Lifeline

Karen turned her head and moved to the adjacent working units. A steady green glow from three monitor lights on the control panel showed everything apparently normal. No pulsations or vibrations came from the machine, only a faint tracing of frost inside the glass, dusting the view of the compact middle-aged woman frozen inside. In Cyrillic characters, the LCD name panel spelled out TRIPOLK, ANNA.

Tripolk—the computer had said something about an Acting Commander Tripolk.

On the walls and engraved onto the control panels, reasonably clear instructions and warnings described how to revive the sleepfreeze subjects—all in Russian, all in Cyrillic characters. Apparently posted as an afterthought, the handwritten English list on the wall covered only the most basic procedure, with no details and no contingencies. Karen muttered to herself about the arrogance of assuming that any rescuer who might stumble upon the Kibalchich would be able to understand. The process appeared complicated enough that Ramis’s mistakes did not surprise her at all.

But Karen thought she could do it. She might be able to query the control computer to enlighten her on specific details. The computer seemed accessible to outside queries, through “validation by Acting Commander Tripolk.”

Behind her Ramis coughed, bringing her back to reality. “I was hoping you would help me remove the body. His name was Grekov.” He swallowed. “And there’s the other body in the command center airlock. The smell is going to get worse, otherwise.”

Karen stared at him, realizing he was right, but finding it difficult to work up enthusiasm for the task. “You’ve been all over the colony?”

“I found a cold-storage compartment on the lower deck, near the waste-recycling pool. I think it was supposed to be used for storing food and specimens. We should put the bodies there, but I cannot carry them by myself. Not that I would want to.”

Karen pressed her lips together. The waste recycler would be on the lower deck, of course, so gravity could help waste diffuse through the filters. “We need to go back to the sleeping quarters first and get some sheets.”

“Sheets?”

“We can knot them into a body bag.”

Fifteen minutes later, Karen and Ramis worked together to haul Grekov’s burly body out of the sleepfreeze chamber and lifted him onto a sheet spread out on the textured metal floor. They folded the sheet over and knotted the two ends.

“Let’s move him out of here. One, two, lift!” The two of them moved in small stutter steps, carrying the stiff, sheet-wrapped corpse between them.

They slid the body down the stairs, opting not to use the direct chute to the waste-recycling unit from the commissary; she could just imagine the body getting stuck there. Karen thought it best that they store the two bodies and let the Kibalchich inhabitants decide what to do with them. Perhaps the Soviets would want to recycle the body, or maybe they would have some sort of ceremony and eject him out the airlock.

As Brahms had done in his RIF.

They found the large cold-storage chamber next to the slowly circulating pool of waste, which was mostly clear now after a month of inactivity on the station. Ramis stood watching the pool for a moment. Karen saw steel teeth just below the surface that would grind the waste into a more manageable form before it was leached and broken down by dissolvers.

The steel teeth in the recycler brought home the detailed planning for the colony back when it had been constructed. People were going to die up here, and unless they were ferried back to Earth, which was too expensive, or ejected into space, which was a waste of valuable minerals, they were going to have to face the reality of living in a closed system.

A gust of frosty air poured out of the cold-storage chamber when Ramis opened it. On the right-side wall stood a tall bank of tiny drawers apparently filled with various samples, like an old-fashioned library card catalog. Piled metal canisters and boxes cluttered the back wall. The other side of the chamber remained empty.

Karen and Ramis placed the dead Soviet on the floor, straightened the sheets, then stood to leave. Ramis mumbled some sort of prayer to himself, looking deeply guilty.

Then they sealed the man back into a frozen sleep from which he would never awaken.

Chapter 43

KIBALCHICH—Day 45

The white dream surrounded her like snow, an icy blizzard coming from inside.

Anna Tripolk saw herself standing alone in a howling void. The cold had gone beyond numbness into a tearing pain. She couldn’t tell if she had opened her eyes.

Anna tried to call out, but the wind snatched her voice away and scattered the words, freezing them as they flew by. Stepan Rurik should have been there with her. He was always there when she needed him. Anna searched for him, but she saw nothing in the coldness.

Had they finally reached Mars? Was this the colony, their first winter there? How had she gotten lost outside? Where were the others?