Lifeline

Chapter 51

Climbing to L-5—Day 70

Luis Sandovaal tried to keep the antenna pointed toward the incoming signal, beamed from the Aguinaldo over three hundred thousand kilometers away. The computer-driven servo had failed and he had a hard time manually steering the delicate controls.

Cramped in the sail-creature cyst, he felt his impatience simmering into anger. He tried again to adjust the antenna, overshot the mark, and hissed at himself before making another attempt. Back in the lab he could maneuver the microwaldoes and juggle chromosomes one at a time in the nucleus of a single cell. He couldn’t dare admit that he was having problems now.

Hourly news updates, beamed from the Aguinaldo on the open channel between the colonies, gave Sandovaal and Dobo some respite from worrying about their trip. As bored as he sometimes felt, Sandovaal wondered how young Ramis had endured it. Dobo spent most of the time sleeping.

A burst of words came over the receiver. “#### showing that your velocity is falling as calculated. You will soon need to ### your sails #######.”

Sandovaal leaned into the transmitter. “You are coming through sporadically, Aguinaldo. Next transmission time I am switching to Orbitech 1.” He would have to adjust the antenna all over again! “Please patch all further transmissions through the American colony.”

“Rog## that. #### out.”

Remembering the difficulty he had had before, Sandovaal decided to take a short nap and then begin trying to direct the radio dish toward Orbitech 1. The sail-creature mosaic had passed through the side lobe for inter-Lagrange point communications and could not pick up anything from Clavius Base, but he would try anyway.

Eight years before, when he first had arrived on the new Aguinaldo, full of enthusiasm, things had been much brighter.

As he had disembarked from the first shuttle-tug, Sandovaal still couldn’t feel his own weight. The shuttle had docked at the Aguinaldo’s zero-G core, and after six days of transit, he was getting tired of floating around. He wanted to move to the rim and feel the artificial gravity pull on his legs, even if it was only a seventh of Earth normal. He wanted to feel solid again.

He drifted with the other new arrivals down the passageway, bumping into walls. Coming into the gleaming Aguinaldo at its axis, he saw the ten-kilometer length unfold before him—a gargantuan cylinder broken only by the lightaxis running straight down the center. The dizzying edges rolled up, encircling his view. Other new colonists milled around him, gasping and muttering to each other.

He had not envisioned the colony quite like this—nothing of such … magnitude. Sandovaal felt embarrassed at his awe and tried to hide it. It was only engineering, after all—on a large scale, yes, but still just pieces of metal welded together.

He let his eyes rest on all the broad open space. As he had feared, he saw distressingly little green. How did they expect to make themselves independent from Earth without devoting most of their effort to intensive agriculture?

Someone prodded him from behind. A bored American attendant standing off to the side seemed more interested in his nails than in helping anybody. “Hurry it up, ladies and gentlemen. Other colonists are waiting to disembark.”

A slidewalk covered with stickum held Sandovaal’s feet to the floor as the crowd moved along. He could feel himself growing heavier as they traveled along the sloping end toward the cylinder’s edge. Looking back over his shoulder, he felt dizzy from the sight: back at the zero-G core, the slidewalk moved almost straight up to the axis; toward the rim, the moving belt sloped until it was tangent to the ground.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention, please.”

The crowd quieted as the attendant moved from his position and perched on one of the slidewalk rails. “When we get to the rim, chasers will direct you to your housing units. We have to process five thousand people in the next week, so please be patient with us. The housing units have all been certified, but something could have slipped past us. Please remember that the transition staff is extremely overloaded and we’re doing our best to make sure everything runs smoothly. Any questions?”

The speech came out rapidly, without inflections, as though the attendant had said it dozens of times. Sandovaal wrestled with the American colloquialisms.

The slidewalk came to a stop at the rim. The new colonists swarmed to the lines. Attendants yelled over the din. “A through D, this line—if your last name starts with A through D, please wait in this line!”

Sandovaal drew in a breath and tried to control his impatience. He made his way to the “Q thru T” line and deposited his bags in front of two young women. He fidgeted and clenched his jaw as he waited, slowly moving toward the head of the queue. It reminded him of a crowded registration line at the university in Manila.

“Your last name?” The dark-haired woman didn’t look up from her table.

“Sandovaal.”

A moment passed. “To the left and down three kilometers; Luzon block.” The woman pointed without looking up. Her hair was offensively stylish.

Sandovaal stood his ground. “Tell me, where are the biogenetic laboratories?”

The woman looked up, puzzled. “Move on to your apartment, please. A map of the Aguinaldo is posted in your quarters.”

She paused. Sandovaal kept his temper in check. “The biogenetic labs—where are they?”

“Sir, I told you—”

“You did not answer my question.” Sandovaal pulled himself up and glared into the woman’s face. “Young lady, I am Dr. Luis Sandovaal, the Aguinaldo’s chief scientist. Now, you will show me the biogenetic laboratories or you will not find your name on the seating list for any shuttle back to Earth. Do you understand?”

The woman tapped a stylus on her desk, looking around for someone to rescue her. Finally, she summoned a steward to direct him. Sandovaal ducked behind the barricade; he heard other people in the line grumbling at him.

The steward eased Sandovaal away from the crowds, leading him to an electric cart. He refused to let the steward help him stuff his bags into the cart’s cargo bin.

Within moments they sped azimuthally up the rim, past the orderly fields of crops, the fish pens, all the empty, wasted space. Sandovaal saw offices and maintenance buildings, parks, ponds, and row upon row of housing areas.

When they arrived at the laboratory complex, Sandovaal cut off the steward’s insincere apologies. He dragged his luggage from the cart. “Which one?” The American pointed to a low prefabricated building, then sped off in the cart before his passenger could say anything further. Sandovaal admonished himself for not having noted the man’s name.

Without entering, he already knew how artificial the lab would look. He hated it when other people “designed” what was best for him. At least with modular construction, he could uproot a wall or two and fix things.

Sandovaal entered the empty research complex, calling out as he entered each lab area, “Dobo! Where are you?” Dobo Daeng had arrived on an earlier shuttle; he should have been here setting up.

The research buildings looked like a geometric progression of identical laboratory areas, reflected endlessly upon each other. With each empty room, closet, and bay he found, Sandovaal’s blood pressure inched up. Nothing had been set up, nothing prepared, nothing ready to go. Some crates had been piled in the halls, marked with stenciled words in English. None had been opened.

Getting to work was the only way Sandovaal knew how to settle down. Without Dobo here, he would have to unpack and set up the laboratory materials himself. He attacked the task, flinging open cupboards, glancing at the facilities. He located the main supply room and hauled out brown boxes of test tubes, sketchboards to be linked into the computer, special pipettes that would work properly in the low gravity.

After a few hours, the magnitude of the task wore at him. He couldn’t get started until everything was in its proper place, in order. In frustration, he ignored the tedious jobs and decided to set up the computer. He had already planned his analysis of the Aguinaldo’s ecology, and now he wanted to see how bad things might be.

The mainframe’s crates weren’t hard to find, though the components fit together into a computer only as large as a suitcase. Sandovaal usually left such work to the hardware people, but he had little trouble assembling the computer himself and running two simple diagnostic routines.…

Sandovaal immersed himself in a study of the Aguinaldo’s resources, running simulations, variable checks, and endless projections. Over and over he graphed out the results and discarded them to try again.

He left only to relieve himself or to scrounge some instant coffee from an aluminum packet he had included in his file drawer from Scripps. He uncovered some prepackaged food among the supplies when he noticed he was hungry. He found himself nodding asleep, but splashed cold water on his face and went back to work.

Persistence. It felt good to be doing something again.

The laboratory lights came on by themselves when the lightaxis dimmed for the colony’s nightfall. He had no idea how much time had passed when Dobo finally arrived at the laboratory.

Sandovaal whirled from his chair as the assistant walked in. “Dobo, look at this.” The words came as a command.

Dobo rubbed his hands as he approached Sandovaal. “I just got unpacked and did a little exploring. My wife and I are still settling down.” Dobo slowed as he looked at Sandovaal, then raised his eyebrows. “Work has not been scheduled to start until tomorrow, but I decided to check in at the laboratory. They said you were brought here after you disembarked. Have you located your dwelling yet?”

“Look at this.” Sandovaal jabbed his fingers at the display.

Dobo squinted at the holoscreen. He pondered for an unacceptably long moment. “It appears to show—”

“It leaves no room for doubt. With the Aguinaldos current agricultural plan using only Earth crops, a catastrophic shortage of food will occur if any imbalance is brought into the system, even years down the road.”

“What system?” Dobo squinted at the screen, puffing out his pudgy cheeks and muttering to himself. “Crop yields, animal offspring, population growth. And the figures are for fifty years from now. What does this have to do with molecular biology? I thought we were setting up a new genetic institute—”

With an exaggerated sigh, Sandovaal said, “At one time I thought you were bright, Dobo.” He gestured across the graphs, indicating nothing in particular. “Use your imagination—or did you forget to pack it? If this colony is to survive, this data shows we must design special new crops tailored to this environment, not Earth’s.”

Dobo frowned. “A new ecological system—ah, so that is where our work comes in.”

“I just said that. Now, pull up a chair and help me with this design matrix. Or better yet, finish the unpacking.”

Sandovaal attempted to plug a fiberoptic cable into the monitor but was quickly frustrated by the maze of cable ports in the back. “Where does this go?”

Dobo didn’t seem to notice Sandovaal’s harshness. “The second port. But my wife, Dr. Sandovaal—she is waiting for me outside. We were going to mass.”

“Your wife is an adult, old enough to take care of herself. You did come to the Aguinaldo to assist me, correct?” Sandovaal turned back to the screen.

Dobo looked lost in thought for a moment and then shrugged. He pulled up a chair next to Sandovaal.…

After closing his eyes and listening to his breathing in the closed cyst, Sandovaal gave up trying to sleep and sat up.

Unlike Ramis, who had continued to accelerate until the end, Sandovaal wanted his armada of sail-creatures to arrive at Orbitech 1 intact. So they had tacked a carefully calculated course, allowing their kinetic energy to evolve into potential (or whatever the nuts-and-bolts people called it), and steered for a spot in the middle of the L-5 gravity well—between Orbitech 1 and the Soviet Kibalchich. He dismissed the insignificant danger of running into the weavewire strung between the two colonies, but nevertheless they had plotted the sail-creatures’ course to bring them in above the ecliptic plane.

Satisfied that the Aguinaldo transmissions had indeed ceased, Sandovaal turned his attention to inspecting the sail-creatures. He flicked on the external flatscreen camera. From his vantage point in the center of the array, everything appeared to be all right. He swiveled the exterior camera around and tried to pick out the individual cores dotted among the huge wings. Only his nearest neighbors were visible, since the tiny camera could not resolve features more than twenty kilometers away.

Slapping at the controls, Sandovaal activated the direct fiberoptic line to Dobo’s sail-creature. The vision segment on the flatscreen showed only a gray-white storm of static. A deep, rumbling sound buzzed out of the speakers. Sandovaal jerked upward and pressed at the volume control. Listening for a moment, he raised his white eyebrows.

“Dobo!” No answer. “Dobo, wake up, you imbecile!”

Nothing.

“Dobo—you are to keep on the schedule. Now, wake up immediately!”

Sandovaal grew angrier with each passing second until he felt as though he might explode. He was glad the doctors on the Aguinaldo could not monitor his blood pressure. Dobo must have turned off his receiver, as well as the visual portion of their communication link; only the audio came through. Inexcusable! “Probably left the transmission line on just to intimidate me.”

Sandovaal had kept in constant contact, making sure Dobo didn’t sleep too much, that he kept his mind challenged by listening to Sandovaal’s theories on bioengineering. Someday Dobo might have to carry on the work.

But it seemed that as soon as they had pushed off from the Aguinaldo, Dobo had become difficult—adhering to his own schedule, switching Sandovaal off in the middle of a conversation, only to apologize later for “accidentally” bumping the television controls. You would think the man had a mind of his own.

Sandovaal snorted. A mind of his own! A preposterous thought for anybody who knew Dobo Daeng.

He stopped abruptly, wondering if Dobo had actually been trying to intimidate him. A moment passed before Sandovaal snorted again, wondering if the cramped solitude was beginning to give him delusions. No, he thought, not Dobo.

Twenty kilometers away, in the core of his own sail-creature, Dobo stopped making his snoring sounds into the microphone and pushed away from the transmitter. With a grin on his face, he watched the flatscreen image as Sandovaal switched off the monitor. As before, Sandovaal had forgotten to turn off his own transmitter.

Dobo watched in quiet amusement as Sandovaal threw a fit but found no target for his outrage. Finally, after all these years of being an unappreciated assistant …

If nothing else, Dobo was having the time of his life.