Lifeline

Chapter 22

From L-4 to L-5—Days 18–27

Encased in the vast solar sail-creature, Ramis watched through the monitors, studying his course. The awesome face of Earth seemed like an oil painting below him, reaching up to swallow him in its oceans.

“You were always there to catch me when I fell, Sarat,” Ramis muttered. “Are you there to catch me now?”

Sarat’s orbit approached closer than two Earth radii at its nearest point, before they swooped back out again on their way to L-5. He wondered if anyone on the planet could look up and see him blotting out a swath of stars against the night sky. Or if anyone would bother. He wondered if his brother Salita was staring up into the Philippine darkness right now … or if the Islands had been swallowed by an even greater darkness.

Leaving the planet behind, Ramis and Sarat climbed toward Orbitech 1.

Ramis shifted his legs in the cramped cyst-cavity. He had no room to move, no place to stretch—and sitting here in the same position had begun to drive him insane with boredom after a week. He took extreme care not to bump the three sail-creature embryos at his feet.

Ramis removed his helmet and took a deep breath of the humid air. He didn’t want to leave the helmet off long—hard cosmic rays still penetrated even Sarat’s tough exoskeleton—but fresh oxygen drove back the claustrophobic dankness for a while.

By now the wall-kelp had grown all along the inner sides of the cavity, making the air smell rank. But it would be enough to start a new forest growing in Orbitech 1, and it gave him food to eat on the long journey. Unprocessed and raw, the kelp tasted awful, but his stomach kept it down. He knew, conceptually at least, that it provided him with necessary nourishment and moisture.

Ramis groped around the spongy cyst until he found the joystick controls for the external video. Swiveling the camera, he focused on the bright pinpoint of the L-5 colony waxing larger and larger. A week ago the colony had been invisible against the stars. Now, under extreme magnification, he could just make out the two counter rotating wheels of Orbitech 1. Also at L-5, the Soviet station Kibalchich revolved slowly into view on the fringe of the Lagrange gravity well.

Time was growing short for them, for him. He found it difficult to think clearly.

“Calling Orbitech 1!” Ramis squinted at the screen in front of him. Why weren’t they answering? “Orbitech 1, come in please.” Maybe his transceiver was too weak. Maybe he was trying the wrong frequency. Maybe they had stopped listening for messages entirely after Clavius Base had cut off communications.

A thought struck him—what if the new director, Curtis Brahms, had done something else? Brahms did not scare Ramis; it was the uncertainty that made him uneasy.

Ramis muttered under his breath. He had been talking to himself too much in the past few days. “How am I supposed to rescue you if you won’t answer?” He snapped the helmet shut.

Maybe the radio’s gain was too weak. Maybe he had used the batteries too much over the past week, chatting with people on the Aguinaldo just to quell his loneliness and isolation. As he swung close to Earth, he had scanned the radio bands. Briefly he caught a burst of hysterical shouting, but it had faded into static before he could tune it.

There was nothing to do. No way to notice that time was passing. Sarat continued to drift on course, to waste away and die.

Keeping himself occupied, Ramis squinted at the cross hairs barely visible on the video screen. The camera angle had been offset enough to account for the American colony’s orbital motion. By centering the image in the cross hairs, the sail-creature would tack ahead and arrive at the right position to intercept the colony in its orbit.

He saw that Sarat was off course by only a fraction of a radian, but with thousands of kilometers left to travel, he would miss Orbitech 1 with room to spare.

Time to steer again. Ramis withdrew a small knife from the equipment pouch. He looked at the cross hairs and judged the angle from inside the cyst. With the sharp point of the blade he poked Sarat’s sensitive internal membrane.

“Sorry, Sarat.”

The cyst tightened. Ramis felt a tension, a ripple, as the vast creature’s reflexes turned it away from the knife’s prick. The lumbering movement seemed to take years, but the L-5 colony finally drifted into the center of the cross hairs again.

He tried counting stars, then making up rhymes, reciting Bible passages he’d had to memorize for catechism years before—anything to make him forget the boredom for a while. And to forget about his slim chances for ever returning to the Aguinaldo. He would give anything just to stretch his legs.

Inside Sarat, looking at Orbitech 1, Ramis felt as if he were falling down toward the station. The old fears began to come back. Space gave him no reference, no horizon, no gravity. The direction down was where things fell when you dropped them … but out in space, everywhere was down.

As the colony loomed closer, Ramis groped out to touch the walls of the cyst, searching for stability, trying to fight off the sickening vertigo. He would be falling forever because there was no place to land.

Sarat had always saved him from falling before … but would Sarat still be there for him, even as Ramis killed him?

Ramis was cramped, hot. The air in the cyst was stifling. The pain in his elbows and knees ached without relief. He felt dizzy most of the time now, sick to his stomach.

Dr. Sandovaal had warned him that the suit might not protect him enough from the hard radiation. They had given him some kind of medication before departure, something that had made him uncomfortably queasy for more than a day, that would supposedly help him fight radiation damage. Now he just considered himself lucky that no solar flares had occurred. He would be a long time recovering from this journey … if he survived at all.

Sarat hardly responded to Ramis’s course-adjusting maneuvers anymore. Reluctantly, Ramis had had to resort to vicious jabs with the knife to get the sail-creature to turn even a little.

The L-5 colony filled most of the viewscreen, like a rotating dumbbell with two wheels spinning on a central axle.

Ramis reached out and stroked Sarat’s inner membrane through the thick jungle of wall-kelp. He didn’t know if the creature could feel him, or respond, but he continued his caress. It kept his hands occupied.

Ramis conserved the batteries in his transceiver, using it only occasionally to send a signal toward the American colony. He had long ago passed out of range of the Aguinaldo. Magsaysay had promised that they would continue to transmit to the people on Orbitech 1, telling them what to expect, telling them how they could receive the lifesaving supplies Ramis was bringing them. But Ramis had no way of knowing if those messages had been acknowledged, or even received.

Was anybody even alive on the Orbitech colony? The wheels’ metallic surfaces glinted in the sunlight, causing bright flares and smears on the video screen. The colony’s observation windows glimmered with light from the inside, but they were devoid of any wall-kelp, naked. It looked strange to Ramis, but he could not focus the video camera enough to see inside.

What if he found no one at all? What if they were all dead, a result of some rampage by the director, or some riot by the other colonists? How would he ever get back? He couldn’t even get inside unless someone caught the sail-creature, freed him, and took him in.

And Sarat was almost dead, which left Ramis with no way back home.

“Orbitech 1, I am almost to you.”

A loud meaningless crackle returned, but Ramis kept trying. He hated these line-of-sight, energy-conserving units. The Americans had to know he was coming. No one could mistake the sight of the giant organic solar sail drifting closer every day. He kept trying and almost missed it when a weak voice came from the receiver.

“###tech here###. Ready###receive you.”

As Ramis stroked the inner membrane of the sail-creature, he willed Sarat to remain alive just a short while longer.

They rapidly closed on the L-5 colony. Ramis’s stomach wrenched because he knew what that would mean for Sarat. In order to slow down enough to impact the colony without killing himself, Ramis had to collapse Sarat’s broad and beautiful sails—draw them in to cushion him from the crash.

Orbitech 1 gleamed on the monitor. He knew which end would have the docking bay, where people would be waiting for him—he hoped. Ramis watched the wheels turning, one clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Floating above, the discontinuous, near-invisible mirror hung where it could direct sunlight inside the colony. With each rotation of Orbitech 1, Sarat drifted nearer. Ramis swallowed. The picture on the monitor screen blurred, but it was just his eyes watering.

Moving slowly, like someone preparing to give a eulogy, Ramis withdrew the pressurized vial from its cellophane pack, along with the tiny explosive-driven carrier pellets.

He had to judge when the time was right. He had to know, and he could not hesitate.

Ramis had to rid himself of all sentimentality now, because he would not have time for it when the moment came. If he botched this up, he’d sacrifice Sarat for nothing—and make a martyr of himself, as well.

And he would have snuffed the last hope of survival for everyone inside the American L-5 colony.

He could see the details of the giant docking bay now, the Orbitechnologies logo, the viewing windows studded on either side of it. The colony swelled to fill the entire video screen.

Out here, somewhere, floated the hundred and fifty bodies that had been ejected from the airlock.

Ramis noticed the sweat of his fingers inside his gloves. He held the vial of pressurized trigger-hormone; it felt slick against the Mylar of his suit. He remembered Sarat, years ago, saving him from the building that came rotating toward him at deadly speed, when he drifted too close to the Aguinaldo’s rim.

And later, finding the one sail-creature nymph with the “Z” mark on its back—the one that had been more special than any other.

He remembered playing with Sarat, as they both grew older, and Sandovaal assuring him that sail-creatures were not intelligent, that they only responded to stimuli.

Falling toward the curved, kelp-covered inner surface of the Aguinaldo, stranded and helpless as the wide wall rushed toward him. Ramis felt the fear burn in his lungs. But Sarat was there, stopping him, pushing him to safety, saving him.

You were always there to catch me when I fell, Sarat. Are you ready to catch me now?

Ramis rammed the hypodermic cartridge inside the sail-creature’s membrane and ejected the vial’s contents.

Minutes passed. Ramis began to wonder if it would even work.

Reacting with incredible slowness, the cell-thin sails collapsed. They drew in toward Sarat’s body, lumbering together as a butterfly might bring in its wings. They stretched dozens of kilometers out in front of the cyst. With the sudden movement, wispy fragments tore away, rippling like the shrouds of a ghost.

Sarat’s crumpled body struck Orbitech 1, pushing against the tattered ends of its sails. Ramis felt the impact ripple through the creature’s flesh, but he was padded by the curtains of wall-kelp and kilometers of sail. The minute-long collision dragged on; it seemed to take too long.

He felt himself drifting back again, rebounding. Suddenly, panic burned through him. If he drifted out of the colony’s grasp, then he would be stranded again, without even the sails for maneuvering.

Sarat was dead; Ramis knew it, but he refused to let the journey be wasted. Sarat could not have died for nothing.

The video monitor was dark. Outside, the cameras had been covered up by folds of the collapsed sails. Ramis sealed his helmet, made certain that the sail-creature embryos were protected in their airtight canisters, then took out his knife.

He had to get out; he had to do something before it was too late. Ramis shouted again into the transmitter. Nothing. He saw that he had left it on, and the battery was dead.

He hesitated only a moment out of respect for Sarat, then plunged the knife into the tough membrane, trying to cut his way out of the cyst. When the blade broke through to the outside, decompression tried to rip the knife out of his hand. Outrushing oxygen tore the gash open wider. Ramis continued to saw with the knife edge. Crystals sparkled as the humidity inside the cyst flash-froze, layering everything with a thin coating of ice. One of the wall-kelp bladders burst and froze in the same second.

Ramis could see through the opening in the cyst, then he felt a tug on the carcass of the sail-creature. As he peered out, he saw several figures in space suits near him, attaching a tether to keep Sarat from drifting farther away.

Ramis felt drained with relief, but he could not yet relax. He kept hacking with his knife, trying to make the opening wide enough for him to emerge. One of the suited figures swam up in front of him, face-to-face, nodding.

Ramis was startled to see behind the faceplate a man who bore a look of excited hope and wonderment that seemed to cut through weeks of despair.

As he emerged from the hulk of the dead sail-creature, Ramis turned back, feeling like a newborn coming out of a womb. He looked at the shriveled remains of Sarat. The once-magnificent sails now looked as if someone had crumpled up a gigantic wad of paper and tossed it aside.

Sharp needles of pain struck his joints, and uneasy tremors raced through his muscles. But it felt wonderful to move again, to stretch, to be free. He stared down and saw only an infinity of stars, not the curved wall of the Aguinaldo. If he started to fall, he would keep falling forever and ever.…

Dizzy, he looked up at the large observation windows on either side of the Orbitech 1 docking bay doors. Pressed against the observation windows were scattered faces. They appeared as gaunt and anxious as the face he had seen inside the suit.

One of the suited figures wrestled the knife from his hand. Ramis was too weary to struggle, so he released it and kicked toward the airlock. He tried to make motions to show them what they needed to get from the cyst. Apparently they used a different frequency in their suit radios, and he didn’t want to waste time figuring it out. That was one more detail they should have firmed up before his departure.

He saw the others removing the sail-creature embryos, then the wall-kelp nodules. The wall-kelp would survive for some time in the vacuum, but they needed to bring it inside as soon as possible.

As he drifted through the maw of the towering docking bay doors, he could see the empty hangar where the shuttle-tugs would have docked, back when everything was normal. He could see a control bay up above with slanted transparent windows. He saw several forms behind the windows.

Another space-suited figure took his arm and directed him to one of the airlock doors at the wall. He supposed it was an elevator shaft. His legs continued to tremble, and he felt ready to dissolve inside his suit. He wanted to get out, where he could breathe again. He had exerted himself too much all at once. He was not anxious to be back inside a gravity environment.

Behind him, he saw the suited figures cutting at Sarat’s crumpled sails, getting at the creature’s body core. The severed, tissue-thin sails drifted away as the L-5 colony continued to orbit.

Though he felt weary and dizzy, he waited by the spoke-shaft elevator and watched to make sure the colonists brought in the wall-kelp and embryos. The frozen kelp strands were still edible, and the central nodules would survive. His escort seemed impatient and urged him to enter the elevator.

Ramis floated inside the elevator chamber as the other figures carried Sarat’s hard, elongated body core into the bay, pushing it toward one of the other elevators. He felt a moment of shocked indignation and anger as he realized they were probably recovering the meat for distribution among the colonists.

One more sacrifice for Sarat, one more debt owed.

As the spoke-shaft elevator descended, the chamber filled with air. Ramis could feel his weight increase as the elevator traveled out to the rim of the torus, picking up artificial gravity along the way.

Ramis’s suit lost some of its stiffness as the elevator pressurized. His escort cracked open his helmet and indicated for Ramis to do the same. As the elevator reached the bottom of the shaft, Ramis lifted up the faceplate and took a deep breath of the warm, stale air of the industrial colony. He heaved an exhausted sigh. The man beside him clapped him on the back.

A potpourri of odors wafted past, very different from the dank, stifling air of the cramped cyst. The smell was metallic, scrubbed clean—more artificial than the Aguinaldo’s. But Ramis felt numb, unable to take it all in at once.

A buzz of people surrounded him. Arms reached out to embrace him, and he almost collapsed in their grasp. He looked around frantically. The men with the embryos must have gone into one of the other elevators, down a different spoke into another part of the wheel. Ramis stood on his tiptoes and called out, wondering what he should do.

“Wait—the sail-creatures! They are my only way back! I need to tell you about the wall-kelp!”

A man pushed through the mass and grabbed Ramis’s elbow. He was tall and forceful, with blond hair swept back from his forehead. At first glance, he seemed too young to be in charge, but the dark bags under his eyes made him look old beyond himself.

“—Curtis Brahms, Acting Director of Orbitech 1.” He seemed to be out of breath. “Welcome to our colony. I hope you’ve brought a miracle with you. We could sure use one. We must have a meeting with my assessors as soon as possible.”

The people grew silent when the man spoke. Their faces smiled back at Ramis, but their eyes looked dead, beaten.

Ramis studied Brahms, trying to quell the urgency he felt. He did not look as forbidding as Magsaysay had led him to expect.

Ramis wanted to see the embryos, make certain they were not mishandled or injured. “I must show you how to grow the wall-kelp, raise the sail-creatures. It is a chance for you all to survive.”

“We can’t thank you enough for helping us.” Brahms gripped Ramis on the shoulders. “We had only … unpleasant options left.” Brahms steered Ramis through the crowd. People stepped out of their way.

“Let me show you your room. We’ve got good quarters for you—they used to belong to one of our division leaders.”

Ramis stumbled along, feeling weak. He tried not to think of Sarat, of the Aguinaldo, of the time he would have to live here until the sail-creature embryos reached maturity—nor of the unpleasant options to which Brahms had referred.

“After you clean up, we need to have a talk.” He flashed a smile that made Ramis uneasy.

The people appeared glad to see Ramis, but somehow he felt more stifled than welcome. He would be walking a tightrope, balancing everything he knew against what he understood of the grim situation on the American colony.

Orbitech 1 seemed to hold many secrets.