Rurik smiled a little, as if trying to lighten the air. “Without me, you would be the acting commander of this station.”
Tripolk forced a smile of her own. “And without me, you would be in charge of a station without a purpose!” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Mars was so close.”
Rurik pursed his lips. “Anna, the Kibalchich has strategic uses beyond mere scientific research. That point has not been lost on the military or State Security. You know as well as I that some of our ‘assistants’ are KGB.”
She smirked, annoyed to hear the reactionary paranoia she had encountered so often, but never from Rurik. “You and Cagarin will have to go under. There aren’t enough supplies to last even the two of you.”
“Enough for a while,” Rurik said.
“Not long enough.”
“Enough … for a while.”
Tripolk stared at the long silver point of the last hypodermic needle, then turned her head away. She injected herself with the yellow drug.
She had stepped across the line now. No turning back. Onward, ever onward—even to this. She couldn’t call for help.
Her body began to feel as if it were turning to ice water, flowing away from her brain stem. She felt dissociated, apart from it and drifting. Her arms and legs flopped listlessly, like mannequins’ limbs.
Rurik gently helped her to lie down in the glass-walled cubicle. He smiled down at her. “I saved one bottle of brandy for myself. Tonight I will drink a toast to you—without Cagarin.”
“Thank you,” Tripolk managed to whisper. She found it hard to move her lips.
Rurik reached down and brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. “Yes. No need to worry. Everything will be all right.”
Yes, she thought, everything will be all right. It would take years and years for anyone to come up and find them. She wondered what it would be like.
Her vision began to grow black and she couldn’t tell if she had closed her eyes or not. With a twitch, she moved her arm and bumped the smooth glass wall of the cubicle. At least I’ll have a coffin if anything goes wrong.
Then the cold of space seemed to reach through her veins, through her limbs, and into her heart.
Maybe she would dream about Mars.
Chapter 17
AGUINALDO—Day 13
The crystal observation blister opened to the Aguinaldo’s exterior. Stars wheeled overhead, making a complete circuit every ten minutes as the colony rotated.
Standing on the translucent, segmented floor of the blister, Ramis kept his attention on the view below him, trying to stay out of Dr. Sandovaal’s way. He felt as if he were in one of the glass-bottomed boats a man had used back in the P.I. to take tourists around on the inlets.
Sandovaal fidgeted like an overeager child. Ramis held his breath as the scientist touched a finger to one of the micro-earphones on his head.
“They say everything is ready, Yoli.”
Magsaysay nodded, hands behind his back. “Tell them to proceed.” Sandovaal snapped an order into the transmitter. Magsaysay had let him command the mission, since the tether idea had been his and since it would keep him from complaining.
Ramis splayed his fingers on the crystal viewport, trying to peer down the long edge of the cylinder. The shadow shield on the far end of the Aguinaldo blocked the harsh solar radiation. Smears of light, reflected from the Earth and the Moon, splashed off the smooth external hull, but most of the colony lay in black shadow.
Ten kilometers away he could see the Aguinaldo’s opposite end drop off. Scattered glints of metal a hundred kilometers distant marked the construction site of the giant wheel of Orbitech 2.
From his perspective he could not see the docking doors swing open or the team of suited engineers drift out. Dobo was supposedly directing operations down in the docking area. Ramis suspected that the engineers knew what they were doing, and he hoped Dobo wasn’t just getting in the way.
The other people clustered by the transparent ring around the end cap had a better view, but Ramis preferred to be with Magsaysay and Sandovaal, in the heart of things.
The viewport veranda remained quiet as they waited. He forced himself to be patient. Ramis knew how long it took for people in clumsy maneuvering suits to complete a simple task.
He caught a glimmer out of the corner of his eye. He paused a moment to make sure, then pointed it out to Magsaysay. “I can see the package of wall-kelp, and one of the suits, I think.” He squinted. “The tether is too narrow to make out.”
Sandovaal ducked his head down to Ramis’s level. Ramis refused to move, but the scientist did not seem to notice. He pressed his finger against the pane, indicating where a glimmer crept into view. In the dim Earthlight, Ramis found it difficult to see the compact package drifting deeper into space, reeling out from the Aguinaldo.
Sandovaal moved to one of the joysticks controlling the exterior-mounted telescopes. “Come on, slowly now …” he muttered to himself. He located the package with the telescope and focused the image on the console’s inlaid holoscreen. Sandovaal squinted at the package, down at his timepiece, then at the package again before he jabbed at the transmitter. “Dobo—tell them they are playing the cable out too fast! Slow down or it will rebound!”
“Is the cable going to break?” Ramis asked.
Sandovaal scowled. “The engineers assure us it can take the strain. It is tape-wrapped carbon something-or-other. But they are playing it out too quickly, I think. If the wall-kelp reaches the end of the tether, it will rebound back to the Aguinaldo.”
Ramis doubted the small package striking the docking end would do much damage—but they would miss a chance to send food to the lunar colony.
“I am sure they know what they are doing, Luis,” Magsaysay said, then tugged on his lip. “Though the backlash could kill somebody.”
Sandovaal blinked into the telescope. “Yes. Yes, it very well could.”
The president paced across the veranda and stared out the wide window plates. “It looks as if the package is slowing down.”
The wall-kelp crept away until they could no longer resolve the dim point of light against the grainy background of stars. Ramis joined Sandovaal at the holoscreen.
Sandovaal muttered, “Nineteen point eight eight three kilometers—not quite twice the length of the colony. It is trivial distance compared to the size of the orbits here. But the tether length must be exact, and that will bring my kelp to the Moon. Amazing subject, celestial mechanics—like witchcraft.”
Magsaysay turned from the window plate and smiled at Ramis with a look of satisfied relief. “We have already informed Dr. Tomkins at Clavius Base over the ConComm network. He is a bit skeptical, but anxious to try it.”
“And it will give us a chance to see how the wall-kelp fares in a planetary environment.” Sandovaal transmitted again to Dobo in the docking bay, double-checking everything.
After more than an hour, all of the cable had been reeled out. Dobo informed them that the tether was taut, holding the package twenty kilometers away from the colony by means of a small compressed air container.
Sandovaal fondled the transmitter button. “We will wait a moment to be sure the tether has stabilized. We have a rather large time window, if the initial orbital trajectory is correct.”
“It is correct on this end, Dr. Sandovaal,” Dobo’s voice answered. “But if we wait too long, the cable could stretch.”