Lifeline

Chapter 56

KIBALCHICH—Day 72

Ramis ran over a final suit check as the airlock hissed and cycled. He felt the suit ballooning around him, the soft sounds of outgassing. The airlock seemed to take forever.

Through his helmet, he heard a muffled voice coming from the PA system—maybe Karen had learned how to use the intercom—but the words faded into silence as all the air left the chamber. He had cut himself off. Karen would have to come outside and use her own suit radio if she needed to contact him, or else get inside the command center.

The outer airlock swung open, leaving him with a dizzying depth of stars in front of his faceplate. The view spun around as the Kibalchich’s torus rotated. The broken rubble shield cast flickering spots on the hull, like leaf shadows on a forest floor.

Breathing shallowly, Ramis pushed out of the chamber and worked his way over the Kibalchich’s hub. The graphite axis rod extended from the mirror above to the massive solar shield below.

Ramis could feel a strange sensation in his suit, against the hull where his feet were anchored. It seemed as if the Kibalchich vibrated to a new motion; the central graphite rod seemed to jitter with the resonance. Anna Tripolk had activated some sort of weapon, whatever it was. He whirled around, then caught himself to keep from spinning. The airlock door closed and sealed itself—he felt an enormous “click” through contact with the hull. Ramis bent forward and punched the Cyrillic open switch above the airlock.

Nothing.

Undaunted, he flipped the manual override switch. Again nothing. Anna had locked him out.

Ramis felt cold, and his stomach tightened. As Karen had reminded him, if he couldn’t stop the weapon, or at least get back inside before it detonated, he would fry from the radiation.

Ramis flipped up his radio options and began to key in Orbitech 1’s emergency frequency, but the clipped voice of Anna Tripolk burst in over his suit radio. “Ramis Barrera, I have sealed open all the inner airlock doors on this station. You can not re-enter. If you issue any sort of warning, I will destroy Orbitech 1. The blood of more than a thousand people will be on your hands.”

Ramis thought rapidly. He still had the weavewire to get back to Orbitech 1—but without the dolly to ride over, he might as well have nothing. Which left him with Jumping. He quickly shelved that idea. He had full air tanks, but it would take him too long—the weapon would detonate before he got there. He had less than two hours.

Ramis ground his teeth together, but he didn’t bother to respond to Anna. Nothing more came over the radio. He boosted himself up over the hub and steadied himself against the rod holding the mirror. Everything seemed serene. The stars burned as ice-cold pinpoints; the great wheel of the Kibalchich rotated underneath its rocky sheath.

Across the depth of space, he looked toward the bright spot of Orbitech 1. Something hung in his way, eclipsing the stars. It seemed like a thick fog, a thin film blocking the view—

Dr. Sandovaal! The sail-creatures!

Ramis squinted and tried to find the sail-creatures’ stubby bodies in the gigantic cluster—that would tell him how near they were. But it was like trying to find a rice husk at midnight in a soccer field. They were floating in, oblivious to what was about to happen, and he had no way to warn them. Anna would be listening to any transmissions,

Until it hit him that he had an easier way.

One hour and twenty minutes remaining—it seemed an eternity to her. But nothing could stop her now, not with Ramis Barrera locked outside, and Karen Langelier banging on the sealed doors to the command center and whimpering into the intercom.

“Anna, please! You don’t know what you’re doing.” Langelier’s voice echoed through the command center.

Because of emergency safety programming, the computer refused to shut off the intercom during detonation sequence Alexander, claiming that it must remain open. Anna tried to ignore Langelier’s whining. “Don’t you have any respect for other lives?”

That angered her. Any respect for other lives? She snapped, “I am not the one who murdered a helpless man in sleepfreeze through simple incompetence! Think of all the people dead on Earth. I am not the one attempting to band together with the remaining survivors in space to wipe out the people on the Kibalchich. This station had a grander purpose than anything your people will ever attempt. I will not let you ruin it.”

Anna shuddered and ignored everything else the other woman shouted back at her. The discussion would sap her strength, redirect her anger, and possibly raise some doubts. She could not afford that.

Anna checked the tall central holotank, keeping a close eye on the progress of the yo-yo vessel making its way up from the Moon. It sped onward, its acceleration constant, less than two hours from its destination. The delicate tracking mechanisms on the Kibalchich kept the target in focus. If she timed it right, the Phoenix would be destroyed with minutes to spare.

She tried to imagine what the people of Orbitech 1 would think. Would they realize her position? Would they find that her decision was the only way she could prevent a corrupting system from rising again? She fought for her own future, to keep the Kibalchich from becoming expendable. Generations from now, the Soviets might herald her as their savior.

They were nice thoughts, but she knew the Americans would never see it that way.

The computer interrupted her musings. The command center diagnostics blinked, catching the side lobe of a radio signal being broadcast from just outside the Kibalchich. Anna snapped at the control system, “Increase the gain—subtract all noise.” She hissed under her breath. “I warned him!”

Ramis’s voice came over the speakers for just a few seconds. She could not make out what he said—he spoke gibberish, babbling nonsense words. Then he fell silent. “Computer, translate!” she said. “Is he speaking some sort of code?”

“{{WORKING.}}”

A minute passed. Ramis did not rebroadcast. “Computer! What did he say?”

“{{UNABLE TO TRANSLATE. UNDERGOING HEURISTIC PROGRAMMING—}}”

“Computer, what was the target of his broadcast? Orbitech 1?”

“{{NO KNOWN TARGET. ANGULAR PARAMETERS ONLY: 0.006 RADIANS AZIMUTH, NEGATIVE 0.8226 RADIANS POLAR.}}”

“Display!” she said, growing frantic. How was she supposed to make sense out of some coordinate numbers? The computer showed a three-dimensional grid emanating from the Kibalchich, with a narrow cone of Ramis’s broadcast extending away from the station, nearly straight toward Earth.

But why? Nothing on Earth could help him. If he was lucky, some amateur radio operator might pick up the signal, but to what purpose? Had the Filipino boy gone crazy? Did he hope that someone on Earth would relay the message to Orbitech 1? Not if he spoke nonsensical gibberish.

“Anna, please listen to me!” Karen Langelier’s voice burst out of the intercom speakers.

“Be quiet!” Anna shouted.

The sudden stillness in the control room closed around her, making Anna feel the churning anxiety. Her head pounded, and she found herself breathing shallowly. Why was it so cold in here?

“Computer, raise the temperature in the command center!”

Ramis Barrera’s transmission had upset her. She didn’t know how to respond. Anna struck the arm of the command chair with a fist. “Who is it? What is he saying?”