April 6: And What Goes Around (5 page)

"Well the
horizon is really close. I'd guess not much more than a hundred meters on the
end here. I suppose if he jumped he could be somewhere on the ice still. Or if
he jumped straight up hard enough he'd take a long time to come back down. I
didn't look
up
. In this suit I'd have had to lay on my back with my
helmet hanging out the hatch to do that. Even then he might not come back down
straight. It would be easy to land beyond our horizon or even do a short orbit
or two before hitting ice again."

"I don't see
Harold for a jumper. He might push
you
, but he had entirely too good an
opinion of himself to ever be self-destructive. Captain, you on circuit?"
Alice asked.

"Yes Ms.
Keynes, of course."

"Is it
possible to check with the radar and see if Harold is nearby but off the
snowball?" Alice asked.

"No, I'm
sorry but with the nose of the ship anchored we can't use it and it is
integrated into the ship so thoroughly it was deemed impractical to remove. It
has insufficient range to of use navigating so they decided not to provide an
auxiliary system," Jaabir said.

"OK, thank
you. It was just a thought."

"You want me
to go down or watch over you?" Alice asked Barak.

"I'm used to
the surface here. I know how the ice is supposed to look. Just monitor my radio
and watch out the hatch so you can haul me back in by my line if I get in
trouble. I may go out of sight. The line is long enough to go around to the far
side of the ship. But if I do I'll keep up radio chatter so you know what's
going on," Barak said.

"OK, Your
rebreather numbers all check good?" she asked. There was no external
monitor for that unless she jacked in. The bridge had telemetry, but she wasn't
counting on that. Barak appreciated it.

"Numbers all
good. I have a week before I need new packs. I'm purging at ninety five percent
pump-down," Barak announced.

There was no
objection from the bridge. They had a huge margin on air supply and could make
more.

The ice under the
lock was packed hard from their foot traffic. Barak didn't expect to see any
marks or debris there and there wasn't anything. He turned and scanned all
around slowly, looking hardest where he couldn't see from up in the lock hatch.

"There's
something under the overhang," Barak told Alice. "I'll be out of
sight just a few seconds."

"Oh shit!
" Barak exclaimed, and then silence.

"You OK? You
need reeled in?" Alice asked, worried at his silence.

"Sorry to
worry you. I'm just fine. Coming back in sight soon. I have retrieved the...
object. I'm sorry but Harold is dead," Barak told Alice.

Jaabir on the
bridge didn't have to be told. He had the camera feed from Barak's suit helmet.

Barak pulled
himself back up the line and swung in the lock. He handed Alice the boot from Harold's
suit. Not the insulated over-boot but the pressure boot. The flange with
locking lugs was fractured half way around and the one lug that was not cracked
bent over when the pressure blew it off. The suit would have emptied itself in
a heartbeat and propelled Harold off the surface like a rocket.

"What a
horrible way to go," Alice said.

"There isn't
any
good
way to go," Barak insisted. "I can't blame the suit
maker. Harold has been kicking the ice off his boots for the last two weeks.
Space suits are not designed to
kick
things. Cold metal gets brittle and
this was simply abused until it failed. If you made a suit you could treat like
that the miserable thing would weigh as much as a ground car and be impossible
to move in."

"If he's been
tethered he'd still be dead," Alice pointed out.

 Barak thought
about that a moment. Harold would have jetted to the end of his safety line but
still been clipped on the post below. Barak would have needed to clip on,
descend to the post below and change Harold's line over to the lock riser or
his own suit, go back up to the lock pulling the extra line along, reel Harold
in, maneuver Harold in his suit through the hatch, unclip both  their lines,
close the hatch and pressurize the lock. There was no way to do all those
things fast enough to save him.

"We'd have
been able to recover his body, but it wasn't survivable," Barak agreed.

"Why don't
you come in and de-suit," Jaabir said. "I'm going to declare
everybody take a rest day to recover from this... shock. We'll discuss how this
affects us and what accommodations we'll have to make later. I'll send word
back in the daily report."

"Alright,"
Barak agreed. "There wasn't anything else visible out there. It wouldn't
really make any difference if I found anything now. We are bringing pressure
back up in the lock and will help each other unsuit. If you need any details
not in the radio log let me know. If I'm to be off duty for a full shift I'd
like to have a drink and sit and decompress a bit. But if you think I'll need to
suit back up and go out I won't drink anything."

"No, no. Feel
free. I may have a medicinal dose too," Jaabir said, although it wasn't
his custom. "After I review the log and write a report."

Barak guessed
there was little chance he'd be asked for a formal report or written response.
Jaabir was going to be happy to do the whole thing, putting himself in as
positive a light as possible. Fact was, even if he'd been much more of a
stickler for rules and rode Harold hard, the captain always caught
some
of the blame when things went this badly wrong.

When they were out
of their suits, with no com feed to the bridge, and everything stowed properly,
including the lone boot, Alice turned and hugged him hard. She was shaking a
little bit.

"Do you think
Jaabir will tell Deloris?" she asked him.

"Jaabir isn't
thinking about
anything
but covering Jaabir's butt right now,"
Barak said.

"Then I'd
like to come tell Deloris with you and stay with you guys tonight," Alice
asked.

"Of
course," he agreed. They had rigged a double mattress extension some time
ago to let the three of them all fit in one bunk. A single bunk wasn't even
comfortable for two. Three was flat out impossible. They wouldn't trust it
under heavy acceleration, but that wasn't going to happen again until after
they cut the
Yuki-onna
loose of the ice-ball back home. They stood there
silently holding each other for a moment, drained,  before they let go. Neither
wanted to clean up and change in the suiting room. They just wore suit liners
back to his cabin.

It was a good thing the motors were all in place before this happened.
Barak would have dreaded working with Jaabir or one of the women to try to
drive anchors and position them. Harold hadn't been his favorite person but he
was fairly big and strong enough to handle pushing the massive machinery around.
It would have seemed a pointless and selfish thing to say out loud so he never
really considered it. But he'd bring it up to anyone who wanted an after action
report. Six people were just not enough for this deep a voyage he decided. It
was going to still be a hardship going back shorthanded. He'd talk about that
later between just the three of them before having to hear Jaabir's take on it.
Not tonight, he decided. So soon he might still say things to Jaabir he'd
regret.

* * *

It was late, past midnight. Gunny was in his room sleeping. For a
wonder April wasn't hungry. She just wasn't sleepy. That didn't mean she wanted
to study or actually
work
. Everyone she knew well followed a day
schedule and couldn't be called this late. She had music on low so she wouldn't
disturb Gunny. She probably should not have had quite so much coffee after
supper.

It was always amusing to see what the Earthies were doing. She was
ready to look at the news again. This afternoon she'd have said she was never
going to look at the stupid crud again. M3 or Home ran on North American
Pacific time so their news was probably pretty dead and just repeating stories
from the previous day since it was their night too. Asia didn't interest her as
much as Europe so she checked their news feeds, scrolling until she found
something Italian. Her friend, Lin, the captain of the boat they sometimes
hired worked out of Italy, so the news had some actual relevance to her life.

The European News
Feed showed a man in robes speaking behind a lectern. He was speaking Italian
so she picked the translate to English captions option. It was outside in
bright sunlight but fairly early in the morning by the angle. There was a stone
building behind him. You couldn't see much of it but April got the impression
it was old.

"The Holy
Father is
not
ill," the Vatican spokesman insisted. "I have
spoken with him recently and he's quite robust for a man of his years. He has
set aside some personal time from Church business for reflection and spiritual
retreat. He has been complaining for some time that the pace of modern life is
not conducive to quiet Christian meditation and has decided to apply the needed
adjustment in his own life first, delegating some of the oversight of the Holy
See to trusted advisors. In time he shall return refreshed. He is certainly not
obligated to trot out on your whim. The faithful are urged to reexamine his
letter of last November and see if they can't apply the same principals in
their own lives."

"What of the
others?" the journalist from the "The Rome Daily Blog of Faith"
asked. "There are almost two dozen very senior churchmen here and in other
European states who have not been seen in public for some months. This is in the
same time frame in which the King and Queen of Spain withdrew from public life
and several members of their charities and government bureaus have been
missing. Is all this coincidence?"

"You have
found us out," the spox admitted, throwing his hands up in mock despair.
"They are all in conference, where various flying saucers have gathered
them to the Mother ship. But the meeting was delayed, just as you suspected, by
illness. The main speaker Elvis Presley is not well at all."

"It is not
fitting to mock a serious inquiry from the press," the fellow insisted.
"What goes around comes around."

"You do not
have
a press," the spox pointed out. "I doubt you even have an office. I'd
be shocked if you don't work solely from your phone."

The man couldn't
reply over the razzing and laughter from his fellow reporters and journalists.

April switched
news feeds. Was that as crazy as it came across, or was the auto-translate
influencing it? She knew that there was something happening with the Spanish
royal family and a bunch of church officials. She and Gunny suspected they got
infected with some virus made to do life extension therapy. She even strongly suspected
who messed up and transmitted it. She's had some modifications done the same
way, but had been very careful to quarantine herself.

She decided to look at North America anyway, where she at least knew the
fine nuances of the language instead of needing a translator. Disney News still
seemed as reliable as any. What were their main stories?

Atlanta, Georgia –
HHS administrators say the Atlanta water supply system is "unfixable"
given its age and rate of failures. They demanded the city put Federal aid
towards sewer systems alone or face funds cut-off. "Water is cheap now
with fusion power and modern desalination techniques," says HHS spox,
"but distribution is expensive and based on a century old system that
requires pumping from the ocean to the antiquated processing plant for
distribution.

Free drinking
water will be distributed in reusable bottles at FEMA service centers by
presenting approved photo-ID. Very few sections of the city will need to go
more than five kilometers to obtain free water. Bulk water may be picked up for
delivery by approved contractors upon submission a list of validated customers.
FEMA will set delivery rates. Subdivisions and apartment complexes of two
thousand or more residents, with water systems no more than thirty years old
may apply to be tied to the supply system on a cost sharing basis. Schools and
contracting charities will offer shower facilities in off hours to residents
with ID.

It is suggested you save your waste water for sanitary system flushing as
well as watering any plants. Watering a lawn from an approved connected system
is prohibited. The first violation is a ten thousand dollar fine and the second
violation results in the cut-off of the entire approved connection. Owners are
urged to disable or lock external sill cocks on their buildings to avoid theft
and responsibility for misuse. Hoarding more than a hundred gallons of publicly
supplied water in a household shall be a class B felony.

Modesto, California – The USDA has ruled that paving portions of
agricultural land and directing the run-off into drywells to raise the level of
rainfall available to the unpaved portion makes the entire volume subject to
applicable water regulations. Such so called dry-land farm techniques using enhanced
collection are as artificial as any other form of irrigation and require
permits.

Lake Tahoe, Nevada – The State Supreme Court of Nevada has ruled
residents of the California side working in Nevada may be required to purchase
a state license plate and county road use sticker if they use Nevada side roads
on a regular basis to commute, citing such use is de facto residency.
"Residency is much more than where we sleep," says Justice Collins.
California is expected to pass matching legislation. Insurance spox indicate
this will require separate policies. Governments in New York and New Jersey are
watching the decision closely. Drivers may be required to buy and display both
plates. No Federal challenge is expected.