Lifeline (4 page)

Chapter 4

ORBITECH 1—Day 1

Fifteen minutes! Duncan McLaris fought with himself not to call up the time again. He sat in the plush viewing chair in the
Orbitech 1
observation alcove. His five-year-old daughter Jessie squirmed and tugged her hand from his grip.

“Not so hard, Diddy!”

He had turned all the lights down so that the reddish glow did not interfere with the panorama of stars. Normally the ocean of space filled him with awe, made him forget all the trivial problems of being Production Division leader. Now, those “trivial problems” outweighed anything he had ever endured before.

The first scattered reports implied that a good portion of Earth’s population had survived the War, but most communications were wiped out from the electromagnetic pulse. As McLaris had guessed, they were utterly incapable of sending any more supply ships, probably for years. That didn’t surprise him: when only one of the early NASA shuttles had exploded, the entire nation’s space program was grounded for three years. This disaster was much more extensive than a single explosion. Their entire industrial base had probably been knocked to its knees.

As
Orbitech 1
rotated, the great shining ball of the Moon swung into view. It seemed so bright, like a bowl filled with hope.
Clavius Base
lay on the Moon’s surface. The oldest of the space settlements, it had been set up as a stepping-stone for the Lagrange colonies. And since supply shuttles had a vastly more difficult job entering and leaving the Moon’s deep gravity well,
Clavius Base
had been forced to become self-sufficient much sooner than the other colonies.

“Diddy, what star is that?” Jessie’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

McLaris looked where his daughter pointed. Her little finger smeared against the crystal, but he had learned to sight along her arm. “That’s called Fomalhaut, honey.” He wasn’t certain, but he knew she’d be disappointed if he didn’t come up with some answer for her. “The Arabs named it.” She giggled at the strange-sounding name, but seemed satisfied.

She wore her reddish-brown hair in braids. McLaris had never been able to decide if Jessie really preferred her hair that way, or if she just wanted her father to spend the time braiding it.

The first time he had tried it, back when his wife was still on
Orbitech 1,
McLaris had done nothing more than make a tangled mess of Jessie’s hair. Taking it upon himself as a father’s duty, he sat up late by the light of a small glow-lamp, toying with strings in his hand, studying the diagrams and instructions he had called up on the big screen of his terminal, practicing how to braid hair. Diane slept restlessly in their bed beside him, probably dreaming about hills and trees and fresh air.

McLaris glanced at his watch again in the observation alcove. Close enough. “Ready to go, Jessie?” He tried to sound cheerful, to keep the quaver out of his voice. “Take a last look.”

“Ready.” She grasped her toy synthesizer/keyboard (she called it her “keeburd”) like a teddy bear. McLaris had built it for her from a kit, and she played it relentlessly. He had told Jessie she could take only one of her toys with them tonight, and her decision had not surprised him.

He drew a deep breath and stood up, adjusting the lights in the observation room back to normal. He blinked, waiting to become accustomed to the brightness. Jessie rubbed her eyes but grinned. She didn’t look at all worried—she seemed to have a lot of faith in her daddy’s abilities.

McLaris didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to think. He would become frightened if he wasted too much time thinking. This was not the type of decision one made rationally.

The others would realize the implications of the War soon enough. Brahms probably already had, but hadn’t yet decided what to do. And if McLaris was to have a chance to save himself and Jessie, he had to do it now, before Brahms decided to act.

McLaris forced his breathing to become even and shallow, though his heart continued to pound. He grasped Jessie’s hand, almost dragging her along with his rapid steps. She clutched his fingers and followed as best she could, uncomplaining.

He kept a complacent half-smile on his face. Some of the workers in his Production Division greeted him, but most looked shocked and disturbed, too wrapped up with the very idea of the War itself, the devastation of their home planet.

You’re all doomed,
McLaris thought.
Have a nice day.

He and Jessie stepped into one of the rapid-lift shafts that led through a spoke of the habitation torus to the central core. At this end of the colony, the zero-G core contained the docking bay for the supply shuttles.

McLaris squeezed Jessie’s shoulder. “Remember what I told you, Jessie. This is very important.”

“Yes,” she said with a confidence and dignity that made him want to hug her again.

Their survival would depend on it.

As the spoke-shaft elevator took them from the rim to the zero-G core, they felt disoriented as gravity decreased. They fell half a mile in only two minutes. Jessie clung to McLaris’s side, quiet and obedient, but wide-eyed with excitement. The doors opened to the docking bay, and Jessie’s face glowed with wonder when she saw the
Miranda.

McLaris breathed a prayer, relieved that he could see no one else. Though only an hour had passed, Director Roha Ombalal had declared a holiday while he consulted with the division leaders. Unfortunately, McLaris would not be able to make the meeting.

Stephanie Garland floated out of the shuttle, then looked at her watch. McLaris nodded.

“Come on inside, Jessie.” The pilot held out her hands.

McLaris picked up his daughter. Jessie giggled in anticipation. He counted, “One … two … three!” then, bracing himself, tossed her in the zero gravity toward the shuttle-tug. Jessie loved it, laughing all through her brief flight. Garland snagged her, swung her down to the hatch, and took her inside the
Miranda.

After ensuring they were alone in the bay, McLaris sealed the spoke-shaft elevator door. He heard the forceful hiss as the airlock frame set itself against the impending vacuum of space. Moving surely, he pried off the lift’s control panel plate and plucked out the operating wires. As fast as he could maneuver in the zero-G bay, he circled to the remaining five spoke-shaft doors and deactivated them as well.

He launched himself toward the other side of the bay to where the great titanium doors stood closed against the vacuum. Feet drifting from the floor, McLaris fumbled with the control box and activated the bay door sequence. Rotating magenta lights went on at all four corners of the bay, bathing the silver walls with a flickering glow, like a rippling sunrise on Earth.
Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.

A klaxon sounded twice, paused, then sounded again. A synthesized voice blared from the intercom. “Warning! The airlock sequence has been activated. Please evacuate the chamber at once. The airlock sequence has been activated….”

McLaris entered the control code on the wall keyboard. Being a division leader had its advantages. The main computer accepted his command. He set the airlock timer to open in one minute.

When he pushed himself back to the
Miranda,
he judged his trajectory incorrectly and almost missed—which would have sent him floating to the other side of the cavernous bay. Right now, he had no time to lose on clumsiness. He managed to snare one of the shuttle’s struts, reorient himself, and propel his body feet-first through the hatch.

He sealed the shuttle door from the inside. With a glance around, he saw that Jessie had already been strapped in. She sat rigidly quiet, looking terrified.

“We’ve got less than one minute,” McLaris announced as he eased himself into the copilot’s padded chair.

“One minute! That’s not enough time to depressurize the chamber!”

“We’re not going to cycle through. I’m dumping it—explosive decompression.”

Garland’s eyes were wide.

“It can be done. Emergency procedure.” McLaris shrugged. “It would take an hour to drain the air out of here if we did it by the book. We don’t have that kind of time. Somebody would stop us by then. They can replenish the air from the leftover lunar rocks they’ve got floating around here. I’m just worried it’ll push the colony out of orbit.”

Garland shook her head sounding practical again. “No way. The air doesn’t have enough momentum. And besides, the
Orbitech
stabilizer jets would compensate.”

McLaris glanced up and saw three faces at the observation windows of the docking bay control room. The figures gestured wildly at the
Miranda.
Soon they gave up and pounded on the glass window.

McLaris smiled to himself. He had already disconnected all the wires from the appropriate control panels. He had done no damage, nothing that couldn’t be fixed—but it would take them hours to get it working again. By then it would be too late. The
Miranda
—McLaris, Jessie, and Stephanie Garland—would be long gone.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Garland said. Her voice had taken on a panicked high pitch. “It’s only been an hour. What if it’s a false alarm? What if things aren’t as bad as we think?”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

“News reports always get exaggerated in a crisis. What if—”

McLaris glared at her. “Do you have a weapon on board?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell them I took it, held you hostage, and forced you to fly out. There, your ass is covered. Happy now?”

McLaris flicked the external intercom, and suddenly klaxon sounds filled the cockpit of the
Miranda.
The computer voice blared from the intercom again.

“The airlock will open in twenty seconds. You have fifteen seconds to evacuate. Emergency. Evacuate immediately.”

McLaris strapped himself into the copilot’s chair and reached behind him, extending his fingers toward Jessie, but the straps kept him from touching her. He waved instead. “It’s okay, baby. Just be brave.”

“I am, Diddy.”

“I’m going to lift us up,” Stephanie Garland said. She looked beaten and very frightened. “When those doors crack, we’ll be blasted out of here with the rest of the air.”

McLaris nodded. “The sooner we get away from here, the better.”

Garland moved one of the joysticks. The craft hesitated, then jerked free of its moorings. McLaris could hear the attitude jets. The hissing sound cut off, but the
Miranda
continued to drift slowly upward, without gravity to pull it back down.

“Five seconds …”

McLaris swallowed, but his throat felt raw. It should be just about—

The giant docking bay doors slid open, and the crack widened like a yawning mouth. The blackness of space spun under them. As the air rushed out, McLaris could imagine he heard the howling wind.

The
Miranda
lunged forward, buffeted from side to side. Like a roller coaster ride, the shuttle-tug burst through the opening doors.

The air froze into a silvery mist of ice crystals that floated around the shuttle. McLaris gripped the arms of his seat, but the acceleration wasn’t great enough to cause discomfort.

Garland slapped at her control panel, igniting the thrusters that pushed them away from the colony.

McLaris looked down at
Orbitech 1
—the majestic Lagrange colony he had called home for nearly a year—as it dropped away behind them. The colony looked like two spoked wheels fastened to each end of a thick axle: two giant counter rotating toruses, each half a mile in radius, connected through the center by a mile-long cylinder that did not rotate. The central cylinder provided a large zero-G environment for labs and manufacturing areas.

Floating above the entire colony shone the broad but delicately thin mirror, discontinuous to reflect sunlight to the louvered mirrors on the rims of both toruses. McLaris turned his head away from the colony and looked instead for the Moon. Their survival lay there.

Garland flicked on the radio, and a hubbub of angry chatter burst at them. Disconnected shouting, dismayed and astonished questions:
“Miranda,
where are you going?” “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

McLaris had taken them by surprise. He allowed a satisfied smile to creep onto his face. Relief filled him like ice water, and he felt ready to melt. They were going to make it—they had passed the major challenge. The shuttle was free of
Orbitech 1.

One sharp voice cut though the babble on the radio. The other voices fell silent. McLaris felt his heart pause with animal fear as he recognized the voice of Curtis Brahms.

“Damn you, McLaris!” He could not possibly have measured the amount of anger and betrayal in the associate director’s voice. “Damn you!”

McLaris desperately reached forward and switched the radio off.

Behind him, Jessie cried.

***

Chapter 5

ORBITECH 1—Day 2

Curtis Brahms unsealed the desk and withdrew his bronze-rimmed eyeglasses. He slid them on, careful not to disturb his precise blond hair. The lenses in the glasses were blanks, for show only, but they made him look older. At twenty-nine, the youngest associate director ever, Brahms felt too self-conscious of his wunderkind status. And right now he needed to command respect. He insisted on holding the meeting in his own office chamber.

The actual director of
Orbitech 1,
Roha Ombalal, slouched next to him in shock. His expression showed little life. Ombalal had spent half a day poring over the detailed disaster plan developed by the Orbitechnologies Corporation years before. Brahms had heard him mumbling to himself, astonished and dismayed because “the plan was supposed to cover every emergency!”

Indeed, Orbitechnologies had not thought of every scenario. They had not even designed life-support pods into the station: Brahms felt sure that they hadn’t considered it cost-effective to provide “lifeboats” for all fifteen hundred inhabitants.

Across from him sat the R & D Division leader, Allen Terachyk, who looked little better than Ombalal—a wrong word might bring down his mental house of cards, and Brahms didn’t have time for that. He needed Terachyk to help him find the right information. Ombalal could be ignored for the moment.

“Well, Allen? Do you think you can do it?” Brahms added a distinct compassionate tone to his voice. Terachyk was six years older than Brahms, and kept his brown hair cropped very close to his head. Black-framed eyeglasses stood out heavily on his face.

Terachyk blinked at Brahms, his expression as blank and open as a test pattern. Brahms kept his face carefully neutral and reached over to turn on the desktop computer terminal. He swiveled the holoscreen to face Terachyk. Terachyk remained sitting with his hands folded in his lap. Ombalal blinked, but offered no assistance.

Brahms scowled. This was like trying to work with mannequins. He picked up the keypad and dropped it in Terachyk’s lap.

“Allen? Hello? Is anybody in there? Come on, you came up through Computer Applications—I
need
that information. Do you still remember how to get it?”

Terachyk squinted at the holoscreen and stared at the keypad in his lap. “Ask me in a couple days, Curtis—I’ll be all right then.”

“We don’t have a couple days, Allen. I have to know now.”

“Dammit, can’t you have a little compassion?” Terachyk flared up. “What difference does it make?”

Brahms set his mouth. He always worked very hard at showing compassion; he considered it one of his strong points.

Terachyk had been on
Orbitech 1
for more than three years, and he was due to be rotated home in four months. He’d been a model employee, one of the most exceptional workers on the colony. A wife and four sons waited for him in Baltimore.

Or had. From the first scattered reports they’d received, Baltimore had been obliterated in the War.

Two months before, Ombalal’s wife and children had been sent home under some sort of cover story that no one believed. On company orders, Ombalal remained on
Orbitech 1,
his self-esteem badly hurt, while Brahms took over the station.

Brahms tapped his fingernails on the desktop. Ombalal knew he had no part in the discussion. “Allen, listen to me. The other people here haven’t figured out how desperate our situation is. They’re still going to be waiting for rescue ships.”

“McLaris figured it out,” Terachyk mumbled.

Brahms reddened but maintained his control. He saw bright white light behind his eyes, but he blinked it away. “You and I both know that
Orbitech 1
was never meant to be self-sufficient. We have fifteen hundred employees here—tap into the database, get the exact inventory of our supplies. You can determine how much our gardens will produce right now. Model our consumption rate. Run a worst-case study. Use different rationing schemes.”

Terachyk kept his eyes turned away from the associate director, but he seemed to be paying attention. Brahms studied him, made a flash analysis of his reactions—yes, it was obvious. Terachyk would resent being brought back to the real world and its problems. He might turn his despair into anger toward Brahms for pulling him out of his misery.

But Brahms was willing to take that chance. He needed the colony to survive; he didn’t give a damn what the employees thought of his methods.
Orbitech 1
had been left in his care, not Ombalal’s—Orbitechnologies had made that perfectly clear.

Brahms spoke quietly to Terachyk. “I have to know how long we can last, Allen. And I have to know before people start asking those questions.”

A moment passed.

Reluctantly, Terachyk logged on. He flashed a bitter glance at Brahms, then stared at the screen. In a few moments, his fingers picked up speed as he allowed the problem to distract him from his own memories.

Brahms nodded in encouragement. Push the right buttons, and he knew he could get the right reactions.

He watched Terachyk work. Nothing was routine anymore, nothing straightforward. Brahms was being sent through the fire, given an impossible task to manage. He felt himself hardening, rising to the job that had to be done. The people of
Orbitech 1
were lucky to have him—they would have no chance at all relying on Ombalal.

Brahms studied the dark-skinned man. Roha Ombalal had been a brilliant chemist but was an utterly incompetent manager. The tall Indian had a soft, gentle voice with the potential for projecting a great deal of authority. Brahms had envied Ombalal for that, but scorned him for not making use of his gift. He could have been a perfect leader image, paternal and intelligent—all the things that Brahms, with his youth and clean-cut, boyish appearance, did not have.

But Ombalal was not a successful administrator—he had his priorities all wrong.

The Indian chemist had wanted everyone to like him, wanted the
Orbitech 1
people to think of him as a benevolent manager, someone they could talk to.

To foster his image, or maybe just to avoid his other duties, Ombalal had spent a great deal of time wandering through the labs, looking at all the work being done. Occasionally, he would become fascinated with the research, interfering and not getting his own administrative work done. Some of the scientists may have loved him for his genuine interest; others thought he was harassing them, getting in the way.

But what could the parent corporation expect? Orbitechnologies had a consistent policy of “rewarding” brilliant researchers with promotions into administrative posts. Brahms stated his own position frequently: “I wouldn’t put a scientist in an important managerial position any more than I would put an administrator in a lab doing research.”

When Orbitechnologies finally relieved the director of his duties and ordered Brahms to replace him, Ombalal’s family had been sent home, but he had been allowed to stay for a while, as a figurehead, only to save face.

Roha Ombalal had been devastated, wide-eyed and baffled at his misfortune. Brahms could tell that the director had never failed like this before, and he still didn’t seem to grasp what exactly he had done wrong.

“Knock, knock?”

Brahms looked up and scowled at the obese man who strode into his office. Tim Drury, the Maintenance/Services Division leader, began to speak, but Brahms held up his hand, indicating Terachyk intent at the terminal.

“Don’t disturb him. He’s doing something for me.”

Drury shrugged. “Question—when are we going to start getting things back to normal? We’ve told everybody they have a few days off to recover from the shock, but some service parts have already started fizzling. My people are going to have to go back to their maintenance duties before long. It’s going to be dregs for their morale if they’re the only ones back on the job.” Drury threw a glance at Ombalal and lowered his voice. He knew who really made the decisions. “Are you going to restart the production lines, Curtis?”

“I’m just the associate director.” Brahms kept his gaze on Ombalal, trying to spark some life in the man.

“Ask me if it makes any difference now.” Drury rolled his eyes. He didn’t seem to realize what Brahms was trying to do.

Drury had long, curly blond hair and a bushy reddish mustache poised on his upper lip as if it intended to launch itself off at any moment. And he was huge.

Brahms disliked people who had such low self-esteem that they allowed themselves to get so enormously fat. “A lazy body is the sign of a lazy mind” he had always believed. Brahms kept himself in good shape, reveling in the fine-tuned feel to his body. But Drury was always so good-natured it was difficult to be angry at the man.

Ombalal finally spoke. “He is correct, Mr. Brahms. Do not let me hold you back.”

Brahms removed his glasses, blinking in the light. “Well we have the raw materials to last us a while. Just no food. Yes, all divisions will return to work. It’ll distract them, keep them quiet for a little longer. Until we can think of something.”

Drury smirked. “How can the universe bear to go on without a continual supply of our no-smear lipstick? Or airy-but-durable single-molecular weaves for the height of fashion!” He paused. “But what about Production Division? Who’s going to fill McLaris’s place—now that he’s taken, er, a brief leave of absence?” The heavyset man made a maddeningly aloof smile.

Once again, Brahms burned. McLaris’s theft of the shuttle-tug was an appalling betrayal of Brahms’s leadership—a betrayal of all the good people on
Orbitech 1.
Not only had McLaris taken the last working shuttle, but he had shocked the colonists, called attention to their desperate situation, before Brahms could find a way to solve things. McLaris had stolen their icon of hope, the symbol that allowed them to think they still had a link with Earth. Even now, McLaris was en route to the Moon, safe and free, leaving the rest of them trapped. Trapped.

Brahms threw a glance at Ombalal, hoping that the man might volunteer for McLaris’s former position. The station director continued to stare at his large feet.

“I’ll take over his duties,” Brahms said, sighing. How could McLaris have done such a thing? He eased back, breathing slowly, slapping a mask of composure on his face. Brahms hated himself for these lapses into weakness, these brief moments without control. He had never been so quick to anger before.

“Okay.” Drury shrugged. “How about a game of checkers, anybody?”

Brahms bristled. “Fifteen hundred people have their throats up against the razor blade right now—we have to find a way to survive!”

Brushing aside the associate director’s retort, Drury spread his meaty hands. “Oh, things’ll work out in the end. Positive thinking, Curtis. Give it a whirl.”

“Get the hell out of here!”

Waving, Drury left, wandering back out into the corridor of administrative offices. The silica-fiber carpeting muffled his footsteps.

Drury had been with the parent company for the past fourteen years. He was a competent manager, but not truly gifted. Brahms, who had done the numbers himself, knew that Drury had not scored well on the Efficiency Study.

Four months before, Brahms’s supervisor back on Earth had spent hours briefing him about what the company expected. The bookkeepers and resource managers looked with glee upon the enormous profits generated from the exotic products created on
Orbitech 1.

In such isolation the entire political and social structure of the station could be compared to the frontier days of Earth. Orbitechnologies wanted to know how well the colony was doing in relation to how well it
could
be doing. Was it operating at its greatest efficiency? They wanted Curtis Brahms to go up and find out, to make suggestions for improvement. He had a knack for learning things like that.

As the Earth-to-orbit vehicle took Brahms up to rendezvous with the shuttle-tug that would carry him out to L-5, he simmered with excitement. Brahms felt so proud, so sure of himself. He could almost smell something in the air, like a premonition.

Before he had left,
Forbes
ran a small article spotlighting him as an up-and-coming manager, loaded with administrative dynamite and filled with new perspectives and ideas. Prime time had come for Curtis Brahms. Everything would fall into place at the moment he stepped out onto the docking bay of
Orbitech 1
and got to work.

He did not ever intend a vendetta against the former director. Instead, he approached his Efficiency Study with a single-minded insistence to get it done right. Brahms saw this as a great chance to put a gold star on his own career, but he also derived immense satisfaction just from making things work better.

Bright-sounding progress reports and extravagant promises from Roha Ombalal would no longer be sufficient for Orbitechnologies. Brahms had a gut-level feeling that Ombalal was an incompetent director, but he waited until the hard numbers tallied on the spreadsheets.

He developed broad criteria for assessing efficiency. The fifteen hundred people had to fit together as a unit. Productivity must be maximized; waste must be minimized; but the people themselves must remain satisfied as well, which seemed to be the most difficult factor to measure.

Brahms set up an extensive survey form on the
Orbitech 1
computers, which processed the demographic data and scored people on numerous criteria, such as their material productivity, their health, the quality and speed of their work, their ability to get things accomplished by a deadline. Then he rated the “fuzzy” factors, such as their general attitude, their ability to work and live with others as a community so that
Orbitech 1
was more than just a giant factory in space.

Over the months, Brahms dug into every detail of the workers’ lives. He studied how happy they were, trying to find which ones wanted to go back to Earth, which ones were still afraid or uncomfortable about living in space, and which ones felt exhilarated and honored to be on the station. He encouraged them to be honest, and thought he had been fairly successful.