Lifeline

“I have no idea how long it will be before someone comes. I hope it will be time enough for our wounds to heal. I have cut off all communication with the other colonies and warned them to stay away. I cannot guess how long that will remain effective. I do not intend to wait and see.”

Anna Tripolk closed her eyes, not wanting to hear what he was going to say.

“Anna, you must understand. I cannot put myself into sleepfreeze—there is no one here to operate the chamber.” He looked around the room. “I do not know how long I can stand this.” He lowered his voice.

“And the transmissions I have intercepted from the other colonies—on Orbitech 1 I watched them kill ten percent of their population.… Their new director, Brahms, executed two more. Things are getting very bad all over. I have had no contact with anyone on Earth. I begin to fear we will never come away from all this. What is the use?

“It may be a hundred years until the madness has been wiped out.” He was silent for some minutes. The d-cube recorded only the sound of his breathing. When he spoke, the words sounded forced.

“Using the medical computer and the pharmaceutical dispensary, I have found an appropriate and supposedly painless poison. After I record this, I am going to the command center. I will adjust the computer to recognize Anna Tripolk as commander of this station.”

She saw Rurik’s image sit up from the bed and walk over to the screen before the picture blanked out.

She felt angry to discover tears running down her cheeks. She brushed them away. Her fingers felt cold. Her confusion and grief funneled together into anger. How could Rurik do this? What did he mean he was ordered to destroy Orbitech 1—that was nonsense! How could he make her commander of this station? She wasn’t ready for that; she didn’t want the responsibility.

Commander Tripolk. She snorted at the sound of the title. There must be another reason—he had acted more as a coward than a commander.

She stood up and ejected the d-cube from the terminal. In Rurik’s holo her own face looked back at her, a younger face, before her dreams had been shattered. One thing she did know was that Rurik was a traitor—and a murderer.

Anna put the cube on the floor and crushed it with her heel. Then she brushed at her jumpsuit, searching for her own dignity, and walked stiffly out the door.

A commander belonged in the command center.

Very well. She would see just what she could do there.

Chapter 49

AGUINALDO—Day 60

From the Aguinaldo’s observation blister, the array of sail-creatures looked like a gossamer armada, ready to skim the Earth and crawl back up the gravity well to L-5. Techs had arranged the sail-creatures in a staggered two-dimensional mosaic, sails oriented perpendicular to the Sun.

Luis Sandovaal could barely make out their full outlines, the stubby central bodies with only a hint of the enormous cell-thin wings.

President Magsaysay stood with Sandovaal, Dobo, and Dobo’s wife. Sandovaal thought Dobo’s wife looked puffy—probably from living in low gravity for too long, or perhaps she had just been crying a lot lately. She should feel proud of the great adventure her husband was about to undertake, not whimper about it.

Outside the colony, spacesuited Filipino techs swarmed over the score of metamorphosed sail-creatures, attaching fiberoptic lines between the sails—wires that connected each creature to its nearest neighbors. The middle two sail-creatures were being readied to house Sandovaal and Dobo. Hormone capsules and a patchwork of electrodes had been inserted into the cavities of the other eighteen giants.

Sandovaal started to speak, but felt a lump rise in his throat. What an odd sensation! The sight outside looked so beautiful; it was a climax to his bioengineering career. The mosaic of sail-creatures was no doubt the largest cluster of life-forms the solar system had ever seen. He found it impossible to say anything—and the intense emotion embarrassed him. Sandovaal turned away and spoke in clipped sentences so his voice would not crack.

“Dobo. It is time for us to go.”

Dobo continued to stare out the crystal blister. He kept an arm around his wife’s plump waist. The Aguinaldo rotated, giving the group an encompassing view of the sail-creatures, the stars, and the vast distance they would have to travel.

Sandovaal began to grow cross. “Dobo—”

“Luis, Luis.” Magsaysay put a hand on Sandovaal’s shoulder and nodded toward the exit. “You have to go.” Sandovaal grunted and led the way from the veranda toward the airlock end of the Aguinaldo.

When they arrived, Magsaysay studied Sandovaal’s ice blue eyes. “The techs are not through checking your sail-creatures. You want to make sure everything will work, do you not?”

“We tried it on one sail-creature. Ramis was successful. The neural network will ensure that it works for all of them.”

Magsaysay replied with uncomfortable silence.