Lifeline

Chapter 66

ORBITECH 1—Day 72

The crowd watched the Phoenix in the holotank above the shuttle bay doors. The five minutes it took to bring the craft into the shuttle bay seemed an eternity.

Brahms felt surrounded by dissipating anger as Orbitech 1 prepared to receive visitors. Terachyk simply didn’t have the charisma to keep the mutineers whipped into a frenzy—not when Brahms used all his abilities to sidetrack them.

Terachyk had no doubt planned his revolt to occur at a time of greatest tension, but he had not counted on the spark of hope even the mutineers would feel. The arrival of the Phoenix and the simultaneous appearance of the sail-creatures carried a kind of majestic awe. In their minds, they would give Brahms credit for this, no matter what Terachyk had told them. Their attitudes reminded Brahms of the euphoria that had filled the station when Ramis Barrera had first brought them the wall-kelp.

On the holotank overhead, the recovery team, outfitted in the red-and-silver space suits bearing the Orbitechnologies logo, grappled with the hulk of what had been the Miranda. Brahms saw a hodgepodge of retro-rockets, vacuum-welded fixtures, and the airtight living area—pieces attached at random over what had once been the shuttlecraft.

Brahms had a flash of a memory, recalling how the Miranda had docked there shortly before the War, with its pilot requesting to stay a few days and relax before returning to Earth orbit for another run.

McLaris was on board that vessel now. Coming back.

The look of the Phoenix bespoke desperate acts, the Clavius people piecing together whatever they had available. Desperate acts—like McLaris stealing the shuttle in the first place, or Brahms proposing the RIF. Or now Terachyk and his revolt.

Desperate times called for such desperate acts. Sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes they failed.

He turned to look at Terachyk, and the other man glared back at him.

On the three-dimensional view, the recovery team positioned themselves around the Phoenix, avoiding the weavewire linkage. The radio crackled over the open band; ConComm refrained from adding irrelevant voice-overs.

“Start pulling them in again! Caterpiller speed—don’t jerk ’em too much!”

“Reeling in. Doppler has them constant at twenty feet a second.”

The image jittered as the Phoenix moved and the holo-cameras tried to maintain their focus.

“Don’t increase speed. Coming along just fine.”

“Holding steady.”

“We’ve got five MMUs on this side of it. A few good blasts should slow this baby right down to a stop.”

Brahms was struck by the irony that no one else on Orbitech 1 even seemed aware of Terachyk’s mutiny, but instead remained intent on the yo-yo situation. He realized that this meant Terachyk’s revolt must be relatively tight-knit and small. He had probably brought every one of his supporters with him.

Now if Brahms’s watchers got together and burst in here.… He swallowed, afraid of the thought and praying they wouldn’t try anything after all. He had no doubt that if the crowd grew any bigger, he would never survive.

His thoughts were interrupted by the blast of the PA.

“Clear the shuttle bay—I say again, clear the shuttle bay. Prepare to bring Phoenix on board. Airlock opening in two minutes. Clear the shuttle bay.”

The wall of people still surrounded Brahms. He felt someone grab his arm, but he did not resist. Terachyk turned to him, wearing a thin smile. “Well, will you join us, Curtis? Or do you prefer to remain here when the airlock doors open?”

Someone snickered. Brahms ignored the sea of faces that turned to stare at him. He wondered if Terachyk would really seal him in the shuttle bay with the doors about to open. He answered quietly, “I’ll follow you, Allen.”

But Terachyk persisted. “You would have sent me out the airlock if I hadn’t measured up to your damned Efficiency Study. You did it to Tim Drury!”

Brahms felt very tired of all this. He met the stares of the crowd. “If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll all go out the airlock just because you talk too much. Everyone knows what I did, and everyone knows you helped me.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the RIF—”

Brahms spoke sharply but quietly, to keep his voice from projecting. “Later, Allen. Complacency has never been a valid excuse under the law. If you want, and if they want—” He swept his free hand around. “I’ll release the results of the study, right now, and let everyone see how they were ranked. We’ll tell them what criteria you used as chief assessor to rank them. The numbers on that list are more your doing than mine. Let’s show them all. Then there’ll be plenty of time to discuss this—even for a trial, if that’s what you want.”

Terachyk looked angry and frightened. The people nearest him frowned; one looked Terachyk up and down and seemed to move away from him.

“One minute to airlock doors. Clear the shuttle bay. Final warning.”

“Right now the Phoenix is coming,” Brahms said. “Let’s get out of the way so the crew can come aboard.” He waited a moment and then, in disgust, clapped his hands and shouted, “Everybody, clear the shuttle bay. Now!”

People moved to obey. Terachyk grew red and started to retort at the director’s audacity, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he snapped, “Let’s move out. Keep hold of the director.”

A few people grumbled, but the dissident crowd kicked off from the wall toward the series of airlock doors to storage rooms and the observation areas. Two large men roughly tugged Brahms along with them. He wondered where Winkowski and the other watchers had gone. He couldn’t quite believe they would desert him so easily.

The two escorts shoved him through an opening to the observation deck, but they never allowed him to be alone. No one spoke. Within seconds they had sealed themselves behind sheltering doors, watching as the magenta warning lights flashed, reflecting light off the airlock doors.

A murmur rippled through the crowd, a rising excitement. A loud “clunk” came from just outside the colony. The PA sound reverberated throughout the observation deck.

“Prepare to open shuttle bay doors. The Phoenix has arrived. Everybody give the crew a welcoming hand.”

The airlock doors yawned open and spread wide to show the vessel drifting in, flanked by five people in space suits, pushing it along with the force of their combined MMUs and nudging it into place.

The ConComm announcer on the PA broadcast cheers from random sections on Orbitech 1. Clavius Base sent up congratulations. In the observation deck the mutineers’ eyes were wide. A man next to Brahms began crying openly, his tears coming off his cheeks and floating in front of his face as tiny spinning water globules. A woman moved among the others, pounding people on the back.

The change felt instantaneous to Brahms—the anger and righteous dissatisfaction among the mutineers was defused; despair was diluted with a new burst of hope.

“Full pressure in the shuttle bay: seven point five PSI and ready for visitors. We should be seeing the reception committee from Director Brahms any minute now.”

Terachyk stiffened, and Brahms turned to him. “Well, Allen, should we go greet them? Maybe you’d like to shake hands with McLaris for the cameras?”

Terachyk gestured toward the door, but said nothing. He wore a stormy expression. The airlock doors opened, allowing them all to spill out into the cold shuttle bay. Their breath steamed into the chill air.

Brahms noted that it was the first time since the War that people passed him by without acknowledging his presence. Only one of the big men held onto his arm.

Through the main front window port of the altered Miranda, Brahms could see two men inside, working at the hatch. One of them would be McLaris.

When Terachyk reached the metal hulk of the Phoenix, the mass of people in the weightless bay moved Brahms up alongside him. Someone called, “Stand back, they’re coming out!”

The Phoenix’s airlock door crept open. The metal moved, a gap opened. Brahms saw a hand.

The crowd began to cheer. The reaction was so unlike anything Brahms had heard in a long, long time, it overwhelmed him.

Clifford Clancy pushed out from the airlock and floated into the middle of the shuttle bay. He grinned, holding his helmet in his hand, and gave a thumbs-up signal. People spilled toward him. Some of them collided with each other, but no one seemed to notice.

Brahms caught Allen Terachyk’s eye. A voice from inside the Phoenix barely made it over the other sounds. “Hello, Curtis.”

Brahms turned his head to see Duncan McLaris floating just inside the yo-yo. He pulled himself out into the light.

Then the spoke-shaft elevator doors slid open, and this time dozens of green-clad watchers emerged. Nancy Winkowski led the cadre. They all carried clubs—long rods and pieces of pipe. Winkowski pushed into the crowd and started clubbing people, swinging her instrument as she flew through the bay. One woman let out a scream as a pipe struck her in the leg.

Brahms watched Duncan McLaris’s expression click like a slide show through a series of emotions—fear, betrayal, disappointment, outrage. McLaris seemed to think he was the target for assassination—that Brahms was trying to kill him for returning.

Brahms saw Terachyk’s men fly from the Phoenix, scattering throughout the bay. Terachyk himself cringed back against the vessel’s hull in helpless terror.

Nancy Winkowski propelled herself in, brandishing the club in front of her.

“Stop!” Brahms screamed over everything, hauling the deep voice up from the center of his chest. “Stop it! Put down your weapons! Winkowski, I order you to cease!”

He felt all the clubs aimed at him, ready to fly. He wondered why he wasn’t seeing his life flash in front of his eyes. He cringed, waiting to hear one more crack as a pipe found someone’s head.

Instead, after a brief pause, Brahms turned and said, “Welcome back, Duncan.”

McLaris held onto the Phoenix’s hatch. Had he not been in zero-G, he would have collapsed to the floor. A moment of awkward silence hung in the shuttle bay, leaving only the injured woman’s cries and scattered shocked murmurs. Clifford Clancy looked astonished and confused, but he did not move. No one else seemed to understand what was happening.

“Oh, put down your weapons, you idiots!” Brahms shouted. “Bloodshed is not the way to solve problems! I thought you would have figured that out by now.”

Terachyk shouted angrily, “Only if you answer publicly for what you have done, Curtis.”

Brahms sighed, trying to exaggerate how weary he was of all this. “You can have your trial. And then we will get on with doing what we need to do.” He felt very calm, unafraid now: the colony would survive.

He looked up and met Duncan McLaris’s eyes. The other man had shaved off his beard; he looked older, but stronger. McLaris seemed to comprehend the power struggle that was going on between Terachyk and Brahms.

The crowd broke into uncertain murmuring. The watchers and the mutineers warily eyed each other and lowered their clubs. Terachyk tried to make himself heard, but his voice sounded weak and broken.

“Everyone is invited to the assembly hall. We will broadcast proceedings against Director Brahms. We will divulge the files of the Efficiency Study for everyone to see. There will be an open discussion of what action Orbitech 1 should take against him.” He turned to stare at Brahms.

“If any,” Brahms added.

McLaris interrupted, directing his words to Terachyk. He spoke in a low voice. “I think you just may find that sometimes people are forced to make difficult decisions under extreme pressures, and sometimes they make the wrong choices.”

He paused. “But you’d better look pretty deep into your own heart before you cast the first stone, Allen.”

Brahms blinked, amazed that McLaris had stood up for him. Or was McLaris perhaps talking about himself and his own decision to steal the Miranda?

“Allen,” McLaris continued, raising his eyebrows, “aren’t you at least going to welcome me back?”

Terachyk blinked at him, as if he could not bear to deal with another variable at the moment. He started to say something, but McLaris motioned with his head toward the exit. “Save it for later, Allen. I’ve been cooped up in a yo-yo for three days.”

The people diffused toward the separate doors of the spoke-shaft elevators that would lead out of the docking bay to the toroidal hub of administrative offices, conference rooms, and business areas. Nancy Winkowski drifted past, perplexed but adamant. The pipe in her hands looked unwieldy, yet she held onto it.

Several of the other mutineers stayed with Terachyk. McLaris tried to remain among them, as if he thought he could defuse tensions further. “I want you all to meet Cliff Clancy. Dr. Clancy is the one who came up with the idea for the yo-yo, and he was also head of the construction engineers working on Orbitech 2 before the War.”

Clancy started shaking hands, moving out to the people, who seemed eager to embrace him and talk with him. He glanced back at McLaris, who nodded for him to go ahead. Terachyk waved his supporters away, indicating that they should move to the assembly hall. Others began to leave, thinning out the bay.

Brahms maintained his wooden smile, waiting his chance. When he finally saw most of the attention directed away from him, when much of the fear and anger had died down among the people in the docking bay, he grabbed Nancy Winkowski around the waist and snapped a whisper into her ear. “Follow me!” He clamped his grip down on her and gave an enormous push against the side of the Phoenix, propelling both of them across the bay, toward the bank of spoke-shaft elevators standing open on the opposite wall.

Brahms heard shouts; clubs whistled overhead as they flew past them, only to bounce off the far wall. To her credit, Winkowski followed along, adapting without the slightest idea of what Brahms was trying to do. The two of them slammed against the inner wall of the spoke-shaft elevator. Brahms’s wrist stung from the impact, probably sprained. He hit the elevator door control and watched the people boiling toward him, shouting and cursing. The last thing he heard was Allen Terachyk ordering the others to stop.

“Where’s he going to hide, anyway?” Terachyk yelled.

Where indeed? Brahms thought.

They would figure it out sooner or later.