Lifeline

Switching the holo back on, she picked up the cube and stared at an image of herself, several years younger, when she had just begun the background work that would be the keystone of her mission aboard the Kibalchich. She had been searching for ways to make a Soviet Mars colony viable—the sleepfreeze process for the long journey, for the colonization of a new planet.

Anna had been younger then, more idealistic. The future was bigger and brighter, before so many opportunities had turned into dead ends.

She pulled the d-cube from the image and inserted it into Rurik’s terminal. The screen fuzzed and projected an image of the commander. He had left the lights too low to capture a good image of himself, and he had lain on his bunk as he spoke. This kept him partly out of view of the recorder so that his image wavered, shifting from clarity to indistinctness. But his voice came in clearly. She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but the tone of his words let her know the emotional wringer he had apparently gone through. She swallowed, afraid of what he might say.

“I suppose someone will find this record, eventually. Anna, I hope it’s you, but I have no guarantee of that. It could be centuries before anyone comes back here. I hope the sleepfreeze process protects our people for that long. We certainly couldn’t test it under such extreme conditions.

“I am all alone.” His voice suddenly sounded tired. “I have killed Cagarin and dumped his body in the materials reprocessor.” Rurik leaned forward and smiled tightly. “He always wanted to be of service to the State.”

Anna stood up with a sharp indrawn breath and stepped backward from the image. Rurik had killed Cagarin? But he was the political officer! She continued to listen.

“I am a traitor, I suppose. I refused the last order my government on Earth issued to me. I have questioned orders before, but this one I could not rationalize. And in refusing, I aroused the suspicion of Vice Commander Cagarin. It should be no surprise that Cagarin had approval and veto power on the Kibalchich—but that is all on paper. There is no more government, and I remain commander of this station.”

Anna Tripolk sat back down on the bunk, confused even further. Vice Commander Cagarin? Stepan had hinted that Cagarin was KGB—but even then, she had thought he was just some bureaucratic flunky.

She had wondered why Cagarin had remained awake with Rurik, what special position he had. It made no sense. She felt as if the tip of the iceberg was rising out of the sea and showing more and more that she had never suspected.

“You see,” Rurik continued, “the Kibalchich has much more to it than most of us realized. State Security had its own plans for this ‘strategic position’ at L-5. Not the straightforward idealistic challenge that you had, Anna, though that’s too bad—a successful mission to Mars was such a nice goal, the perfect cover story.

“There’s no place for KGB at L-5 or in humanity’s future. Their paranoia—along with equivalent paranoia on Orbitech 1 and our entire world—is what caused the downfall of Earth. They seem to forget that human beings are supposed to be an intelligent species. We have to prove that now.

“I refused my final orders from Earth; I could not destroy Orbitech 1 and murder fifteen hundred helpless people. Cagarin and his people would have killed me, taken over the station, and followed the instructions without question. I could not allow that. I knew that in order for us to survive, most of us had to go under sleepfreeze, to wait for help. I convinced Cagarin that I had every intention of following the government’s directive, but that people here would riot if they knew about it. I told him I would carry out the instructions after everyone had gone into the chambers. No one would know.

“Cagarin was suspicious, but he agreed. I put him out of the way before he discovered what I was planning to do. Then I disconnected the sleepfreeze chambers of the other eleven KGB people. The remaining survivors on the Kibalchich have clear consciences and true forward-thinking minds. They are the hope for our future. I have removed the tainted ones.

“Anna, if it is you listening to this, don’t resent me. It will all work out for the best. If someone else is hearing my words, I can only hope mankind has matured a little in the years since I recorded this.”

Anna breathed heavily. She stopped the recorder. Stepan, a traitor? She allowed the shock to sweep over her. Stepan, a murderer?

She played the recorder through at fast forward, catching snippets of Rurik’s message. His entries became more disjointed, day after day, as he remained alone on the silent station.