“I’m divorced,” said Dan.
“And your ex-wife had a beard.”
“Funny.” Dan forced a laugh. “That isn’t it. The lawyer who raked me over the coals had a beard. I can still see him running this tiny little comb through it like it was a mink stole. That was after my ex-wife won the custody battle for my kid. I wanted to talk to the guy, tell him what a lousy job he had done taking my son away from me. But he was too interested in preening his goddamned beard.”
“I guess that would make me shave every day,” said O’Donnell.
“You know, I hate those guys,” Dan said with sudden intensity. His sky-blue eyes were focused on a point in his own past. “They come into your life, wreck it, and then go back to their offices to count their money. And what the hell are you left with? A mess. A big goddamn mess they made for you because they were charging by the hour.”
“They don’t always go back to their offices,” said O’Donnell. “Sometimes they stay around and finish you off.”
O’Donnell threw his last dart and slipped his feet from the loops. Dan took his place and fired three quick shots. None hit their marks.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
O’Donnell floated slowly toward the board to retrieve his darts. He realized he shouldn’t talk about his past, but sometimes he just couldn’t keep it bottled up. Dr. Renoir was a woman. He could put his brain in neutral, disengage his mouth, and rap with her as he had rapped with chicks in bars. Dan Tighe was different. He might actually understand.
“My lawyer sold me out,” said O’Donnell. “He charged me fifty grand for a settlement that I could have gotten myself when the case began. I had only twenty grand left, so he took my lady.”
Dan grimaced.
“I guess she was worth thirty grand. I don’t know anymore.”
“Doesn’t sound like the normal divorce case to me.”
“It wasn’t,” said O’Donnell. A smile creased his face. Telling this story would be fun, as long as he avoided specifics. “You are looking at the first man to be completely and utterly rifkin-ized.”
“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that a bunch of know-nothings brought me and my company into court and obtained an injunction removing EPA approval of several genetically engineered microbes I designed for agricultural use. Of course, it happened just before my company was about to go public. The investors evaporated, the company tanked, and my lawyer waltzed off with my last dollar and my girlfriend.”
“When was that?”
“A few years back. Lots of it is a blur, for one reason or another.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I eventually went to work for a company large enough and established enough to have a high-powered set of lawyers of their own. The board voted to join Trikon NA. So here I am, property of Trikon.”
They tossed several rounds of darts in silence. Ramsanjawi chattered happily as he chased Oyamo’s king across the board and eventually proclaimed checkmate. Oyamo sulked and asked for another game.
Dan mulled over what O’Donnell had told him. The scientist seemed candid about career and women, the two most important aspects of a young man’s life. But something was missing. Dan felt it in the vagueness of the dates and the blur O’Donnell said his life once had been.
“Tell me something,” O’Donnell said.
“What?”
O’Donnell aimed and fired another bull’s-eye. “The orientation manual says you grow taller in microgravity; your spine unbends when you’re weightless.”
“That’s right,” said Tighe. “That’s why they make your flight suits extra long for your size.”
“But I don’t seem to be any taller, really.”
Tighe chuckled. “If you had a full-length mirror you’d see why.”
O’Donnell hiked his eyebrows questioningly.
“Well, look at me,” Tighe said. Standing in the foot restraints, he knew he was bent over in the semi-question-mark posture known as the microgravity crouch.
“Am I doing that?” O’Donnell asked.
“Sure. Straighten yourself up. Go on, try it.”
O’Donnell strained for a moment. His back straightened, his shoulders squared. But with a puff of held-back breath he quickly relaxed and went back to the more comfortable crouch.
“In micro-gee,” Dan explained, “the spine does unbend. But the muscles tend to pull you into a sort of fetal crouch.”
“O’Donnell the ape-man.” Hugh grinned at himself and scratched under his armpit.
Tighe laughed. He was starting to like O’Donnell. Then he caught himself with the memory of who he was and what his responsibilities were.
“Play you for a drink,” he said.
“There’s liquor on board?” O’Donnell looked startled.
“No, but the loser can pay Earthside.”
“Let’s play for a soda,” said O’Donnell.
Tighe nodded. Inwardly, he realized that he had expected just such a response from Hugh O’Donnell.
Freddy Aviles moved silently through Hab 1. Most of the sleep compartments were darkened. A few leaked pinpricks of light through the seals of their accordion doors. As Freddy drifted toward the rear of the module, he became aware of a dull, rhythmic vibration. The sound strengthened and finally resolved into music as Freddy steadied himself outside Stu Roberts’s compartment. Freddy recognized the exquisitely clear electric guitar riffs that seemed to curl in arabesques against a heavy Latin backbeat. He had heard this music on boom boxes all over the South Bronx. Carlos Santana. Still a rock icon after thirty years.
Freddy slipped into the Whit, which abutted Roberts’s compartment. He removed a tiny sound amplifier from a sleeve pouch and pressed its suction end against the wall. The music was so loud that Carlos Santana seemed to be picking guitar strings inside the convolutions of Freddy’s brain. Freddy adjusted the amplifier to mute as much of the music as possible.
“This doesn’t look like the same stuff.”
“It is.”
“But it looks jagged.”
“The man downstairs didn’t put any gelatin capsules in the last shipment. That’s why it looks like a rock.”
“It’s yellower, too.”
“Hey, take your business elsewhere if you don’t like it.”
“Sorry. It’s all right. It’s just that—”
“Goddammit, it’s the same stuff. Take my word for it. Do you want the shit, or not?”
“Yeah, I want it.”
Someone turned the music louder and drowned out the voices. Freddy coiled his amplifier into a tiny bundle and slipped out of Hab 1. Better run that relay test quickly, he thought. Otherwise, Lance might become suspicious.
27 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
Trikon Station has been equipped with state-of-the-art extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) designed through the combined efforts of NASA, ESA, and Trikon International’s own aerospace division. These space suits are sleeker than the suits you may remember from photos of the Apollo lunar program or more recent American space shuttle flights.
The suit itself is constructed with layers of various insulation materials, a gas-tight bladder, a heat-resistant comfort layer, and protective outer layers of glass fibers and Teflon. The bubble helmet is made of a high-strength Lexan plastic.
The suit is ribbed at all joints and at the shoulders and waist to provide increased mobility. The self-contained life-support system will allow you to perform routine tasks safely and comfortably for up to six hours. There is an umbilical option if a longer duration is dictated. The suit also is equipped with multichannel communications units. During EVA, you may select one or more channels over which to conduct your communications. Special channels allow you to monitor the station’s internal alarm system or voice traffic over the station’s intercom.