"If s too much," Kim said, as if speaking to himself. "The rate of decay is far too great." He turned, gesturing to Jelka to come across to him. "No," he said, answering the radio signal in his head as Sampsa's mother, her tall shape clothed in a tight-fitting outworlder suit, joined him beside the transmitters. "We need to boost it somehow, to keep the pulse strong... No! It's just not good enough! It has to be much stronger. At least two hundred times stronger. As it is the beam won't even get a quarter of the way there. We might as well shine a rucking torch into the darkness!"
Sampsa watched, surprised. It wasn't often that he saw his father angry.
"What is it?" Jelka asked.
In answer Kim punched out a figure on the display panel on his left arm and showed it to her.
"That much?" she said, shaking her head.
He nodded.
"Shit!"
That too was strange; hearing his mother swear. The test results must have been really bad. He looked to his right.
There, by the glowing control board, his baby sister, Mileja was amusing herself doing somersaults in the zero gravity conditions, the umbilical that tethered her to the platform stretching and coiling, forever pulling her back.
He smiled. It was just wonderful up here. How wonderful he hadn't guessed until now. No wonder his mother and father spent so much time out here. Below him, to his left, so close it seemed he could almost reach out and touch it, was the moon. Further down, directly down that was, sitting there like a blue-green hole in the blackness, was Chung Kuo.
If he wanted he could leap from the platform's edge and fall towards that tiny circle, like a diver falling toward a distant pool. And how long would he take to fall? Weeks, months, perhaps, though he would probably starve long before he ever breached the surface of that pool.
He turned back. His father was shaking his head now and tutting to himself. The lenses he wore — saucer glasses designed to enhance his view of the stars - made him seem even more alien than he naturally was, with his huge head and tiny frame. And though he had something of each of his parents within his own ungainly frame, he thought once more just how ill-matched a pair they looked.
Ill-matched yet complementary. Like a double star system, they orbited each other endlessly.
"Sampsa?"
He went across. "Yes, father?"
"Is the shuttle coming?"
He looked down at the timer at his wrist and whistled, surprised. Was it that time already? "I'll check," he said.
He drifted over to the board.
"I can do doubles," Mileja said, tapping the top of his helmet as she floated past him. "Watch!"
He watched a moment, humouring her, clapping her, his thickly-gloved hands making almost no sound. Then, knowing his father would want an answer quickly, he studied the figures on the board's display screen.
"It's on its way," he said, looking to his mother who was watching him fondly. "ETA eighteen minutes."
"Good," Kim said, his concentration unbroken. "At least one thing's going to plan!"
Sampsa heard the bitterness in his father's voice, the disappointment, and looked down. Kim had been sure he'd cracked it this time; certain that the rate of decay - the rate at which the beamed laser signal broke up - had been reduced substantially. And so it had. But not enough, it seemed. Nothing like enough.
"Shit!" Kim said, sighing deeply and moving from the platform's edge. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"
Mileja, in mid loop, gave a giggle. "Shit!" she said.
"Hey," Jelka said, coming across to her. "That's quite enough, young lady!"
"But daddy said . . ."
"Enough!"
Again Mileja giggled, so that even Kim broke into a smile.
"Is it that bad?" Sampsa asked.
"Bad?" Kim came and touched his arm. "Oh, far worse than bad. I'd say I've been barking up the wrong tree, if that image made any sense at all out here."
"Mining the wrong asteroid?" Jelka suggested.
"Terraforming the wrong planet?" Sampsa added, joining in the family game.
Kim grinned, his eyes like ostrich eggs behind their lenses, then he gave another sigh. "Whatever... it looks like I'll have to start from scratch. Find some other way to tackle the problem. It's not the lasers - they're powerful enough - if s the interstellar dust. There's not much of it but, over the distances we're talking of, the signal just gets eaten by it. Absorbed. You might just as well try to send a signal through a mile of steel."
"You'll find a way," Jelka said, putting an arm round him. "You always do."
"Not this time," he said, a hint of despair in the words. "If s just too far."
"No," she began, but he shook his head.
"I'm deadly serious, my love. For once I might just have overreached myself. I mean, linking the stars, it's a crazy idea, don't you think? Building a massive cat's cradle between them. Who but a madman would think of doing that?" "Or a genius?" Jelka said quietly.
"No." He shook his head again. "No."
"Spiders," Sampsa said. "Think spiders."
"What?" Kim looked to his son, a sudden intensity in his eyes.
"Krakatoa. . . remember? You told me the story once. About how all the wildlife on the island of Krakatoa was utterly destroyed by the volcano. And how a spider was the first creature to return to the island."
Kim's smile grew slowly. "I remember. It was too far from land for it to get there by normal means, so it sailed there on the wind, spinning a thin silk thread as it went."
Sampsa nodded.
"And you think we could use something similar? To sail on solar winds, perhaps. Out into the darkness between the stars, until it comes to land . . ."
"Spinning a thread," Sampsa said. "And boosting the signal as it went."
Kim laughed. "Brilliant!" he said, clapping Sampsa's back. "I think that's brilliant!"
"You think it'll work, then?"
Kim shrugged. "The gods alone know if it'll work. But we'll try, eh? We'll sure as hell try!"
Chao stood before his adopted father where he sat at his desk, the young man's head bowed, listening as Lin Shang spoke of what had happened and what it meant for them all. Chao had heard much of it already, of course, for there was no one in the City who was unaffected. Taxes would hit them all. But for Chao it meant more than most. For Chao it could well change his entire future.
Emily stood to one side looking on, her chest tight with anxiety. If Ji, the youngest, was her favourite, Chao, the eldest, was the one upon whom all her hopes rested. Brighter than the rest and quicker of mind, he had taken to his studies like a fish to water, but who knew what this set-back would do to him.
". . .so you understand," Lin said, finally coming to it, "that this will mean sacrifices for us all. We shall all have to work harder. Not only that, but we shall have to do without many things we have previously taken for granted . . ."
"Papa Lin?"
Lin Shang looked up, surprised that Chao had interrupted him. He straightened his shoulders, a slight tick momentarily making the right-hand side of his face jump. "Yes, Lin Chao?"
The boy kept his eyes averted, yet there was something in his face - an earnestness beyond his years - that she had not noticed before.
"Would it help if you did not have to pay for my studies, Papa Lin?"
Lin Shang swallowed, disconcerted by this turn of events. It was clear he had braced himself to break the news to Chao - to be hard, if necessary - but he had not been prepared for Chao's offer.
"It would."
"Then I should be glad to give them up. If it would help."
Lin's face twitched once more, then, abruptly, he bowed his head. It was done.
Emily stared at Chao, impressed by his self-control, by the maturity he had shown - yes, and the unselfishness. She wanted to go to him and hug him tightly; to tell him what a brave young man he was, but knew that would be wrong. From the tension in Chao's neck muscles, she could see that his self-control was hard-won. Chao, ever quick of mind, had seen for himself what the new taxes would mean and had resolved to make the best of it. Even so, it was a grand gesture.