bright, they peppered the vast darkness with an immovable reference frame.

Twisting his head around, but careful not to pull the weavewire across his MMU pack, Ramis assured himself that he was indeed receding from the American colony. The video camera on his chest would record everything he saw.

He tried to estimate how fast he was drifting. His depth perception grew worse the farther he moved away, making it harder to judge.

A voice from the Orbitech 1 control bay came over the link, answering the question before he could ask it. “We’ve got him at a velocity of four point eight meters per second—”

Ramis finished the calculation in his head: that was about seventeen kilometers per hour. Divide that into a hundred kilometers to the Kibalchich. The trip would take him six hours. Not as good as he’d hoped, but he couldn’t change now without jetting from his MMUs, and he needed to reserve the fuel there for corrections. For good or bad, his course had been set.

Ramis could hear Curtis Brahms and Karen speaking to each other. Karen wanted to remain outside for as long as possible, ostensibly to monitor the weavewire dispensing cavity. Ramis knew she felt as much urgency to get off the claustrophobic colony as Ramis did, but she didn’t seem willing to admit it to herself.

Ramis tuned out the radio chatter in his helmet, the babble of reassuring comments, good wishes, redundant instructions. He was by himself now, in control of everything in his own small environment. Despite the constant sensation of falling, he felt somehow at peace.

He let his arms and legs dangle loose. The closed environment of his suit felt huge and bulky, but not uncomfortable. As he sweated, the temperature controls of the suit cooled his skin. He felt nothing—nothing to touch, nothing to feel. He sensed the mass of the air tanks, the MMU pack, the sealed boots, but none of that mattered in weightlessness.

He was swimming in the ocean of space, tethered by a line so thin it was invisible to the eye. He’d have to hang there for hours, vulnerable.

The thought of a solar flare spewing out deadly protons and x-rays gnawed at the back of his mind. If that happened, he would be drilled by high-energy particles, fried crisper than a “dog on a log” back home on the Philippines.

He wished he could use the MMU again to add to his velocity, speed up the trip. Maybe he could use one of the air tanks. With nothing else to occupy him, Ramis began to run through mathematics in his head. If he doubled his velocity and finished the trip in half the time, he’d need only half as much air. And he could use compressed air from his tanks as easily as he could use propellant gas in the MMU. A couple of blasts from the nozzle of an air tank, and he could double, maybe even triple his speed. And if he did get inside the Soviet station, he could recharge his tanks. That meant he really only needed enough air for one way, not two.

He pursed his lips. He vowed not to be like the bickering senators in the Aguinaldo’s council meetings, endlessly considering options until the problem got around to resolving itself. And besides, what did he have to look forward to if he returned to Orbitech 1?

It sounded like a good enough risk to him.

Ramis took a few moments to rig one of his spare bottles, pointing the emergency bleed nozzle directly behind him over his shoulder. He wondered why none of the Orbitech theoreticians had come up with that solution.

He had to be extremely careful not to send himself into a tumble that would get him tangled in Karen’s weavewire; the first hundred meters were thick multistrands that wouldn’t cut him, but a tangle could still cause him big difficulties.

He blasted a jet of air behind him. In the padded suit, he felt the jerk of sudden acceleration, then rapidly lost all sensation of movement again. The Orbitech 1 monitors would probably lecture him for altering his plans without letting them know.

Let Director Brahms come give me a spanking, then, he thought. I can make my own decisions. As if in defiance, he let out two more bursts from the air tank.

“—Ramis, what in the living hell are you doing out there?” He clicked off Brahms’s voice, leaving his helmet in silence.

He decided he should try to get a little sleep. He could do nothing else. Newton’s first law—or was it the second?—would keep him drifting until something made him stop.

Ramis jerked his eyes open. Stars rotated around him in a slow drift. Waving his arms in panic, he tried to see what was happening. The Kibalchich was nowhere in sight.

Fumbling with the controls on his suit’s forearm, Ramis squirted the MMU to compensate for his rotation. He felt the vibration of the hissing attitude jets. The bright wheel of the Soviet colony centered itself in his visor again.

The sound of breathing filled his helmet. He kicked on his heads-up display and scanned the suit diagnostics as they were bounced from the control panel below his chin into his front view plate. His air tank supply and the propellant in the MMU looked good. The carbon dioxide count was a little high in the suit, but that made sense with his recent burst of rapid breathing.

He kicked back on his radio.

“—detected a click. We’ve got him back on line. Someone get the director.”

A minute passed but no other sounds came over radio, until, “—Ramis, Curtis Brahms here. We lost you there for a while. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” His voice came out rough from sleepiness. He cleared his throat. “I am fine. I took a short nap—”

“We know,” said Brahms. “We were monitoring your vital signs, and we show your breathing rate greatly increased. Is anything wrong?” Brahms paused a beat. “Why did you turn your radio off, Ramis?” His voice had an edge to it.

Ramis scowled to himself. Even here, he is watching me. “I started to rotate, but I have made the appropriate correction with the MMU.”

Karen Langelier’s voice broke back into the conversation. “Diagnostics show the weavewire has twisted but is not now rotating. He’s doing just fine.”

“Good. Good job, Ramis.” Brahms’s voice still sounded tight. Ramis closed his eyes and scowled. “I’m leaving now. You will follow directions, won’t you, Ramis?”

“Of course.” Ramis cut the transmission short.

Hours passed as the universe coasted beneath him. Karen occasionally broke in to chat, and Ramis was glad of the company. Off and on he tried to signal the Kibalchich himself, but received no answer.

Now, it was less than thirty minutes away. The station’s outer sheath of rubble hid the rotating living quarters. He could make out the giant mirror suspended above the colony. Unlike the Aguinaldo, which was built as an immense rotating cylinder, or even Orbitech 1’s dumbbell of counter-rotating wheels, the Soviet colony looked like the classic doughnut-shaped space station conceived by Willy Ley more than a century before.

As he grew close, though, the station took on an alien look: jutting struts, weirdly placed objects on the exterior, even the paint scheme looked dark and brooding. The silent Soviet colony looked dormant, devoid of life. Tiny darkened portholes dotted clear patches on the outer hull.

Ramis remembered his approach to Orbitech 1 while riding in the organic solar sail, watching as the flatscreen broadcast the view from the external cameras mounted on Sarat. He had been half an hour away from the American colony when he had injected Sarat with the hormone that collapsed the huge, beautiful sails. He had been half an hour away when he had caught sight of faces in the colony windows—weary and frightened faces, watching him with hope.

Now, thirty minutes from the Kibalchich, he saw nothing.

“I will use the maneuvering units to guide me in,” he said into the radio.

“Be careful—every time you punch those MMUs, you’re adding some component to your forward velocity,” Karen said. “It might not seem like much, but remember how fast you’re already going.”

“I will manage.” Ramis thought to himself that with all her concern, Karen did not know of his experience flying in the Aguinaldo. He had hit the Jump squares peppering the Sibuyan Sea going twice as fast as he was moving now. The Kibalchich should have had two hundred people aboard, waiting to greet him. But instead, the colony refused any contact. It hung dark, like a giant empty house in space.